This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
PAUA HUT
HALLOWEEN By Don Goodhue
it had been such an interesting event last year that this year it was most definitely going to happen -a Halloween . trip to Paua Hut. Except this year, it was unlikely that we could get Lyndsay to perform his pyrotechnic face-lift stunt for.a second year running. And so, on the last weekend of October, the Tongue & Meat witches and goblins descended on Paua Hut for an evening. of
An advance party left Catchpool at about 1100 am on
Saturday with two ankle-biter monsters in tow andladen down with the last of the new mattresses for the hut. The weather was fine, but not fine enough to stop one of the monsters from complaining that the walking was giving him.a sore tummy five minutes out from the car park. However, the moans gradually dissipated to a low pitch whine after the sore tummy was replenished with a few treats. From there on, the rest of the walk was uneventful, _ and we eventually arrived to find no one else had snuck past and beaten us to the hut.
After a bite of lunch, the monsters were set loose to amuse themselves in the bush beyond the hut and later, down on the river bed, the logic being, that the more energy expended now, the more likely the monsters would have a restful night. As the afternoon headed towards evening, there was a steady stream of halloweeners arriving at the hut. Some on mountain bikes, some on foot, and some keen ones who arrived via the Orongorongo River on mountain bikes and then promptly set off to run back to the Catchpool for their gear! As the numbers grew, a small city of tents and flys arose from amongst the scrub around the hut. One goblin was seen to be walking in circles with his tent poles ala diving rods, but the diving rods weren’t working and he eventually gave up and pitched his fly in the scrub adjacent to Woody. (Goblins are obviously attracted to you, Woody!)
By the time it was time to start thinking about dinner, the numbers had grown to the extent that there was standing room only in the hut. With about twenty people trying to get dinner cooked, things became rather cosy. After dinner a crowd gathered around the campfire outside and settled in for the evening. Having seen the results of Harry's geriatric fireworks from the Ming Dynasty last year, most had provided their own, so for about the next two hours, we were treated to an almost continuous display of fireworks.
Eventually the monsters drifted off to bed. The party raged on into the small hours, and those who crashed in the hut were to become the innocent victims of the antics of a couple of the village idiots. Just as we were settling down in the hut, there was a hissing sound in the fireplace. This seemed strange as the fire had gone out some time before. Next thing, the hiss tured into a bang and there were all sorts of colours emitting from within the fireplace. Not to be satisfied with that, it was followed by another; this time the bang was enough to blow the door of the fireplace open and fill the room with smoke. The culprits weren't hard to find the next moming, bragging about the subtleties of launching sky rockets down the chimney.
_ Sunday dawned wet and misty, so the monsters were gathered together, and the procession back to the Catchpool began. As the treat supply was running low by now, the groaning and whining was harder to subdue, but we eventually made it and found a fresh lot of treats that had been strategically left in the car.
It looks like Halloween at Paua Hut will become an annual event. Won't be as much fun when you can’t buy -sky rockets (to drop down the chimney’).