Meng's Travels: Blue Duck Lodge

After leaving Taupo, we drove through some of the most beautiful farmlands to get to Whakahoro (pronounced Fakahoro, "wh" is pronounced like an "f" in Maori). Our destination was the Blue Duck Lodge, a 9,000 acre high country farm that is both a working station and an environmental conservation leader. This is the most remote part of North Island and the scenery is simply gorgeous. There were many activities for us to choose (with a fee, of course): horseback riding, tour around the farm, clay target shooting, goat hunting, and hiking in the area on your own. The goat hunting activity became a wild-pig hunting trip because of the rain.

I picked the farm tour because I wanted to see how they run the farm and managed the sheep. Unfortunately, our guide decided that she wanted to look for some rare blue ducks that she saw the previous day. She took us around on a jeep to the waterfall and river to look for the ducks. It rained that day so we were all slopping in the mud. We took a short kayak trip on the river but we did not see any ducks. She did explain some traps that were set out to poison possums and traps to catch stoats, which is a squirrel-like animal, but a little smaller. Possums are a big problem for New Zealand because they are voracious eater of leaves and would leave a mature tree without leaves and eventually kill the tree. They have multiplied very quickly since introduced by the Europeans from Australia.

Before man settled in New Zealand 800 years ago (first by Polynesians), there were no mammals in New Zealand. Most of the birds have lost their ability to fly because there had no predators. Now New Zealand has many pests like rats, stoats, goats, wild pigs, etc. The pig-hunting group did not find any pig, even with dogs trained to hunt pigs. They did shoot a goat however.

Many of the European travelers enjoyed the clay target shooting. They have never fired a gun or will never have a chance to fire a gun so this may be their only opportunity.

New Zealand is known for its sheep but we were told that the number of sheep is dwindling because many farmers are switching to cattle. As you drive along the road approaching a sheep farm, those near the fence would run away because of fear of humans. I tried to approach a few of them at this farm but they wouldn't let me come close. I had to use my zoom lens to take pictures of them. They look so cute and cuddly that I just want to touch them. Ba....Ba....Ba...no way!

I was told by our guide that the land around this farm were given to NZ soldiers by the government after they returned from World War I. But the former soldiers had such a hard time clearing the trees that a lot of them finally gave up and gave them back to the government