We spent most of the weekend in Thames with Jamie and Jude and we had a lovely, laid back time doing a whole lot of nothing at all and taking our sweet time at it. In fact, we did more during the drive home than we even thought of all weekend (watching Easyrider excluded) because I made time to stop at the Martha Mine lookout in Waihi for Ads to have a goodly gander around.

He has been wanting to do this for absolutely ages.

So, just after lunchtime, we parked at the bottom of the track to the lookout and left Nushie on guard while we went for a look down into the big hole in the ground.

And it IS a very big hole in the ground.

If you look very carefully, you can see the diggers in the centre and a white dot that is a ute, off to the right, at the bottom.

Where we were standing on the lookout used to be quite close to the BOTTOM of Martha Hill, as it was in my childhood when Grandad and Helen lived about 2 houses down from the site, in Moresby Ave; now its at the very TOP of Martha Hole and Martha Hill is only a childhood memory.

But even though the mine has destroyed the lovely lake with all its water lillies, ducks and swans where we used to picnic en famille as kids, it hasn't quite destroyed the old 104 year old Cornish Pumphouse that stood not far from it.

Almost, but not quite.





But anyway, Adam was rapt to finally get a chance to see the "juggernaut" as he calls it up close (even if he couldn't climb inside the cab):


and take a new picture

to add to the fetish page.

PS - Last week, Billy Connolly drove wayyyy down into the mine on his lovely trike on his TV show. Just thought you would like to know that you missed it.