Picnic At Hanging Mangleton

With the prospect of the warmest Easter in several years looming the OSM (Occasional Stud Muffin) thought it would be nice to go for a Good Friday drive north west to Mangleton which lies right under the mountains near the small country settlement of Kereru. I knew this area fairly well as my mother's eldest sister Eva (known in the family as "Boofy") and her husband had drawn a soldiers' settlement farm there after WWII. It was originally part of Poporangi Station which was subdivided into smaller farms and then allocated to returned servicemen. Not that Uncle Jack got much of a bargain as his piece of land was riddled with rabbit holes every two feet. He would sit on a tree stump and fire his gun until it became to hot to hold. In this fashion he eventually cleared his farm of rabbits (mostly). He and Aunty Eva then lived in a Nissan Hut until their homestead was built and farmed there until Uncle Jack died in his 60s after which my aunt remained there alone while her son, who built a house next door, ran the farm.

So you'd think I'd have a good idea where the farm actually was situated. I mean my parents and I visited there enough times including the one memorable holiday there when Aunty Eva and my mother decided to mow the lawns except neither of them had used a motor mower before. I'll never forget hearing screams before seeing the mower calmly making its way across the lawn with two middle aged women in pursuit.

I was really looking forward to seeing the farm again and was sure I knew where we were going. We headed out through the Gwavas Forest reaching a height of 553 metres above sea level before dropping down slightly when we passed through Kereru. Which is where it all went wrong really. Firstly Mike remembered a lovely picnic area but the first big dip we came to didn't have one so we had to drive further up Mangleton Road until we found it down a bumpy farm track. There was a picnic table but we decided to venture nearer the creek which meant Joey the dog had a wonderful time sniffing the overgrown grass and blackberry.

Joey surrounded by a paradise of scents

 

Nearby was a lovely mountain stream which had been dammed to create a swimming hole although it wasn't hot enough to tempt us to have a dip. A sheer cliff rose up from the far side rising up towards more trees. There was just the sound of the water and birds singing, a peaceful oasis in a drought area.

A lovely little mountain stream in Mangleton

And that was what really shocked us. We thought the drought was bad enough in Central Hawkes Bay but at least the heavy dewy nights have left to a slight dusting of green across the countryside. In Mangleton everywhere was brown and decidedly crispy. As we drove down roads trying to find my aunt's old farm we saw fewer and fewer animals, more and more barren paddocks. Yet sometimes you would sweep down a hill and there would be a vestige of native bush huddled in a ravine.

A patch of bush huddling under the ranges

There was no mobile reception so attempts to ring a cousin to find our the name of the road my Aunt had lived on were doomed to fail. After spending ages going down dusty shingle roads we admitted defeat as for the life of me I could not remember where my aunt's farm used to be. And of course as we drove out of Mangleton I think I recognized the road as it was the only one we hadn't bothered to drive down. Sometimes I should really stick to my motto of never going back to places. Or else get some more memory added to my brain's hard drive.