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Published: December 11th 2010
Private James Hanson’s tent
1850 military style - most settlers had to amke do with these when they first arrived!Jamie came round this morning just as I was getting fed up of job applications & we headed off to Howick Historical Village – A mixture of Maori & early European settler dwellings (mostly the latter) loosely based on the fencible village of Howick, the largest fencible settlement which together with Otahuhu, Onehunga & Panmure formed a chain to protect the young capital of Auckland from attack by either the Maori or the Frence. Fencible comes from defencible as in capable of defence, retired soldiers were offered free passage for themselves & their families, a cottage with an acre of land to become theirs after 7 years part time service. Many jumped at the chance, especially those Irish hit hard by the potato famine. In total 10 ships brought 2500 men, women & children to Auckland in the mid 19th century. We had a wonderful timke poking around all the cottages, I thoroughly recommend it to anyone visiting Auckland, but expect to spend longer than the suggested one hour there! We took slightly longer as we we determined to find all the Christmas cherubs hidden around the cottages & located by a series of clues. We suceeded in finding them all
Private John Broidy’s Raupo
Built by Maoris the settler's lived in these raupos until their cottages had been built. much to the amusement of the lovely lady in the shop & won lollies in return! We also treated ourselves to giant date scones at lunchtime!
After this we set off to visit Piha Beach, it was quite a drive along twisty turning roads & the sat nav seemed rather confused about where in Piha to take us so we just ignored it & parked by the beach! The black sand was scorching so we hurried over to the sea to cool our poor feet in the cold waves. It was a tad to rough to swim (& there was a strong breeze that would have been chilling when wet) so we contented ourselves with a paddle & a climb up Lion Rock. After an ice cream each & another trip over the scorching sand we headed back to Auckland & treated ourselves to hot chocolate (white for me, chocolate orange for Jamie) & a dark chocolate fondu at a lovely chocolate cafe in Parnell! Yum! This came with fruit to dip so counted as fairly healthy.... I guess I should go & find some proper food though!
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Vix
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If I could have been there on any one day this would have been it!!!