The Bridge Guardian and Suspicious Poultry

I was going about my business, just hunting in the bush (as you do) and there he was. The most magnificent duck I have ever seen.

He lay on the bridge I wanted to cross and stared at me from among a group of regular sized ducks that appeared to be body guards (or maybe adoring acolytes)

Although he was at least four feet shorter than me, he stared me down, and then wandered off all self-important and dignified, as if he just happened to have another place to go. His entourage followed.

 

In my role as a house sitter and writer I get to explore a lot of country. I am still in New Zealand and travelling the windy highway from Wellington to Napier on the East Coast.

It is called Highway Two (a nod to its importance as the second biggest highway on the North Island) but it is still narrow and parochial. Despite regular road work, it regularly slows to city speeds to pass through the centre of little country towns and if you catch up with a truck you can be doomed to follow at a snail’s pace.

Some of the swathes and folds of emerald and gold hill that make it such a beautiful road to travel can also make it impossible to pass trucks labouring up a circuitous incline.

I can’t complain about the wild life along the road though.

At one park there were some rather marvellous partridges (quail?) hanging out with the ducks.

In another, seagulls played at being ducks, in a busy inner city fountain,

At one highway rest stop hidden behind straggly trees, I found a suspicious looking rooster.

 He had set up a home for his little family next to the picnic table.

 

New Zealand is an awesome country and well worth exploring. If you have never been here, I can recommend it, especially if you can take a road trip. You can even go bush in safety.

We don’t have big spiders, grumpy bears or any snakes, poisonous or otherwise.

Just watch out for grumpy poultry.

NZ Earthquakes 1931

The Christchurch earthquake was devastating and continues to haunt the city. People are still living with uncertainty as many buildings remain cordoned off and aftershocks are still being felt a year later. It is unusual in length but not in strength.

As I write this I am staying on a yacht that is moored In the Napier Harbour. If you like vintage planes, old machinery, and 1950’s fashion, you would love Napier.

It is a small city on the East coast of the North Island of New Zealand and four hours from Wellington. It is slightly warmer than Wellington and more often sunny. It is a coastal city, bordered on two sides by the Pacific Ocean and the Harbour and overlooked by myriads of homes, built on the steep surrounding hills, many of them perched on stilts for stability.

It is a beautiful city and a popular place to take holidays and to retire. It is also a city built on tragedy.

On an ordinary Tuesday morning in February 1931, the city was rocked by an earthquake. If you have seen the Christchurch earthquake on TV, this was worse.

It lasted two and a half minutes; measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and killed 256 people. Many more were injured and almost all the buildings in town as well as in the nearby town of Hastings were destroyed. The Wellington Regional newspaper suggested that Napier had been “Wiped off the map.”

There were big changes to the surrounding areas too. Nearby coastal areas were lifted around two metres and about 40km of seabed, became dry land. This land is now the airport and the busy port area and shipping terminals.

The Port that used to be sea floor

It was huge and changed the region significantly.

Over the next few years, most of the city had to be rebuilt, so even now, it has a distinct 1930’s feel. All the public buildings, the parks, even the garden layouts, were designed in the style of the day, Art Deco.

Napier honours that past with museums and displays and by holding a very popular Art Deco weekend every February. I was here last year and many women wore flowery dresses and cloche hats while their men looked dapper in their suits and boater type hats. In three weeks, I will tell you all about it.

From Gravestones to Beach Stones - Hutt Valley, New Zealand

After the last blog about local slums, I thought I had better show you some better pictures of my neighbourhood. I have been exploring and I always take photos, even on home turf.

This one was taken from a cemetery that I had never explored before. It is five minutes from home and my son works making headstones across the road. This  view looks across the Hutt Valley region to the Wellington harbour.

This is taken from the top of the main road across the hill to the suburb of Wainuiomata. In Australia this would be a mountain, but in New Zealand this is just one of the many hills surrounding the region. I guess that is why it is called a "Valley."

That is also Wellington Harbour in the distance.

 Some of the sculptures on the Petone beach. These represent oars and the place where the Europeans first came ashore to settle in the 1800's.

In the Harbour itself. Boats, jetskis and the Inter-Island Ferry in the distance. On a hot day it is a great place for water sports.

They say you can't beat Wellington on a good day. I tend to agree.

Sometimes home can become so familiar that I forget how beautiful it can be.

The disappearing suburb and a child named Mighty

It was a rundown community for the poor and disadvantaged. It was the kind of place where children were given names like Storm or Freedom or Mighty.

Children played outside until long after dark. Yards were decorated with broken down cars, rusty prams, and old appliances too big to go in the council rubbish. It was home to gangs and drug dealers and the disadvantaged.

Now the whole neighbourhood of about 80 units has been disbanded.

The two story weather board units were built seventy years ago to help the families of soldiers returning from war. For the last few years, residents have been complaining about rats and mould. It was the seedy side of Wellington, akin to Harlem or maybe Brixton.

People have been moved into other communities, and each week another building is torn down into a huge pile of rubble that lingers for a few days, and then is picked up and taken away, leaving the area a blank canvas for new developments.

It was never a popular community, except with those who could afford nothing else, or those that were particularly proud of living in “grass roots” New Zealand. It was a community people fell into and sometimes never made it out of.

Some families lived there for over thirty years, propped up by government benefits, and subsidised housing costs. Many had grown used to be being supported in their government assisted lifestyle and were understandably upset about the change.

About twenty residents set up a tent city and stayed onsite in protest. It lasted only a few weeks. I suspect there wasn’t enough interest by the media or sympathy from the community.

Bit by bit the homes and the memories are being removed. Change is always hard, but it brings to mind the saying “Change is inevitable, misery is optional.”

I hope these families find a reason to embrace the move and welcome new opportunities. This is New Zealand and one of the most beautiful countries on earth.

I hope children like Mighty and his sibling Kingdezzy, (yes, these are real names) get a chance to live in a more beautiful and prosperous part of it.

I have a confession to make.

I am not in Australia, I am in New Zealand for a few months.

I wasn’t going to write about it because I called New Zealand home for over 40 years and besides, this blog is called traveller in Oz.

But then I thought; there may be some of you that are as interested in New Zealand as I am in Australia. It is a fascinating country. I just happen to be in an uninteresting corner.

I am staying with four of my sons in what used to be my family home.

It is in the second cheapest suburb in the region, as it was the only place we could afford a five bedroom, two bathroom house, at a time when more than 90% of homes had one bathroom. (Most still do) We also have 6742 sq metres of land so the boys can have space to run around. Naturally as children of the 90’s and the new millennium they prefer to use just ten square meters of it to stay inside and play computer games.

There are two sides to our suburb; the “good” side, where children are picked up from school in four wheel drives, and the “bad” side where you don’t leave washing on the line at night and shoes get stolen from outside your door. We live in the good side.

One of New Zealand’s best model designers lives in our suburb, so the shopping centre boasts a wonderfully designed two seater bike with a metal man on the front who pedals along with anyone brave enough to ride on the back. Four other interactive structures were installed just before I left but this is the only one that seems to have lasted the two years since.

New sculpture

Our suburbs welcoming structure is a sculpture shaped like two worms mating. It is currently being used to display some wags collection of road safety cones.

Now they have added a new sculpture in a similar style. It seems to be designed for longevity and not aesthetic reasons. From some angles it looks like a finger in the air gesture.

I did love it here and it’s a nice community to raise a family but after twenty years, it has lost its charm for me. I am a wanderer.

If you add in the chilly winters, Antarctic winds and unreliable summers, you might see why I have chosen to move to sunny Queensland Australia.

My next post will be about the nearby suburb that is not just fading, it is vanishing. You have been warned.

Mudgee Rocks!

About 30 minutes out of Mudgee in New South Wales, and maybe ten minutes from each other, are two National treasures.

The first is Hands on rock, a long wall face with hand imprints made hundreds of years ago by local aboriginal people. The walk in is almost eerie and there is a real presence here, a feeling of serenity and untamed beauty. Wild and crooked branches grow up out of the ground and rocks seem piled into turrets and towers, reminiscent of crumbled English castles.

The other formation is called The Drip. It is a large curved, pancake layered cliff wall with enough water flowing over it to keep it green and mossy. At the bottom is a pool of water littered with rocks.

The walk into this location is a feature in itself. I took photos of giant boulders, scattered along the stream like giants bowling balls, rocks with pockmark type holes I dubbed Swiss Cheese Rocks, and another looking suspiciously like a skull.

I was in Mudgee for weeks before I heard of these locations. Even friends who lived locally had not mentioned them. I think they were some of the most stunning I have ever seen. Phil, who has lived in Australia all his life says there are many, many more across the country.

I loved them so much; I used the photos I took to design a t-shirt. a mouse pad and a mug.

Thanks to Red Nomad Oz and her blog about Australian Gorges, that reminded me about my visit to Mudgee and inspired me to revisit the photos. I wrote about these rocks before so if you want to see more photos, check back to the post I wrote last year.

p.s. If you want to see some really magnificent travel photos I have just downloaded a free book of 25 amazing photos from Gary Arndt. I can't wait to read about his travels.

Experiencing Christmas

When I was a teenager, my father left home and his gifts became more expensive. The first year he gave me a suitcase with gifts inside.

Another year, he enrolled me in a scuba diving course, and he took the course right along with me. I still carry my diving card proudly.
It was issued in the days when computers took up an entire air-conditioned room and typing was still done on manual machines. I am surprised they even had plastic cards in those days. It must have been one of the first ever printed.

While I cannot remember a single gift that was inside that suitcase, I have always carried the experience of diving with me. That gift has lasted all these years and brought me much joy.

I spent most of my adult life as the stay-at-home mother of six children. I loved that time when my children were small, but travel and adventure could seem very far away when I spent my days washing clothes, faces, and dishes, or changing what seemed like hundreds of nappies.

Just knowing I had the qualification, made me feel I was still an adventurer at heart.

Almost thirty years later, my diving qualification has also been useful. Last year I was offered an opportunity to go diving at the beautiful Nelson Bay marine park in New South Wales, Australia.

The sea life was amazing and the coral seemed unspoiled and so beautiful in colour, shape and texture. I saw a huge blue groper with a droopy jaw, stingrays, baby sharks and a puffy orange boxfish. I admired purple and orange fixed coral and wavy, fronded, flower-like coral. It was magic.

The experience of diving was one of the best presents my father could have bought for me, and one that still has value today. When all the physical presents are gone, the experiences are still there, ready to be taken out and mulled over if I am ever grounded by age or illness.

As it comes up to Christmas, I have been thinking about what I can get my boys for Christmas. I want the gift to be memorable.

I would love to give them scuba diving courses but it would be too expensive this year. I will have to be more creative. I am thinking camping or maybe spending some nights on my friends moored yacht.

We are also going to put together baskets of goodies to leave anonymously at doors on Christmas Eve. It is one of my favourite traditions, and a fun experience for me and for my boys.

I hope your Christmas plans are coming along well. Experiences make lovely Christmas gifts. If you have any better ideas for Christmas experiences, please share them in the comments section. I would love to hear them.