Pukawa Weekend

By the Lake

This weekend we had a family get-together at Pukawa for the Barriball whanau.

 

Pukawa is a bay on the south-west shore of Lake Taupo, in a cluster with Omori and Kuratau.

 

Apart from being a popular holiday resort, Pukawa is very significant in history, as the site of a very important meeting of tribes in the middle of the 19th century to found the King Movement and choose the first king.

 

Other places may claim to be "the heart of the King Country", but Pukawa is really, in history, that heart.

 

Each day I sketched the house we were in, or the view from it. Here is the house  we stayed in. It is about 100 metres from the shore, where we all spent a large part of the day together, paddling, flying kites, eating, snoozing, and chatting. 

  

 

 Sitting on the deck and looking towards the beach, you see the view sketched here. There are large trees all around, and other similar houses down both sides of the approach road, and its side-roads.

 

 

Hidden in the bush are baches (sketch below), many quite large, which are occupied at this time of the year.

 

When we have stayed there in the winter, though, many are empty and the village feels deserted.

After lunch Spencer and Joshua (Christina and Lito's eldest boy) and I went for a walk in the bush, along a track that links Pukawa with the next bay.

 

It is only a 10-minute drive to Turangi, and on Sunday we all met on the bank of the Tongariro River and walked the track down to Turangi for an hour and a half, pushing or carrying the baby and toddlers.

 

 

View from our deck

There were 10 adults, and six children, so there was plenty of fun and games.

 

Earlier in the week, I sketched the Huatoki valley on Vivian Street (see the photo below). I was on my way home from breakfast at the cathedral, where they provide a community breakfast at cheap prices to fundraise for the Ebola Programme of Doctors Without Borders.

We think this is a great project, for a very important cause, so we support it when we can.