New Zealand on a Very Tight Budget Day 16

We had a good plan for today. A walk to Dawson Falls and the Wilkie Pools on Mount Taranaki after popping into Hollards Gardens and finishing up at Cape Egmont light house before returning to the same lovely campsite.
BUT! We hadn't planned on stumbling across one of the finest gardens in New Zealand - totally deserted, totally breath taking and totally free (with complementary coffee thrown in). What a place! We spent all morning at this piece of paradise created by a dairy farmer from the 1920-60 and now in public ownership. The scope and range of the planting was incredible and Bertie and Rose Hollard established themselves among the leading horticulturalists in the country. The family area with free barbecues and fabulous play ground, was an inspiration in it self. We were dazzled.
Mount Taranaki had been teasing us all morning with cloud moving in and out within minutes but we got a few good shots of its near perfect symmetry rising straight out of the sea to 2500 metres.
By the time we escaped from the garden it had a thick covering of cloud so we cut straight to Cape Egmont. It was here 375 years ago the Abel Tasman named the land New Zealand and became the first European to set foot on it. He'd found south Island first but the seas were too stormy so he came north but had a skirmish with some Maoris and left PDQ. It was more than 100 years later that Captain Cook arrived as the stories persisted that the land wasn't good for much and the natives very hostile.
The light house had been moved here in sections by barge from its previous location near Wellington where it seemed to be costing more lives than it saved due to mariners confusing it with another one nearby!
We returned for a tea time swim in the river and were entertained by some parapenters.