Walk to Red Rocks

 At the bottom of the North Island there are a few winter seal colonies. The males haul up for a rest, safe from the local population of orca. It's a flat 3.5km walk from the car park and we went on a sunny late winter day with a picnic.

Cook Strait with a ferry coming to Wellington and the Kaikoura Mts in the South Island.  Destination Red Rocks on the right.

Plenty of chunky seals hanging out on the rocks.

We were both limping along with various ailments but we were doing ok until both my soles began to peel off on the way back. Made it back to the car with a teensy bit connecting on each boot. Another reason to travel with a roll of 100mph tape (and a couple of cable ties).

Box Brownie images are in

Surprisingly, no light leakage and pretty good lens action for an 80 year old camera. Somehow I only managed six images. The roll should do eight. Expensive: about $25 for the roll and $30 for the developing. I knew I had mucked up the winding on to begin but the little numbers were a loooong time appearing in the little red circle. Manual ops! Next time I shall be a tad more savvy. 

Photos aren't much composition wise, but the detail and exposure are dandy. There are definite arty possibilities here, and it's fun to go low tech. 

Here's the veg boxes and the island on a grey day. The weird stick is our ginkgo.

It was a gloomy day, which was just right for black and white. This is our track to the beach.

DYI asphalting

Our long driveway is uphill and potholed and patched with asphalt from past years.  A year of trucks and big vehicles and workers coming and going in 2024 made it pretty rugged in parts. To hold it so it stays driveable we bought some heavy and expensive bags of  asphalt and gave it a go.

Easy! Having an excellent product helped. We pushed the mix into dips with a bit of old wood (still plenty of that lying around), and drove over the repairs a few times and Bob's your uncle, done.

Box Brownie adventure begins

My first camera was the good old Kodak Box Brownie. That camera from dad is long gone, so I bought a couple online to have a play. You can't buy the 620 film any more, but you can buy 120 film and hack the canister and the loading to fit the Brownie.

One camera cleaned up nicely, the other I have buggered trying to take it apart. So here's the good one, a Box Brownie D, getting its first run. No idea how the 8 expensive images are going to turn out but the film is now being developed in the city. What fun using an old camera again and loading and unloading film in the dark. The skills are not forgotten. 

Waikanae River cycle

Just a short 20km cycle up a cycle path by the expressway to the Waikanae River and a sunny winter picnic by the river. Then onto a different cycle path to the beach for an estuary check - but not many birds around at the moment.

Weekend in Whanganui

Ran away up north a couple of hours to the Whanganui River for three days. Stayed in an old railway signal box that has been relocated and refurbished and placed on a river bend. Cute as. Windy as blazes the first night and the windows are original so it leaked cold air and cracked and creaked. It kept the rain and hail out though. 

All part of a signal box adventure.

We were on acreage and saw nobody, only the owner's chickens and two kune kune pigs. The word 'kune' in te reo means fat and round. They're a sociable domestic pig so they came over to say hello.

Wandered some of Whanganui's art galleries and second hand shops and cafes. Drove up river for a looksee and then down river to the beach.

Not many bridges over the river but here's one - a footbridge.

And its infrared shadow. The river was a major thoroughfare for Maori and early white settlers. There's so much history along here that the river has special status and is legally a person.

Both roads alongside the river are a bit dicey in places - I wouldn't do 100kph at this point.  Crazy.

 

We headed inland down dirt roads about 20km to visit Paloma, a large private succulent/palm garden. Extremely impressive, says Mish. We had a pleasant stroll around there, apart from getting dive bombed by a magpie and stepping over a dead lamb. Spring in the countryside!

Walking through the bamboo grove (with airy artworks).

Admiring the size of a giant aloe with flower spike.

Full moon rising over the river was simply gorgeous. This is the view from the signal box through trees with car headlights on the other side of the river on the Whanganui-Taupo road.

On the northern beaches

After Janey's funeral we spent a few days on the northern beaches. Janey spent a lot of time at the Bilgola Beach cafe, right on this beautiful small bay. It was a cool sunny day, not many people around, when we  did the same in her honour. 

Carol and Sally at the cafe.

Then Carol jumped in the sea pool for a cold dip - which Janey would not have done haha.

Later, Whale Beach sea pool (in underwear that day - no-one around). About 5 degrees warmer than Bilgola sea pool which was interesting as they are so close.

Newport Beach with Sally.

Mish and Sally took a walk at Bobbin Head.

It was all restorative.

Vale Janey Reid

                                   

Janey putting on mothers 'rattlers' as juju against crashing - Siem Reap airport. It worked!

Doing the 2013 census at Waiheke island, New Zealand.

My adored sis. It feels like you've just dusted off your green fingers that used to coax and lovingly tend the pots in your little courtyard.

Nurturing, tenacious, intelligent, quiz loving, brilliant cook, wordsmith, foodie, stoic, honest, unbreakably loyal to your whanau, painstaking and passionate. 

You were the best big beautiful sister.

So I shall chat out loud to you, knowing that you know what it is that I'm sharing, cos chances are it would have been a particular colour, or a plant, or piece of furniture, or teapot (amongst dozens) that would have caught your eye too. 

So its not goodbye. Not really. Because you're always with me. That's the joy of having shared a lifetime with you my wonderful simultaneous sister. 

Flowers for Janey

Carol, Claire, Amaia and me being dazzled by all the beautiful flowers at the Sydney flower market.

Then I spent a happy few hours arranging them, just so, for Janey's beautiful wicker casket.

A bit of Japan comes to us, via Australia

 Mish says she's waited 40 years to get the right piece of furniture in the right place. Here it is.

From Japan to Australia and onto our front door. Bit of an expensive exercise, including several freight companies and a borer spray in New Zealand, but months after we picked it in Edo Arts in Sydney, it's here and she's happy.

Working outside in a nice bit of rain

We've been making good use of the local landscaper and their free trailer use. Inbound with a couple of trailer loads of good soil, and outbound with bags of green waste and later, bags of of flax to landfill. Flax jams the mulchers so it's not green waste.

Mish wanted to raise the two grevillea we bought so that was trailer load one (and much shovelling). 

 They are going to look fantastic when they bulk out.

The crab apple by the front door is looking lovely at the moment. The last leaves are hanging on and its spread is coming up and out just the way we hoped it would. Underneath it is the rare non flowering banksia 😞

In the rain:

We've begun a clean up down the bottom of the drive. The silver birch and feijoa trees there are old as the house I reckon. They've been unpruned and jammed with flax and weedy grasses which are now all dispatched into the big garden bags (working in the rain, yay!).

Trunk of the feijoa is a great colour. We can see it now.

Steam train trip on the shortest day

 There she goes, woo hoo!

6.30am from Paekakariki on a heritage diesel, and then two steam engines replaced the diesel engine at Palmerston North (it was light by then).

Then on to Ohakune in the middle of the North Island.

Two steam engines is rare and we were quite the drawcard. There were photographers on every crossing and hill and good viewing spot: people waving from their front doors and streets and parks and cars. A celebrity train.

Going around a loop.

With photographers on hay bales and cars as we came around.

Train chasers.

Sheep and cows running away from the long monster with the whistle.

The base of Mt Ruapehu near Ohakune, obscured by cloud and our steam and smoke. 

Over one of the viaducts. We needed those window wipers when we got steamed up inside, mostly in the dark at the beginning and end of the ride, and also coming out of the tunnels.

Ohakune is a small ski town, they weren't really prepared for 550 people suddenly appearing. We had our own sandwiches and tea etc but did manage to score a local coffee before we had to jump back on.

It was dark when we got back to Palmerston North and they put the diesel engine on the front, leaving the steam engines on. 

The shortest day was a loooong one for us - 14 hour train trip, phew. But we had a great day!

Greg's travelling welding workshop comes to Raumati

Brother Greg has all the welding gear, and Mish has been angling for a welding lesson for a while. Our friend Paula has a timber based workshop and is keen to learn welding too so she turned up, and here they are. The experimental practise piece is on the welding table.

Bonsai area construction

 Another Mish project. 

The bonsai plants (meagre collection that they are) have been plonked but well protected under the plum tree for several years. They survived the build. Mish is building an area where we can work on them and actually look at them. Yay!

On the south side, things are moving more slowly. But there are pavers, certainly not laid with the precision of the landscaping team who paved the back. We'll probably grass around these for a sand free walk. 

Can't believe we are planting grass, but, well, yes. 

Here's the seating area for the adirondack chairs, currently under construction. Had to keep the sparrows off the seed, tricksy little birds they are. I think we've sussed it with ex-vineyard netting, and every edge weighted. Mish's gum tree doing very well.

Aotearoa: The land of the long white cloud

New Zealand's Maori name is Aotearoa (ow-tay-ah-row-ah). 

Legend has it that when land was sighted from the first migrating waka about 1400 years ago it was Kupe's wife Kuramarotini who called out ' he ao, he ao, he aotearoa!' (a cloud, a cloud, a long white cloud).

Waiting for Mish at my favourite little bay beside the airport, there was a very long chunky white cloud hanging in the sky from the entrance to Wellington Harbour, across Cook Strait and over to the city's southern suburbs. 

Here it is: a long white cloud. 

And up the hill behind me, a moa!

Autumn sunset

Awesome last night, from the west deck.

The guest sculpture challenge

Bits of left over cut concrete, saved as they have a lovely smooth terrazzo edge, plus some  metal curves used in felt hat making, and a white rock from Kaikoura - waiting for visitors to have a play and rearrange.