Winiata’s Blog

My dad works as a yardman at Timmos ITM. He drives a forklift, loads trucks with packets of wood, he sells timber, and he prepares order requirements for builders.

On the 16^th of May just before the bell rang for home time, I noticed dad’s car in the car park of our school, waiting for me to come out. We were going to a graduation ceremony in Rotorua that at the time seemed so important to him.

The graduation was for my Dad because he did a training course and was getting a certificate for wood product manufacturing Level 2. Because my dad had taken part in one of these courses, we were all invited to a party where we would see him receive his certificate for completing his course.

This year the FITEC training organisation held their graduation for all participants at the Blue Baths in Rotorua, a small city located in the central north island of New Zealand.

As I hopped into the car, he checked that I had my seatbelt on, and then he zoomed out of the school’s driveway. On the way to Hamilton (a city where my mum works), dad picked up my two brothers, then left town in a cloud of dust!

Once we arrived in Hamilton, we parked dad’s car at mum’s school and got into mum’s car. Then we continued our journey onwards to Rotorua. On the way, I got a little bored and decided to annoy my brother, which resulted in arguing and fighting in the back seat. After an outburst from an angry mother and an upset baby, we agreed that I had learnt my lesson.

When we arrived at our destination, I was given the instruction to look out for our hotel. Luckily, I spotted it just as we were almost reaching the edge of Rotorua. The hotel was about five storeys high, but we only had a room on the ground floor. We quickly unloaded our bags and got changed, getting prepared for the celebration.

As we travelled along the main road towards our venue, we had a lot of problems. We couldn’t find the right street, time was ticking on, and Dad was starting to get a little desperate. We went up and down the same street several times just to find that the street we were on wasn’t the right one! By then we were running about half an hour late!

Once we found the right street, we didn’t know which building we needed. So we searched up and down the street, sometimes driving all the way around buildings. After a while mum finally gave up and stopped to ask directions at one of the hotels. To our great surprise, our correct destination was just across the street! All that searching for nothing!

Anyway, after we had found a car park and parked the car, we proceeded through the doors of the ‘Blue Baths’. As we walked in we were assured that we weren’t too late, because they were running late themselves.

While dad went to register at the registration desk, we settled down and found a spot to wait until the hosts were ready. Nearby us was a table loaded with hot and cold drinks and cups. My brother and I guzzled coke, one glass after another, as we were thirsty from the long trip.

Finally we were allowed into the venue. We had a seat near the front and we waited patiently while the formalities were carried out. Then each graduate had their name called out. They had to go up onto the stage and get their certificate. Each certificate was framed and wrapped in a ribbon. Everyone clapped after each group was done.

Eventually my dad’s name was called out. He went up and mum took a photo but it didn’t come out because the lighting wasn’t right. At the end of all that, we just had to wait while the waitresses brought out big trays of food. There was salmon on pancakes, chicken kebabs, meatballs, and other stuff. I really enjoyed that part.

After a while, we decided to go back home. On the way we asked if we could get McDonalds, but there was another problem. The McDonalds was on a corner and we couldn’t find the entrance into this strange place.

It was a repeat of earlier, driving all the way around the building to enter, and still finding ourselves in the wrong place! Frustrated, we searched around but couldn’t find an entrance so we decided to enter through the exit, and go in the wrong way. Then we got our food.

Once dinner was over we returned to our hotel room. We got changed and settled down to watch sky TV. I was thinking about what fun we had just had, then mum came up with an idea. She wanted to go outside and have a late night swim in the heated pools. As we stepped outside, I noticed the temperature had dropped and it felt very cold at this time of night.

Anyway, we had a look around and managed to find the biggest pool first. We dipped our feet in but it was only a little bit warm. Then we came to the smaller pool, and we were surprised because it was really warm, so we jumped right in. Then we saw that it was a Jacuzzi. We sat in there for a while, and turned on the air jets, that was pretty cool. We had the whole place to ourselves.

After some time, we chose to get out and change for the night. Once we got back to our own room, we settled in bed and turned on sky TV. We watched it until midnight, and then mum told us to turn the TV off because we had to go to sleep.

First thing in the morning, we got up and decided to search for the gymnasium. As we were getting ready to leave the rooms, mum noticed a short-cut down the stairs, so my brother and I agreed to go and check it out. Luckily for us, the short-cut led straight to the gym. Mum and dad said they wanted a sleep-in and that breakfast would be at 9.00am. So we took our brother Jordan with us and went to try out all of the workout equipment. Then we wandered around the motel grounds some more.

When we went into the restaurant for breakfast, the sight we saw was amazing. There were about ten tables spread out, covered with all sorts of food. The first table had hot drinks, and then another table had all sorts of cold drinks and juices. One table had all kinds of cereal, another table had fresh fruit, tinned fruit and dried fruit. Next to that was another table with toast and spreads, split english muffins, blueberry muffins and a range of pastries.

Then came the hot food, every kind of breakfast food that you can imagine. Bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, hash browns, kumara, mushrooms, baked beans, pancakes with maple syrup….the choice was endless! There was even a table full of oriental foods like noodles, rice curries and wonton soup. This was traditional breakfast for Asian people. My brother and I tried almost everything, we just ate till we were stuffed full.

At about ten o’clock, we went down to the motel pool, and stayed there swimming till noon. Then we got dressed, packed our bags and loaded the car. We couldn’t wait to go on the luge, a tourist attraction on a hill where you ride down in these little go-carts. I think it’s really fun. We had some discussions about what we should do for the rest of the day.

First mum wanted to go to a market which was on in a nearby park. While mum and dad were having a look in the bookstore and the market, my brothers and I played on the rope structure. We were supposed to stay there for about half an hour, but ended up playing for an hour. When we finally decided to leave, our car battery was dead. Now we’re stuck there for another hour, waiting for the AA man to come and start our car.

After that we were able to leave, and mum and dad decided to cancel all other activities and just go straight home. By then it was 4.00pm and we had to get back home. That’s when my brother Etere and I started complaining, because we really wanted to go on the luge. As usual, mum was not going to change her mind, and kept reminding us that we were late and had to leave Rotorua.

All of us fell asleep from our swim and our big breakfast. I really enjoyed the weekend away and my favourite part was definitely the breakfast because we got to eat as much as we wanted. Dad was happy that we all got to go away together as a family. Mum was just happy to get home.

Walking through a house which has been destroyed by fire is really weird. The public tours went from 10 o’clock until 2o’clock. At 3 o’clock, all the fire-fighters in town gathered for the next event. They were going to burn down the remainder of the building. All the fire trucks were parked along the road (which, by the way, was closed), and they tested the hoses. There were cones and barrier tape marking where the public boundaries.

There was a big crowd of people sitting across the road from the house. We all had our cameras out ready to see the action.  Shortly after, a fire-fighter went inside to the owner’s bedroom. About a minute later, we could see flames leaping up, through the bedroom window. Two minutes later, the window exploded. Soon part of the roof was on fire. I looked in the hollow gap where the window had once been, and the room was completely full of flames. That was when my camera and I went crazy.  

Ten minutes later I heard from the crowd a gasp of shock as the bedroom roof collapsed. The bedroom door had incinerated, letting the fire spread into the rest of the house. Suddenly, big clouds of strange yellow smoke appeared above the house. It was the insulation in the roof which made the yellow smoke (Bradford gold batts). What really amazed me was how hot it was. The corrugated iron up the roof was melting so fast that I could feel the heat from across the road, and it felt hotter than the sun.  There was a big tree at the front of the house. At the beginning it was all green and growing ok. While the house was burning, all the leaves were turning brown and shrivelling.  The firemen were hosing the neighbour’s houses, and also the lawn and the tree. Luckily the tree was saved from catching fire, but I don’t know if it is still alive. 

My favourite part was probably the chimney collapsing. While the house was crumbling room by room, the chimney was still standing. Eventually, it finally began to give way. But this was different because it was falling just a little at a time. The excitement of the crowd was growing every time it fell because we all wanted to see what would happen when it finally flopped.Another highlight was the smoke which was billowing out into the sky. Sometimes it was white, black, yellow and grey. When the roof had fully collapsed, there was a big burst of black and yellow smoke. When I got home afterwards, I could still see the smoke from my house.  I can’t wait to go back and see what it looks like now.

This is my third weekly diary (which is the latest you could get). Yesterday, after we had picked up our Makuhari student, we went to view a house which was in the newspaper. A man called Grant lost his house in a fire 6 months ago, but the house didn’t burn all the way down. It had happened at 2 o’clock in the morning (the day it was damaged of course!). Grant was the only person in the house at the time, and if his dog hadn’t woken him up, he wouldn’t have survived.  There were some firemen waiting outside the house, and they took us in for a tour. They told us that the fire started when a laptop was left on the carpet. It was over-heating and it ignited. It travelled along the carpet and burned the couch, which just happened to contain the equivalent of 30 litres of fuel. On the wall was what remained of a flat screen plasma TV. IT was just a piece of rusted metal hanging on the wall. The fire-fighters showed us how dangerous it is to leave electronics plugged into the wall at night. The kitchen was a mess and the fridge freezer had melted and shrunk. There was a tap going in the sink but the tap handle had burned so bad it was melted and couldn’t be turned off. I went into a room where the door had been shut, and the room had suffered hardly any damage. As I walked around inside, I looked up at the roof. It was completely hollow and I could see all the wires that used to power the lights. I could see what was inside the walls, and in some places, you could just make out the wallpaper which was surrounded by flame marks. There were signs on the walls which stated the things that happened there, for example: one said ‘this room reached up to 400 degrees Celsius’, and another said ‘the smoke level was down to here’, which was about 30cm above the floor.  It must have been really sad for the owner to stand helplessly outside and watch all his belongings explode into flames.