This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Samuel Cox (aged 10)
On Friday 9" February, Helen, Mum and I walked to Paua Hut in the Orongorongo Valley. It was a dirt track most of the way. On the last part we had to walk on a riverbed. The river wasn't very high because there has not been any rain for quite a while. It took about 2/2 hours to get there. We had to take our own food and clothes in big heavy packs. We started from the Rimutaka Forest Park in Wainuiomata. We saw lots of native trees like pongas, nikau palms, rimus, ratas and epiphytes. Epiphytes grow on other trees; they grow from bird poo —— the birds eat the seeds and poo them out and they grow into epiphytes. There is no power so we had to cook on a gas cooker (Helen is a good cook!!) There are no showers and there was a long drop (a bit smelly!!). We got rainwater off the roof but unfortunately it didn’t rain so we ran out of water and we had to go to the river and fill a pot with water. We came back and boiled it in case it had bacteria. When we were jhere we went swimming and then possum spotting with our flashlights. There weren't many people, only some who were deer spotting. I would like to go back there some time.
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