Farm-turned-amusement park provides ‘good, wholesome fun’
If you’ve ever wanted to ride a cow, or get towed behind a tractor, or ride a bike like ET, you need to visit Fernbrooke Farm Amusement Park.
Sitting near the base of Mt Taranaki, the park is the brainchild of Stratford farmer Dave Hunger, who for the last five years has spent his spare time creating weird and wonderful machines and toys.
Hunger started bringing visitors on to his farm five years ago after making a trebuchet, similar to a catapult, out of a 13-metre long tree. The trebuchet had a 2-tonne concrete block that could hurl a 20-kilogram object about 100 metres.
The contraption caught the attention of the public, with people visiting Hunger’s farm for a look and he decided to build other things for them to do.
‘‘I guess it’s a hobby to build things, build unusual things and once you’ve built them you’ve got to have someone come and play on them or else it’s pointless building them,’’ he said.
His collection now includes a set of swings made out of barrels, buckets and a canoe, a massive bicycle with a tractor tyre for a front wheel, magic carpet rides on a sheet pulled behind a tractor and a train towed by a quad bike, to name a few.
Behind the milking shed and across a home-made swing bridge is the ET ride and a flying fox, while beside the shed is a maze made from wire and weed sheet.
The ET ride features two bikes attached to both ends of a long pole, which flies out over a small hill.
While people used to padding on their trampolines might baulk at the idea of hurtling down a wire at full speed, Hunger said ensuring the park was safe kept him awake at night and he always filled out numerous risk assessment forms before each open day.
But Onero grandmother Christine Snowdon said the lack of bubble wrap on everything was part of the attraction for her grandchildren.
‘‘There’s nothing challenging out there, they need something challenging,’’ she said.
‘‘Mr Hunger’’, as the children call him, was also all over the place: feeding Baby the cow while a child stood on her back, then driving the tractor for the magic carpet before the children called him back to the quad bike for another ride down the race.
While the park opened at 11am, the number of visitors started to pick up around lunchtime with people from around the region rolling down the driveway to the ‘‘public car park’’ - a paddock with a muddy patch in the middle.
Hunger said by the time he finished at 3pm, he expected around 80 people thorough the gates, but a busy day could see more than twice that number.
Entry was by a small donation which Hunger would then pass on to a charity.
‘‘It’s about giving parents some- thing cheap that will get their kids away from screens, because all parents want their kids away from computer and TV screens and they can come out here and do something that’s outside and good, wholesome, old fashioned fun. Parents love it and kids love it too.’’
Getting people out onto a farm and up close with a cow was another benefit of running the park.
In the past, most people living in the city or town would have gone to visit their grandparents or uncle living on a farm but there was now a growing disconnection between rural and urban life, he said.
‘‘This is giving town kids an opportunity to come and connect with a cow and chickens and see a tractor and meet a farmer and that’s important for dairy farmers to rebuild that bridge that’s been lost.’’ are now wall-to-wall,’’ says Minehan.
‘‘There are a lot of new sites too, especially on road verges along State Highway 1 as well as more rural routes.’’
A showery spring and early summer season meant seed which sat dormant in the soil for many years had germinated. Spotting plants was especially difficult due to the pest plant growing vigorously and flowering sporadically, in wet conditions.
Even with Minehan’s experience, he was finding one or two plants in an area then returning on a second run to discover missed patches as big as a flat-decked truck.
Where it was once assumed the dry-loving grass would grow only in drought-prone north Marlborough, this season plants were thriving on two properties adjoining SH1 at Spring Creek between Blenheim and Picton, Minehan said.
He described needle grass as an invisible invader which looks like any other grass for most of the year, forming a distinctive purple seed-head only in spring. It was disappointing that some landowners without Chilean needle grass and even some with it actively caused spread, Minehan said.
Mowing was the worst practice, especially on vineyards where operators worked across infested and clear areas and even roadverges without washing down machinery to remove any seeds.
Sheep carrying needle grass seeds on wool and in pelts were also knowingly shifted.
People responsible for spreading Chilean needle grass seed were breaking biosecurity rules and could be prosecuted, Minehan said.