Butterfly house

New Lynn Butterfly house

http://www.westlynngarden.org.nz/index.html

New Lynn lies on the western train and bus route of Auckland, 10 kilometres tot he southwest of Auckland city centre.

There is a lot of through traffic .

The  garden of 4.5 acres used to belong to a nursery man, Jack Clarc,  the founder of Eden Garden,

http://www.edengarden.co.nz/our-history/

 where he planted seeds and plants for Eden Garden.

When he got older, he sold this place to Eden Garden Society, in the early 80th. He must have asked the council if he could develop the plot into a garden with the help of volunteers. That land doc and eden garden society looked after the area, so they have not to pay fort the right to work on the land.

The West Lynn Garden Society is now an independent organisation of volunteers who love gardening.

The local trust gave them money to construct the butterfly house. The trust gets money from the pokey machines and this money you can ask for community projects.

30000 dollars were financed 20 years ago, and now the butterfly house must be restored. The West Lynn Garden Society just started to have 2 half payed persons to look after the books.

Regular 14 volunteers work here, and others once a month or a fornight.

At the moment you only can see heaps of Monarc butterflies in and outside the Butterfly house.

The volunteers also tried yellow admiral and the red admiral These butterflies live on stinging nettle, but the people touched it and there were problems. The admirals chased the monarc from their plants, they were quite aggressive. They also tried to breed copper butterfly. They live on sorrel, but they did not breed in the butterfly house.

The community has a propagating house and a shade house to harden up the swamp plants. They keep the swamp plants in pots and put them into the butterfly house.

From November to June the butterfly house is the main attraction. Even in winter they fly around the garden.

The garden itself has lots of camelias ( late autumn), a lot of stock plants are still around. Especially azalea and colored leaves attract people in autumn. Also rhododendrons and magnelias are of interest for garden clubs.

Since there is a fence there is not so much damage. It always happens that the children kill butterflies or pick flowers, but it is getting better. Sometimes ladies pick flowers and they must be asked to leave the flowers or small plants where they are to be seen by everyone.

The domain name, the website and the booking they have to pay.

They have weddings here up to 120 people, they also can hire the building. Childrens birthday party are famous recently.

Pasifica - Auckland event

On the weekend of March the 12th and the13th 2016 the festival of Pasifica took place in Western Springs, Auckland . Not for the first time, this was already the 24th time that the festival took place. The idea of the festival is to bring Pacific Island communities together and show the variety of their values, culture and lifestyles.

A special bus shuttle was operating from Britomart to Western Springs and there were a lot of parking possibilities around the area. Also normal bus routes stop at Western Springs.

Western Springs is a park with a lake in the middle and around the lake there were stages of different pacific events.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasifika_Festival

Islands like Hawai, Fiji, Samoa, but also Maoris of New Zealand had their own stage and around shops with their typical handicrafts, clothes and food.Some of the stalls were run by community groups. For the visitors creative activities took place as well, as weaving, lei making, ukelele lesson, drumming or carving. Each ethic group had their special program, a mixture of music, dancing and information about themselves. There were no seats prepared, the people sat down on the grass with their food and drinks, watching one of the programs.

The entrance was free and there were a lot of people joining the festival, but because the area was so big, there was no bad feeling because of the crowd.  Walking from one stage to the other was relaxing, the birds of the park were not shy and some were begging for food.

At Western Springs you also can find Auckand Zoo and Motat (Museum of Transport and Technology). The park with its lake, ales and birds is also worth visiting when there is no festival. 

The event ended at 4 p.m., very early for an event, and the people left the park quite clean, what is also exceptional for an event :) The festival was well organized, even tents for eventually lost kids could be found and we think that nobody got lost because of the clear information that was preserved.

Short trips from Auckland - Omana Regional Park

Omana Regional Park has a big advantage for travellers without an own car : you can reach it by public transport from Britomart to Maraetavi Dr and then there is "only" a 16 minutes walk to Omana Regional Park. And you have to use 3 different buslines. A good service, isn´t it?
Omana Regional Park is an alternative to Auckland´s city beach, Mission Bay.
Do not expect shops, but there is a nice area for camping, picnicing and relaxing.

A half an hour trail leads you around the park, starting from the beach to cliffs, through farmland and forest. The trail also leads you to an organic toilet :) 

You can enjoy different views of the inner Hauraki Gulf.

The water is very flat, that means safe even for children. Families and groups of different nationality have a picnic there. They bring their traditional food with them, some also grill or cook at the beach.

Short trips from Auckland - Muriwai Beach

First of all: you need a car to go to many places.

Muriwai 

For example: Muriwai Beach.
see this link for more general information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriwai
















Although only few kilometers away from Auckland, district of New Lynn, the place is only to be reached by private transport. At the end of the road we found a surfer paradise. Everything there: a surf club, a surf school, you can hire a surfboard, even a camping area.







 On the left side a natural coast, reserved for birds  called gannet and bird watchers. When we visited the beach, in November, there was breeding time. Hundreds of birds were sitting on their nests. In between we saw chicks of different age, waiting for their food. There are safe paths to the coast where you can watch the birds from different views without disturbing them.

We found that sign at the entrance to the beach and heard the story of a shark, that killed a swimmer.

At the picture you can see one of the holes where the water comes out just like a fountain. The rocks are older volcanic material, sometimes plane, sometimes broken and rugged.

 On the way from the surfers to the birds we also saw people paragliding.

Before you reach the surfer´s beach there is a path to the right where you can find a golf club. But the path does not stop there, when you go further on, you reach another area of the beach. A parking is preserved, but nothing else. The sand is black and the waves still rough, not really for swimming. A woman told us that she nearly drowned. 

Nevertheless we saw campers on the beach. Next to their tent there was their car.

People come here for fishing, riding horses

or for a walk with or without their dog. There are some paths, starting from the parking, through secondary wood, along a small river leading directly into the sea and different landscapes. Lovely!

See more pictures at this link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.990607817693587.1073741829.879139848840385&type=3