Hope all you beautiful mothers had a great mothers day!!
Today we left Palmerston North at 8:45am! We got to sleep in a little bit, thank goodness. We headed to a knitting factory where they had some very nice wool apparel that make great gifts, hint hint. Perfect grift for those of you getting 85 degree weather! It is around 50 degrees here, but the sun feels great because there is little ozone in New Zealand. We took off on the bus for a two hour drive to Wellington. Upon entering Wellington, we were struck by the beauty. We came around a hill and saw the ocean and all of the beach houses. The roads are quite scenic and there are a lot of "wow! Look at that!" comments made. Our tour guide, Ron, knows so much about every aspect of the country and makes comments along the way.
Our first stop was downtown Wellington at Beef + Lamb New Zealand (BLNZ). This was a levy supported extension service because the government doesn't supply extension programs. The levy was 60 cents per head of lamb and sheep and $4.40 per head of cattle at slaughter. This totaled 60 million for this organization. BLNZ is research based, gathering their own data and analyzing it. They also do a little lobbying for farmers. Although, there is no government support they channel their lobbying skills to control tariffs and the exchange rate. We talked a lot about market demand and how they try to contribute to the world market. After this meeting we ate quickly in the town square, with quite a few pigeons that Colton was hand feeding and throwing fries by the girls to scare them.
We then walked to the Ministry for Primary Industries and met with Fiona, a representative of the ministry who deals with international marketing. She talked about a general overview of exports and how the government is involved here. A farmer in New Zealand depends on less than one percent of their income from government help involving everything from food safety to tariffs, while a Switzerland farmer depends on 61 percent of their income from government involvement. The United States was only at 7 percent, surprising a lot of us. The unemployment system here gives a person $293 per week, and must be actively looking for employment. There is not much for crop insurance here, as premiums are very expensive.
The next stop for the day was Mt. Victoria. This was the highest point of Wellington and very scenic. You could see the ocean, the harbor, downtown, and the suburbs of Wellington all in one location. Then we headed to the museum. Some people glossed through the huge variety of exhibits, others attempted to read all the plaques. There were so many choices ranging from a children's exhibit that actually contained a giant squid, currently with one eye, to a maori exhibit entitled Blood, fire, and water. The nature exhibit had buttons that had children speaking about native animals in the display. I learned that kea, the national bird of NZ , is mischievous, basically resembling a large parrot roaming the mountains. There was a giant wooden xylophone and Dana attempted to play 3 blind mice, it was a tragic misadventure. Others got sucked into the children's exhibit fiddling with mind games.
We miss you all, well some of you
Derek St. John
Dana Gadeken
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