St Heliers Festival Day

After the chill of last evening we woke to a warm, blue-sky day.

Looking down on to the
main festival street

Main Stage

After breakfast we all set off to St Heliers Bay. The festival was being held in the part of the town known as the village. The main shopping street and a side road was blocked off. Local organisations, especially the schools, had set up stalls and a large stage had been erected with its back to the sea. In the middle of the main street an area had been barricaded off for children to do pavement art. In the other street was a large inflatable and a rock climbing wall. On the sea front were more stalls and small tractor hauled train.

Pavement Art

While we waited for the St Heliers School choir to perform we walked along to see our friends at their Noah's Ark stand.

We sat on chairs put out in rows on the street to see Zoe perform as part of the school choir at 11 o'clock.

Great Timing

We think that the choir performed spectacularly well. They were loud, clear and on pitch.

From this we went around to the climbing wall. Both girls tackled it, but Zoe succeeded in two full climbs; as we knew that she would. (See earlier blog.)

Emily's First Attempt

Zoe Reaching the Top

Next came the inflatable train tunnel. Emily was satisfied with one pass through.

As Emily was tired we headed for the beach. The site of the sand and sea quickly refreshed her as did the food that we purchased at the bakery; together with 'coffee-to-go'.

A Typical Kiwi Bakery

After our lunch we walked along the front looking for the tractor-train. The driver spent a long time talking to the children, finishing with an instruction to hold on tight. Emily did this with a determination which probably shocked the little girl that she was next to. Grandma followed in their wake.

Emily Holding Tight

While this activity was going on I introduced Sally to Debbie and spent some time observing people coming and going from the Ark stall. Among the visitors was Simon O' Connor, Member of Parliament for Tamaki. He was happy for me to take his photograph and I left while he was talking to Stefan.

A Kiwi MP

I caught up with the girls at the play park and left to walk back and collect the car to take a certain tired young lady home.

The next excitement of the day was the discovery that two monarch butterflies had hatched out from their cocoons which Zoe had collected some days earlier. Zoe proudly carried them to the back of the house where we watched the drying out process for some time before the next event of the day.

Sally had discovered that the pool was not heating properly because the inlet nozzle was not facing outwards. She was able to move it, but it swung back again. She was obliged to get into the somewhat cold water to see what was happening and discovered that the part was broken. However, a few pieces of plastic straws held in in place (and still do at the time of writing). The pool was then able to heat up and the two girls enjoyed a swim. We think that Emily can now just about reach the bottom. This shows how much she has grown since we arrived in January.

The monarch butterflies triggered another event and that was the need to provide food for them. Mum found out they had been living on a swan plant and so I drove her and Zoe out to the garden centre. There we found that it was the wrong season for planting swan plants, but we did purchase a trowel, a weeding fork and a spade before returning for mum to do some  digging.