Drury Quarry Open Day

Oceania
November 14th 2009

Published: November 19th 2009

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Inspirado

Open Day

It does exactly what it says on the shirt!

Every two years, the big quarry in Drury, South Auckland, opens its doors for a family fun day. After seeing the ad in the local paper which promised rides in big trucks, a giant sandpit and (mostly importantly) free ice-cream! Now there was an offer we simply couldn't pass up.

The event began at 1.30pm and we rocked up a littler later at around 1.45pm. I hadn't been expecting it to be very popular - I mean it's just a day at a quarry - but there were hundreds of people already! We parked up and made our way to the main event area where a folky rock band were blasting out favourite old tunes like Hotel California and all around us people marvelled at what was going on.

In one corner, a huge sandpit had been created and there was a hoard of enthusiastic kids madly digging around, hunting for prizes hidden deep in the sand. There was a queue of people waiting for rides in big lorries which were doing loops of the quarry. Then there was the queue for the monster trucks! We immediately made our way to the back of one queue and marvelled at

Big Truck!

Someone looks very excited about their ride in the big truck!

the wheels on these behemoths which were easily taller than me (I'm 165cm or 5'5'').

Whilst waiting excitedly for our ride, we got a message from a new German friend called Andrea who we had invited along. She came and found us in the queue and was later joined by Sarah, a Swedish girl who had been clever enough to go and get free ice cream before joining the queue!

The ride in the quarry truck was awesome. The quarry guys had designed a bit of an obstacle course with twists and turns and a couple of big bumps to entertain us and every moment of my ride i was giggling with enjoyment. I wanted to go again straight away but the queue was really long so we went off in search of other adventures.

Elsewhere in the complex there were big diggers and bulldozers, all stationary, that we could climb into and onto. That was fun too! Then Glynn made his way into the main marquee and sourced himself a free barbecued sausage (known in NZ as a sausage sizzle) while I made my way to the ice cream van and waited my turn. That poor

And they're off!

Look carefully and you can spot the white of Glynn's t-shirt in the truck cab.

Mr Whippy guy was serving icecreams as fast as his arms would let him. Every so often, he would stick his head out of the van window, look at the length of the queue, shake his head at the sight of the long queue and duck back inside.

Once I had my 4 ice creams, I joined Glynn, Andrea and Sarah in the queue for the quarry loop rides. Each truck could only take 2 passengers (3 if you count our little Jish) so Glynn and I hopped in first and were whizzed off for another fun ride. Our driver, Tony, was a bit nuts and even let go of the steering wheel to pose for a photo whilst we were moving but he was our kind of fun/mad!! Incredibly, on our return from the ride, it was almost 4pm and the fun day was almost over. We managed to make it to the free coffee stand before it closed and each bagged a warm drink to round off the day.

During conversation with our new friends, Sarah had mentioned that she was interested in buying a guitar. Glynn suggested to me that I could give her my

Bulldozers!

I really like this photo because of the mum and kid in the bulldozer scoop!

spare acoustic which was kindly donated to me by a Kiwi lady when I first arrived in NZ. I now have my original guitar from the UK and haven't played on the other one for months. When I mentioned it to Sarah, she was positively beaming! A quick pitstop back at our house and Sarah became the proud new owner of 'Dusty' the guitar. Another great day out :-)

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