Cheese & Chutney in Geraldine; Aurora & Camp Fire in Waihi Gorge

Saturday 16 May

Despite going to bed around midnight with temperatures still comfortably above zero - we woke with cold noses and frost on ELLAMY’s roof. Taking advantage of our powered site at Peski, which also supplies water and encourages you to dump grey water on their hedgerows I had a lovely long shower, washed my hair and spent a while battling the hair-dryer!

It was unusual to be here with so few others - in the summer & early autumn months there are usually around a dozen campers here - only 4 of us overnight this time, and two of us left in the morning. We packed up and headed off at 10.30, into Geraldine central for a bit of gourmet food shopping and a market visit.

First stop the fabulous Geraldine Cheese Company to stock up on dairy deliciousness… particularly their Halloumi which they sell at 3 randomly sized blocks for $10 (reader, one block alone was priced at $10.33 so we were making out like bandits!) We also got some aged gouda, a funky blue, a cumin gouda and a bag of parmesan for making cheesy seedy crackers.

Once you’ve got cheese you’ll need a chutney so we dropped into Barker's of Geraldine, sampled all the delicious offerings there and came away with another bag of goodies after pausing for lunch too. We tried to be good and just get some nice cheese accompaniments, but somehow left with a raspberry conserve and a jar of gingerbread caramel - oops! Had a lovely smooch with Baloo the nervous English spaniel who was absolutely convinced his humans would never reappear from the lunch queue... amazingly they did! Turned out to be fellow caravaners like us and spotted the photo of their old boy on FB.

Passing the cinema we were rather taken with the day's sessions and would happily have ducked inside for a binge watch if it had been a rainy day - "I feel the need, the need for speed!"

Bought fresh eggs at the minimal market, said hello to the lovely old fella serenading us on the accordion and picked some mint at the community garden behind the police station then set off about 12km up past Woodbury to the Waihi Gorge DOC campsite. It was a beautiful little spot beside the Waihi River, though I couldn’t see an actual gorge!

We set up in the sunshine and then realised we needed firewood for the fire pits and all the natural wood in the surrounding area had already been harvested & burned! Went for a wee walk along the Waihi, collected about 3 sticks of potential firewood but that was about all there was - so I pinched some from another fire pit. There were mystic markings all over the grass… can only assume there was a school camp trip here last weekend, but a follower suggested it was likely for a cross-country run.

We whipped back into town for a bag of bio-briqs (cheaper than kindling & wood) and most importantly, marshmallows!

It took a little longer than planned as I had to stop and say hello to this big blue SUV full of golden retrievers! They'd obviously just had a lovely walk as they were quite damp and the old fella looked rather tired - their owner came back and we discussed the joys of goldies (and the pitfalls like hair moulting and muddiness) - these three were Tea (Te Reo for white), Fen and Jack 💛🧡🤍

Got back & lit a fire in our nearest fire pit and sat around poking and fanning it to get things aflame 🔥 It was already pretty chilly as the sun set behind the hills casting a fantastic line of shadow into the sky.

While it got burning, we had a lovely dinner of BBQed lamb chops and tasty veggies then sat out in all our warmest clothing & toasted marshmallows whilst watching the satellites skitter past overhead, below a stunning Milky Way.

On a tip, I checked the aurora alert again and it was 7/9 but sadly as we were on the wrong side of the hills we couldn’t see much… but there was a definite glow.

Filled a hot water bottle, turned off the water pump, drained the pipes and retired to bed quite early… already at zero so a cold night ahead!