Five Star Memories

Those of you who know Christchurch will know the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Well, here it is now - a heap of rubble - not even a shadow of its former self. Although I am personally not one for fancy hotels, I have enjoyed some good meals here. Our son-in-law used to work there as a bar manager and then as purchasing manager. In my formative years (I'd like to think I was still forming!) Victoria Street used to run right through here.
The upper image shows the heap that remains and very soon to disappear, leaving yet another cleared vacant space.
The lower image is ~5-6 images stitched together. The road to the left is Kilmore Street looking east. The road on the right is Durham Street looking south.
The city's town hall is just to the left of the rubble. The verdict is still out as to whether it too comes down - like most of the high rise buildings in the background.
Ho hum.

Frustrated by Technology - and ACC

A typical Monday morning! First few hours sorting out computery things - then out to the workshop to framing tasks. Somehow the header on my blog has minified itself. So what do I do? Than I discover an item on the new blog page that says 'published comments' and there are quite a few there. So I click on these and lo and behold, I find people have commented on past blogs from way back - back into last year - way back. So I do have viewers............!! Thank you for your comments. Somehow I'll have to sort this issue - these issues! Diary note - speak to blog man (aka DW).
And now after 2.5 months of phone calls, ACC have finally approved my claim for a knee injury. now to get the MRI appointment.
The image above was chosen carefully as it seems this is how my mind goes when technology gets the best of me. Must away and plan for a trip into the hills and away from technology as soon as the knee is fixed!!

Crossing the Ditch

It was exactly two years (three for Chris) since we'd flown to Melbourne to see the family. Off we flew on Easter Sunday, the beginning of the school holidays. We were totally unprepared for the cold and rain of Melbourne for the first two days, but then it changed - for the better - with temperatures in the high 20s and blue skies every day for the remainder of the trip. Four days in the Grampians were just awesome. Quintessential Australia - or as we know it anyway! Julz had a photoshoot on during the second week and we were fortunate to be invited along for a few hours to see her and her team in action. It was lovely to spend quality time with wee Shea and see hime loving school - and footy.

Anzac Day

It has become an annual event for many years now.
Jim and Jude, Mike and Danny went over to Ross to wear Peter's medals and Jim's Dad's medals too.
I was planning to photograph the sunrise off the end of the New Brighton Pier (the right day thanks to TPE), but Anzac won. This year the parade was held in Cranmer Square - an excellent venue with ~5000 people there. The Governor General was a busy boy that day, flitting around the country participating in various Anzac events.
The memorial statue in Cathedral Square was replaced by a simple wooden cross, made by the Australian USAR team with materials recovered from the partially collapsed Christchurch Cathedral.
A lovely morning which turned into a superb autumnal day. A reflective day.
I must wear my Dad's medals one year.
My big brother, Barry has posted an interesting Anzac blog with a fascinating reference to family history.Read it at http://barrysinparadise.blogspot.co.nz/

The Local Village

Blimey, you go out of the country for a few weeks and the blog system changes. Here goes.........!!

The day we left for Australia, I noticed the blank wall of the local pharmacy down the road from home suddenly became a whole lot brighter. The gap filler projects are an amazing idea. In time the vacant lots left behind after the buildings were demolished will be filled with new buildings - and judging from the signage, this site will be no exception. In the meantime we are left to enjoy this lovely urban landscape - and it is right over the road from my local cafe!

I loved the subtle advertising in the mural. I missed that until a few minutes ago. Sad boy!!

A Valley Revisited

I've been hankering to wander back up into the Upper Otira Valley for years. It has always been one of my favourite spots to head to. There have been good and bad times up there. I've been involved in several tragic accidents and rescues, climbed the Otira Face of Mt Rolleston with my big brother, plus climbed the mountain by nearly every other route, and when our elder daughter, Rachael, was only a few weeks old, we

















carried her up here in a wee cot and placed her under a large rock
to escape the searing sun that day.
Finally, last week, 'The Lads' annual tramping trip (32nd year) - reduced to renting a bach at Arthur's Pass due to crook knees and feet with half the group - staggered up the valley in perfect weather. One member made it up to the low peak of Rolleston - a fine achievement, whilst the rest of us photographed flowers, keas, and generally put the world to right where the Otira slide used to be. What a huge and significant change there has been in the upper valley since I was last there. All rather frightening this global warming - if you don't believe it, wander up there and see for yourself!

Speaking of Gold

We're still in Ross - that thriving little rural community on the West Coast. Ross started life as a gold town as mentioned in my last post, died a natural death and good folk like my father in law took over as the town's biggest employer for many years.
Now the town is in decline and once again gold is the mainstay. The town used to boast two excellent walkways - one still exists, but the other, which lead up this dam (see image) was destroyed over recent years in the pursuit of that gold, now using modern methods. The old dam was built by the early prospectors and fed the many sluice operations at the time. It is now nigh on impossible to get to this dam - the track is long gone or overgrown, the gorse is thick in the new tailings. The owner of the current mining operation tells us there is still $2,000,000,000 (read two billion) worth of gold under the town!!
Small fry I guess when you think of what it is going to cost to rebuild Christchurch. Or was that the whisky talking??

End of an Era

Ross, Westland.
Back in the late 1800s Ross had a population exceeding 30,000 and more pubs than you could complete a pub crawl still standing.
In 1909, "The Honourable Roddy Nugget" was found in Jones Creek (see image), weighing in at 99 ounces. The NZ government bought it and presented it to King George V as a coronation gift. Subsequent enquires in the 1950s as to its whereabouts, discovered that it had been melted down to gild a royal tea service, but that this tea service could not now be located!
In 1947 Peter Gurr drove his Indian motorbike over to Ross to purchase the local garage. He was soon followed by his new wife Eileen. Three daughters followed, the first in 1950 - Chris, my wife.
In 1968, I first darkened the doorway of their relatively new home in Ross and was duly ushered to the divan in the lounge which I learned was to be my 'room', clearly visible and well away from the 'Gurr Girls'. The rest, as the saying goes, is history!
In September 2009 Peter breathed his last, and poor Eileen was brought over to Christchurch, soon to be put into a rest home, and subsequently into a dementia care unit.
The house was empty, the furniture sold or taken, and memories cherished. The house was put on the market to sell.
And so it did - eventually. Jim and I drove over last week to collect the remaining furniture, cleared out the cupboards, gave the place a thoroughly good clean as only two husbands of 'Gurr Girls' could do! The keys were handed over.
But before we left town we darkened the door of another famous Ross establishment, the Empire Hotel (or Top Pub as the locals knew it) - the Roddy Nugget is reputed to have been the door stop there at one point. Ah, if only the walls of that place could talk. We drank deep in honour of Peter and Eileen - icons of the West Coast was how the owner of the local gold mining operation described them at the bar).
Finally, before locking the door of #31 Sale Street, I went and lay down on that same divan 44 years after I first lay my head. There were some great memories, but now the soul had gone. It was just a house. An end of an era. I shed a tear as I drove out of town.

Musings

Stop the world, I want to get off! Where does the time go?

For the month of February I co-hosted another exhibition out at the Selwyn Gallery in Darfield. I exhibited with my brother Barry (woodcuts) and his wife, Catherine (paintings) - the theme this time "Poles Apart", depicting both Arctic and Antarctic regions, and celebrating the centenary of Scott and Amundsen reaching the South Pole. In terms of sales, the exhibition was not as successful as the one we had two years ago, but then the viewer would need to have a specific interest in polar regions. All three of sold items so we were not disappointed.

I feel a new camera coming on - I have for quite some time, but have been procrastinating. The temptation to go upmarket with megapixels is not there. The thought of going simple with an advanced compact is there but would frustrate me quickly I think. More a second camera for in the mountains maybe when I finally give up carrying my DSLR and getting a sore neck!!

Have sold many of my older lenses and have started to buy new state of the art lenses - which means I guess I'll have to stay in the Nikon market for the time being. I feel the purchase will be soon - I've (almost) made up my mind.

Now, all I need is time! I'm supposedly retired, so who is to blame then??

Beyond the Pass

Those of you who have driven over Jack's Pass at Hanmer Springs will understand what I mean when I say that you cross over into a different and wonderful world as you cross the pass into the Clarence Valley.

We'd only been home from the West Coast for 4 days when we headed off up to Hanmer with our friends for a little more R&R.

Apart from continuing the West Coast theme of reading, coffees, food, vinos, etc - we actually did some exercise and climbed Mt Isobel in searing heat. The next day was a lazy journey into Acheron Station at the beginning of the Molesworth farm road.

Can't Get Away From the West Coast!

I can't resist posting more images of the West Coast.
The bush walks over there are so fulfilling and rekindle the soul. Here Chris is walking the Pororari River track near Punakaiki.





















The Southern Rata coming into flower on the coastal section of the Heaphy Track.






















Part of the DOC interpretation panels up at the Denniston Plateau.























Juxtaposition of one of the native ferns in front of the Nikau fronds.

Another Year!

We escaped the big smoke for two weeks in early January - headed over to the West Coast and up to Punakaiki and onto Karamea.
A lot of sleeping, heaps of reading, mugfuls of cafe culture, mountain biking, bushwalking, evening vinos, and even a little photography.
Hadn't been up to the Denniston Plateau or to Karamea in over thirty years!
This image on the left is the top of the Denniston Incline, which used to transport all the coal down to the waiting trains - even carried the ladies down to the Saturday night dances!












Mokihinui Beach at sunset.










The remains of the SS St Lawrence remains visible on the beach most of the time. Wrecked there in April 1891 without loss of life.















Scotts Beach on the Heaphy track.
A magic part of this world - apart from the sandflies of course!















Typical northern west coast bush.

The Day After!

Blimey, we are into February already. The last post was 22 December 2011. Less than 24 hours later the earth moved yet again - twice in fact, a few hours apart. Big ones. Chris's scream from the kitchen still resonates in my mind. I swear her feet did not touch the ground as she bounced down the hall to rugby tackle me in the laundry where I was holding on tight. Poor Chris, these shakes do nothing for her - and all this on top of a shite year at work. And then an even bigger one later, the epicentre only 200 metres from Rachael's already knackered house.

An early Christmas present?

And then on Christmas Day our granddaughter gave us a 2012 calender with her art depiction of the 2011 year illustrated - an apt image for this blog.

2012 has been reasonably kind so far and another blog will follow soon - inshallah.

A Matter of Balance

Many of you - if indeed there is anyone ever viewing this - will have been wondering just what I'm on when writing these blogs! The wording and images seem to be all over the place each time I upload something new.
And indeed they are, but I can't ever seem to control this. Early in the New Year a friend has promised to help me. Whatever I write in the Admin page bears little resemblance to the final product.
Very frustrating! And it does my head in, but I must keep my cool. Thus it becomes a question of balance.
And speaking of balance, check out this image. I spotted this scene as I looked out the back window of the campervan last week down at Aoraki Mt Cook. Not a bad sight to behold during 'happy hour' eh. For the record the mountain is called Nun's Veil.
This may be the last blog for 2011. What a year it has been! There have been highlights but frequently they are hard to discern with all the carnage and downsides throughout the year.
For those of you that are on our emailing list, there is an annual epistle coming. It is hatching as we speak!!
Happy Christmas to you all.

Getting Sorted

The gaps in the city get bigger and more numerous as the demolitions continue unabated.
"I seem to have temporarily misplaced my sense of humour" is a new initiative by local artist Wayne Youle - a public artwork presented by the Christchurch City Council and Gap Filler in the suburb of Sydenham, our neighbouring suburb.
There are some great 'gap fillers' appearing in the now vacant lots - artworks, chess sets, open air movies, mobile cafes, etc.
This shadow board reminds that that most of our friends laugh at me when they inspect my workshop and see my organisation out there - everything has its place. Alas not recently - the earthquakes and subsequent events have taken their toll on my increasingly alzheimic brain. But now the artwork depicted here has inspired into action. I hear a sigh from a dear soul mate!!

Time out - Aoraki Mt Cook

The Ranunculus lyallii at Mt Cook are only in flower for a very short period of time at the end of November and beginning of December each year. And so I took the campervan down for a week in the hope of perfect conditions both for photography and a climb up to Sefton Biv, a small hut tucked under Mt Sefton and Footstool above the Hermitage.
Alas the weather did not oblige for two days which left the flowers in the Hooker Valley decidedly bedraggled. By the third day the weather lifted and I was off - and up for 4 hours to Sefton Biv.

Sefton Biv and the view beyond.

View from Sefton Biv door!! Not bad eh, and well worth the effort.

Aoraki Mt Cook

Ranunculus lyallii and Aoraki Mt Cook.

What's in a Name?

What do these names have in common?
Victor Borge, Moody blues, Tequila sunrise, Lavaglut, Western Sun?
Why, they are all roses I photographed in the Botanical Gardens last Friday of course.
Back in the days when I used to compete in photographic competitions a judge waxed eloquent on my brilliant rose image, then proceeded to reject it because he considered the title completely inappropriate to the subject. The title was "Tequila Sunrise', the name of the rose I photographed!

Hard Day at the Office

We finally got away into the hills - the 31st annual event - delayed by events beyond our control last February!
We had beautiful sun, gale force winds, torrential rain, flooded rivers - and everything in between.
Quintessential inland Canterbury high country.
Good friends, good food, good whisky!
Five excellent days away from 'teagate' (you need to be a Kiwi to get that), earthquakes, mobiles, etc.
Bliss!!








Fun way to descend.
















Sunset over South Ashburton River.

Small Beginnings

Several weeks ago, Cashel Mall reopened with 'pop up shops'. Virtually all of the shops in the mall were demolished during or after the quakes. Now, they are replaced by temporary shipping containers converted cleverly into shops.
Ans so, the inner city's heart begins to beat again, albiet very quietly and in a tiny way - but it beats.
We wandered through on a Sunday morning - the silence was palpable - everybody was either whispering or chatting quietly.
We were impressed - and moved. In my wildest dreams I never imagined I would shed a tear as I walked back into Ballantynes. Sad boy!









Part of the south side of Cashel Mall with Ballantynes in the background.
















Duelling jibs!! Two of the cranes being used in the deconstruction of the Grand Chancellor Hotel.

Bob Dylan

"The Times, They Are a Changing"

- so wrote Bob Dylan all those years ago. He remains amongst my favourite singers.

It certainly has been a rather 'topsy-turvy' few weeks. Do not fear, I'm not going to bore you with the details! But there is a bright side in there somewhere. I can feel it.

In amongst this shite, I am craving some peace and quiet. I was thus reminded of this jetty I photographed for the umpteenth time a few weeks ago. The jetty at Lake Mahinapua. It was a dull evening, the day was almost over, and I popped my x10 ND filter on. The exposure was of the order of 30-60 seconds. There was no-one else around. Pure bliss! That is, apart from the black swan who would not go away and kept swimming into my image. Fortunately, she (it had to be a she) kept moving and so wasn't recorded. Lucky me.

And to finish off now, my apologies to all my followers - there must now be almost 10 of you judging by the comments re my lack of blogging activity. Mea culpa, mea culpa..............

In 11 days I am off into my beloved mountains for 5 days. Following that adventure, there's bound to be something of interest.