The First Mahakirau Tipi

We’re getting all fancy now. We’re the talk of the town.

We have our very own tipi!

A while ago we thought it would be great to have a tipi on the land as a sleep-out. As it turns out our architect had one is his backyard when we went to visit him one day and it was then that we decided we should get one to stay in while we are waiting for the house to be built.

We contacted the same people who built our architect’s tipi, Jaia Tipis and they had a 5-meter one in stock, ready to send to us. We were so excited…like a couple of kids waiting for Christmas, crazy with anticipation.

And then finally, it arrived from Golden Bay!

We drove to the Freight depot on a Friday night after work and were astounded to see the size of the poles. They were enormous! Thankfully we had the trailer on the back of the truck as the poles reached midway across the trailer. And I think we were also very lucky not to get pulled over. The tipi gods were smiling on us.

By the time we got to the land it was very late and the weather was looking a bit dodgy so we covered the area where the tipi was going to with a large tarpaulin and went to sleep. We didn’t actually get much sleep though because the wind kept trying to take the tarpaulin away. In the morning the day turned glorious and we began the task of putting up the tipi.

We laid out our poles and admired the craftsmanship. Then we started reading the instructions and were hopeful we’d have the tipi up in a few hours. Five hours later, our tipi was erected.

Seb uttered a phrase his dad had told him on more than one occasion. “Doing and re-doing is still work.” We did a lot of re-doing…the magic number was three times for each re-do. Somehow our relationship remained intact and once the tipi was up we were both happy and all of the re-dos and mistakes were forgotten (well, mostly).

With the sun setting we started putting our items in the tipi. We used pallets as a base for the mattress and spread carpets over the tarpaulin that was now our floor. We put the little pot-belly stove in and started a fire. It was super cozy! Once everything was in we had a celebratory glass of wine with some Coromandel oysters and then I cooked my first dinner on the wood burner…a vege frittata.

As we were going to bed we could hear a storm brewing outside. It only got worse as the night went on and we spent another sleepless night wondering if our tipi would be blown away. We wondered if we should have gotten a caravan instead. Unlike sleeping in the truck, we could hear every single sound in the bush. We thought there were mice in the tipi. We thought the possums were just outside. I thought they might eat us if they were hungry enough and I remembered that story that one of the contractors told me about possums running up onto people’s heads.

As it turns out our tipi was still standing the next morning and the possums didn’t eat us. Only a tiny bit of rain got in and dripped on my head thanks to the rain catcher. I spent the next day wind-proofing the tipi, taking everything out and re-doing the floor. The next storm we go through in it should be much better and we might even get some sleep…