After my stay at a bed and breakfast on the north island I headed to a bed and breakfast on the south island. I took the three hour ferry from Wellington to Picton, and arrived before nightfall. My next host picked me up at the dock and we drove 5 minutes to their property. The house was situated on a hill with a pine forest behind it. The pine tree was imported to New Zealand from North America and is used for building materials. The trees grow twice as fast in New Zealand because of the climate and were an ideal choice for the early colonizers. I stayed in a frontier style cabin located about 5 minutes walk behind the house. It had no running water or electricity, so I used a camping stove for cooking, oil lamps for heat, and candles for light. The outhouse was a short distance away.
The cabin
Outhouse
Most of the work I did dealt with the weedwhipper and the chain saw. The weedwhipper can have different heads attached to it, like a triangle saw and a circular saw, both of which I used to cut down the gorse and broom that is everywhere in New Zealand. Both were bought in to create hedges and natural fences for animals because gorse is prickly and broom is very thick. Anytime an area of land is clearcut the first species to pop up are grass and gorse and broom. Like all other introduced species they have become a huge problem because nothing can keep it in check, humans or grazing animals, and the native animals don’t use it.
The other main task I had was helping to cut up the 50 year old pine tree that was cut down while I was there. The pine tree was sitting on an eroding cliff and would have fallen in a big storm, so instead of dealing with it after it had fallen by itself, Nine, one of my hosts, decided to have it cut down where he wanted it to fall. The tree was massive and I spent about 2 days just clearing away small branches and cutting up useable pieces of wood.
I made my own breakfast in the cabin, leaving lunch and dinner, both of which I ate with the family. The family consisted of a husband and wife, with two daughters. One was 15 and the other 19, and it was great fun to hangout with the whole family. There was no tv and limited Internet. This left a lot of time to talk, so after dinner we usually sat around the table for an hour or two drinking coffee or tea and eating dessert.
