Masterton

I visited Masterton, the area's biggish town today. Big enough for a movie theatre, a small department store, and three grocery stores, but small enough to have a single main street. Plenty of cafes, and a decent variety of shops. I caused some confusion at one of the cafes by ordering icecream and coffee. The woman behind the counter (whom I took to be the owner) thought I wanted the icecream in the coffee. I took them separately, but perhaps I made the wrong choice?

Once again, I forgot to take my camera along, so I'm afraid there are no photos in this post.

I visited the sheep shearing museum, where I was lucky enough to see a video of the Golden Shears competition. The shearers are quite athletic and impressively fast---each sheep taking less that a minute to shear, and all of them done very cleanly and thoroughly. However, I found it a bit boring after the first three or four sheep (I think they do twenty each), and wandered off to see the rest of the museum. The displays are not exactly riveting, but the informational placards are reasonably well written and interesting. Apparently much of the wool produced here is turned into carpets. A lot is exported unspun, to be spun and woven elsewhere.