Last time we were in Marton
In 2015 which seems like a long time ago I found myself in Marton for the first time ever, along side NZ giant pumpkin record holder Tim Harris and his son Alex. We were there to see a really big giant pumpkin get weighed by local grower Aaron Akkerman, in fact his 732.5kg pumpkin broke the NZ record, only to be broken again a week later by Tim. We unfortunately couldn’t make it to the Marton Harvest Festival the next day.
You can read all about that trip right here.
While we did see this monster of a pumpkin getting weighed, we didn’t get to see the event that it would be shown at the following day. The Marton Harvest Festival. This year I thought I would remedy that as myself and the producer headed down to see what happens at the Harvest Festival and maybe get to experience this 50m swimming pool everyone is always talking about.
The Travels
We had a great trip down with us heading down SH3 for the first part of the trip, we stopped and looked at the 3 sisters near Mokau before carrying on to Whanganui where we would be staying the night.
Having never been to Whanganui before I had a list of things I wanted to check out, one of which was the Durrie Hill elevator, first built in 1919. It was made in conjunction with a large tunnel to allow people to easily get to the top of the hill where their houses were. We were told it is the equivalent of a 20 story building in height.
After that we climbed onto the roof of the elevator building to get a better look of the area, and while that was impressive it was nowhere as near as impressive as the 176 step climb in the tower nearby.
Also they have one of the best playgrounds I’ve seen in age with a decent flying fox and all sorts of characters about the place and a BBQ inside a giant pumpkin structure, what more could you ask for.
Marton Harvest Festival 2018
The next day it was time to head on down to Marton and check out their harvest festival. The one thing that I see time and time again is these smaller areas really do know how to put on a great event. With lots of stalls and interesting things to see the Marton Harvest Festival really is something you should check out if you are in the area.
The Pumpkins
OK onto the important stuff now, the pumpkins looked pretty good and it was almost no surprise to see Aaron had walked away with 1st place again with a 471kg pumpkin, something which I am lead to believe didn’t have too much work put into it. The next heaviest was a 100kg pumpkin.
The one pumpkin that got a lot of comments when I was there was this regular sized one with bumps all over it.
A shout out has to go to Joshua who one 1st place for a junior and was a first time grower, I look forward to seeing what he grows next year.
There is more at Marton
1907 McLaren 917 Traction Engine took us for a trip around the block. It’s always awesome to see these old machines still working.
After that we decided to have a swim in the one and only Marton Swimming pool, which if you didn’t know if 50m in length.
Road Trip Back Home
From there it was Waiouru to see the Army Museum, Taihape and Ohakune before making our way back home.
A great road trip, pumpkins and museums were involved which make it a winner to me.
