New Zealand - Barrytown

Rightso - what can I say about Barrytown.....

Well the reason we stopped off to stay here is because the bus drivers need a rest and so did the rest of us - the timetable means that we spent 2 nights here so effectively the opportunity to have a lie in rather than getting up at 6.30am...and here was me thinking that kind of thing would have stopped when I quit work! With this particular company the general pattern of events dictated that Barrytown equals PARTY town - hence the Baz Vegas label and I have to say it didn't disappoint.....for the next 48 hrs. I think everyone really enjoyed themselves here and there were a few funny sights to be seen - one particularly memorable one was a young Danish man taking the dressing up challenge (designing an outfit purely from plastic bags) very seriously and appeared a couple of hours later as Bananaman!

So apart from the new self-imposed rule of what happens in Barrytown stays in Barrytown I will tell you about my knife-making experience.
Turned out that apart from the usual 15 or so that normally sign up for this there were only 3 of us, me, Donovan (Belfast boy) and Leo (English boy) - which was good for us but no so good for Steve (the owner of the outfit) who was expecting rather more ($$$$ of course) - which may have explained the bad mood for most of the morning which eventually lifted after some serious leg pulling from yours truly along the lines of you grumpy old git!

You may be wondering how the hell do you go about making a knife, well let me tell you.....you get to forge your own blade from red hot steel, and complete your knife with native timber handle, brass bolsters and pins. This means lots of hammering to begin with to shape your knife then lots and lots of grinding (with a machine - not what you may be thinking!) before attaching the handle, affixing it with pins and then sanding the lot down so in the end it looks bloody fantastic - my mother can provide testament to that as mine is now safely back home in Aghadowey! Took all day so don't go thinking it was a short process, it wasn't. So knife made - cue the celebrations! Let me just warn you all that moonshine is highly illegal and highly potent - in the spirit of my earlier 'what happens in Baz Vegas stays there' thats all I'm saying. All I will say is that there was lots of pulling knives out in the pub and uttering that classic line from that classic film 'Crocodile Dundee' ........'That's not a knife - this is a knife!' Very amusing evening had by all. So that was Barrytown - time to move on yet again.