About | Advertise | Contact Us

Cow's Life : Happiness is tall stories at altitude

On the first Monday of each month I pack my lunch, dig out my tramping shoes and backpack and drive to Opotiki to meet up with 20 or so happy, fit walkers who belong to the Opotiki Bush Walkers.
Our ages range from 50 through to 86-year-old Dick. I like walking beside this energetic octogenarian with his quick wit and great sense of humour. When we go in single file up a narrow steep track, if I can see Dick's behind in front of me I assure myself, if he can make it, so can I.
Our destination is predetermined and walked or checked out by the two organisers, cars are pooled and we venture often where humans have rarely been before. Once we came across a beautiful stag who stood transfixed as we moved quietly by. He obviously had not seen humans before. Just two months ago we came across a fat morepork having a snooze in the shadows of the trees.
The camaraderie is what makes our party special as we catch up with friends and set off for another million-dollar view at our destination. Such was the case when 23 of us set out the other day to explore and climb 800 metres to the highest point of what is known as the 1000-acre block.
We were ferried across the river by four-wheel drive vehicles with sided trailers, looking a bit like culls off to the works. We spiralled up and up, and were greeted by the owner who pointed out the correct track to the summit.
We were fenced in by a five-wire solar electric fence, 19km long. And we walked past a hydraulic ram pumping through 1000m of pipe into a 30,000 litre gravity-fed water tank. I was amazed at this alternative energy.
The view at the top was something to die for, taking in Whale Island, White Island, Mt Hikurangi and down into Pakahi Valley where Barry Crump used to hang out. The owner came up on his four-wheeler explaining it was easier to find lost trampers on his bike than to spend the next four days
Over lunch, someone mentioned the TV programme Country Calendar was 43 years old and how much they enjoyed the show. We started reminiscing about the rural spoofs and April Fools Day stories of many years ago.
Remember the turkeys in gumboots story?
According to one of our group, this came about while trying to avoid coccidiosis in turkeys. Skellerup were so impressed they decided to run trials.
Then there was the spaghetti pasta story with macaroni growing in fields. Apparently this was done by threading macaroni onto boysenberry vines. It seems adults were sucked in on this one, but not the kids.
Then someone remembered how the stock and station agents were besieged after a report that upper incisors had been invented for sheep, increasing the wool yield to 12kg/sheep, and the ewes were producing six lambs each.
The story I liked best was about the pre-dug post holes you could buy. It was rumoured that telephone companies had invested in several of these. They backed into one and disappeared forever.
I was wondering if this was a Believe it or Not show when another walker said how recently he read in a farming magazine of the invention of a contraption for sheep to measure the rear emissions. It seems the Aussies are looking into masks for sheep to measure greenhouse gases.
So if you are over this way in the Eastern Bay of Plenty on the first Monday of the month, come and join this happy band of walkers.
Keep fit, keep amused and do try to avoid those postholes.

PRINTABLE VERSION