Category: Uncategorized

Note: people have been asking if we are in Christchurch at the time of these tragic events. No, we’re not – in real time, we are in New Plymouth, on the North Island. There is usually a considerable lag between blog entries. But thanks for asking.

We have good luck with the weather for a change.

We arrive in the fiordland region and make Manapouri our base. Just south of Te Anau, but without the crowds.

We luck out once more when we drive the Milford Road. This is 120 KMs or so of white-knuckle driving and eye-popping scenery.

We have no cruise scheduled and are pleasantly surprised to buy tickets for one departing in ten minutes.

On top of this, the weather is spectacularly sunny and rain-free. It rains a lot in this part of the world, as you might gather from the following bit of doggerel:

‘It rained and it rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simply bogs
It started raining cats and dogs.
After a drought of half an hour
We had a most refreshing shower
And then the most curious thing of all
A gentle rain began to fall.
Next day was also fairly dry
Save for a deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And after that the rain set in.‘ – The Rain (found in Architect’s Creek Hut, Westland Nat’l Park, New Zealand)

There’s no doubt fiords are beautiful to be around. Slartibartfast, the planet designer from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘, won an award for the ones he made in Norway.

Next day, we take a cruise to Doubtful Sound.

This involves taking one boat across Lake Manapouri and a bus across the Wilmot Pass.

We get a rare shot of both of us, thanks to some friendly fellow-travelers from the North Island.

At the mouth of the sound, we see seals and albatrosses.

Back on land, we follow the southern scenic route, through Tuatepere, Invercargill, and the Catlins.

In Tuatepere, we have the unusual experience of staying in a campground/motel/backpackers hostel in which we are the only guests. We find some paua shells (known elsewhere as abalone) to decorate our table.

At the Florence Hill lookout, we stop to admire Tautuku Bay from above.

We are surprised to see a large flock of sheep marching up the beach. (You may have to enlarge the photo below to see them trooping out of the bottom right.)

We spend a few days in Dunedin. It’s very hilly.

The Scottish influence is everywhere. We visit the excellent Otago Settler’s Museum.

While in Dunedin, we are forced out of our accommodation by an Eagles concert. (Many fans made advance reservations.) This motivates us to visit the beautiful Otago Peninsula that starts at the edge of town.

Sight or Insight of the Day

On our Doubtful Sound cruise, we come upon a couple of albatrosses putting on an aerial show in front of the ship.

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s ‘hollo!’  – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Beautiful and graceful in flight, these are more than simply glorified seagulls.

We learn a lot more when we visit the Royal Albatross Centre at the tip of the Otago Peninsula. (So-called because there is a species called the ‘royal albatross’, not because of any kingly patronage.)

The young ones are really cute.

Several of the recent ‘Sight or Insight of the Day’ sections are about birds. Total coincidence.

So much for the Franz Josef Glacier. We were going to indulge in a ‘heli-hike‘, where you are whisked atop the glacier in a helicopter for a three-hour hike, visiting ice caves, etc.

Apparently it looks like this:

But we are socked in by rain and low-visibility weather for two days, grounding the helicopters.

On the plus side, the morning we leave I spot three keas flying overhead with their characteristic raucous squawk. Fewer than 5,000 keas exist – to see three together is surely a good omen.

So we drive south. Past the town of Haast, we navigate treacherous winding roads through a severe rainstorm. Signs warning of rockslides are everywhere. We are reminded of the vacationing Canadian couple who were killed in a rough-weather situation in NZ in 2013.

We wonder where in the country this incident took place. Looking it up at our next destination, we discover – it was driving in the Haast Pass, the same route we had just taken!

Eventually, the rain clears up.

We travel along two large, long lakes; Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.

Just outside Lake Hawea Village is a small, low-profile campground.

It’s so beautiful and tranquil, we spend the next two days here.

Among the things we love on the lake is the way the view of the mountains changes with the time of day.

We decide to skip Queenstown altogether. After our idyllic few days in Lake Hawea, we can’t face the thronging masses in QT.

We do, however, stop for lunch in nearby Arrowtown. Originally a gold mining town.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tempests and Takahēs

In the town of Te Anau, we visit a bird sanctuary. Among its denizens are several takahēs. Once thought extinct, they are rediscovered in 1948. There are now around 300.

Another local bird brought back from the brink of extinction are kakapos.

Large, flightless, and nocturnal, there are only about 150 of these guys left. They make a strange booming noise in mating season.

Spare a tear of sympathy for the ground-dwelling birds of New Zealand. They had a predator-free, heavily-forested home until the arrival of humans and their dogs, rats, and mice (and later, cats, ferrets, stoats, and foxes.) ‘Puir wee things‘, as the Scots would say.

Christchurch suffers a major earthquake in 2011. Empty lots and signs of destruction are still everywhere.

We visit Quake City, an informative exhibit about the quake and its aftermath. A worthy initiative – appropriately named ‘Gap Filler‘ – is to deliberately not leave vacant lots empty.

We enjoy this garden made of pool noodles.

In the Christchurch Art Gallery, we find this whimsical installation by Bill Culbert.

On our way out of town, we stop at the International Antarctic Centre.

You can pet the dogs at the IAC. We arrive just as their wrangler brings buckets of ice. Which the dogs immediately love to lie on to refresh themselves.

Across the street is the US Antarctic base supplier. Christchurch is a major point for shipping stuff down there.

You can see several ski-equipped C-130 Hercules aircraft used to do the heavy lifting.

We drive to the other side of the island over Arthur’s Pass.

Along the way are attention-demanding roads and spectacular scenery, including waterfalls. These falls are sluiced over the roadway.

We spend the night enjoying the mountains around Jackson’s Retreat, just past Arthur’s Pass.

The next day, we carry on to the Franz Josef Glacier.

Sight or Insight of the Day –

At Jackson’s Retreat, we are visited by troops of boldly curious wekas casually strolling around the campground.

We are told that one reason wekas are doing better than kiwis and other ground-dwelling NZ birds is because they are much more aggressive than these other birds in defense of their eggs, their young, and themselves. Good for you, wekas!

My goodness, it’s a couple of weeks since our last entry. We blame it on the less-than-stellar WiFi in New Zealand. We’re already rounding the southern tip. Here’s a brief entry as we begin to catch up.

We make it safely across the Cook Strait and head for Marlborough. Marlborough, is of course, wine country. We replenish our supplies.

Among the wineries we visit is Spy Valley. The winery gets its name from the Waihopai Station satellite tracking base down the road. Like its much larger cousin in Alice Springs, Pine Gap, it is the object of many protests. Sad that so many people don’t realize that we are the good guys. (To be fair, the protestors’ statement that the existence of the base means NZ is ‘working for Trump’ would give anyone the heebie jeebies.)

We rent bikes and cycle the Golden Mile.

It’s hot. We love it. Finally, we head down the coast to the Kaikoura Peninsula.

Kaikoura is the site of the first human settlement in NZ (as far as is known) about seven hundred years ago.

Very rugged, with lots of seals. You can get surprisingly close. According to the NZ Department of Conservation:

‘Before the arrival of humans, a population of about 2 million fur seals inhabited New Zealand. They were taken as food by Māori, and the onset of European sealing for meat and pelts in the 1700s and 1800s pushed them to the brink of extinction.’

Interesting wrinkly limestone rock formations all along this coast.

After a drive through more beautiful countryside, we arrive in Christchurch.

We visit the Canterbury Museum. Te Waipounamu – the Maori name for the South Island – means ‘place of greenstone’. There is an exhibit of greenstone carvings, including this hei-tiki.

I get a little one to hang around my neck.

We’ll be catching up to our present whereabouts soon. Stay tuned!

Sight or Insight of the Day – Te Waipounamu

We visit Ernest Rutherford‘s old workplace at the University of Canterbury.

A bored Ernest probably carved his initials in this lecture hall.

Physics joke: A photon checks into a hotel and is asked if he needs any help with his luggage. He says, “No, I’m traveling light.”

We cut across country and spend a night in Palmerston North before going to Wellington.

We stay in a caravan park in Upper Hutt and take the train into town every day. It’s sunny and hot. And windy, which Wellington is famous for.

The water is delightfully clean in the harbour. Young folks cool off by jumping off the quay.

Betcha wouldn’t find people doing this in Halifax or Victoria.

We visit the Beehive. This is New Zealand’s Parliament. (Or more accurately, the ‘Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings’.)

We hope to run into Jacinda Ardern, NZ’s youthful PM. We’re fans. (She’s refreshingly different from the bloated trough-snufflers and pathological liars that run most governments.) But no luck – she’s off visiting the victims of bushfires in the South Island.

We get some walking-around money from a Kiwi Bank ATM.

It’s fun being in a place where everyone sounds like Bret and Jemain on Flight of the Conchords.

One thing that is a definite bargain in New Zealand is fish & chips.

We enjoy an ample meal at The Chippery for relative peanuts.

Wellington is very liveable. Like most capital cities. We get the lowdown on local history at the very cool Wellington Museum.

I visit the childhood home of Katherine Mansfield.

We prepare for our three-and-a-half-hour trans-Cook Strait ferry ride.

Lucky for Maria the forecast is for a smooth crossing.

The Cook Strait can have unbelievably rough weather. There have been numerous shipwrecks, including the relatively recent Wahine disaster.

Sight or Insight of the Day

New Zealand is known in Maori as ‘Aotearoa‘. The common translation is ‘the land of the long white cloud’. You can see why in this photo taken during the crossing.

From the Coromandel Peninsula, we arrive in Rotorua.

Rotorua is an infernal kind of place. Lots of sulphur-smelling hot springs.

We rent bicycles and tour along the lake.

We come across bubbling witches-brews of hot springs and mud.

Many years ago, I went out with a girl from Rotorua for quite some time. I believe she eventually settled down in this area. A casual Google search turns up nothing of her whereabouts.

From Rotorua, we drive to Lake Taupo, NZ’s largest lake. Of course, Maria has to test out the waters.

Our caravan park contains soothing mineral hot pools.

Apparently this DC3 makes the local McDonald’s one of the coolest in the world.

Next stop is Napier, a pleasant seaside town.

A severe earthquake strikes here in the 1930s.

Napier is known for its many Art Deco buildings. (Art Deco was popular around the time of the earthquake – hence the binge.)

For us, however, it’s all about the wine. The Hawke’s Bay region is one of New Zealand’s best. A Google search whittles down the number of wineries we can reasonably visit.

• Mission Estate
• Black Barn
• Craggy Range
• Sileni
• Trinity Hill
• Te Mata
• Alpha Domus

Mission Estate is the oldest winery in NZ. As we arrive for lunch at their wonderful restaurant, preparations are underway for an outdoor concert with Phil Collins. (Currently on his ‘Not Dead Yet‘ tour – I kid you not.)

This is an annual thing: last year, it was Neil Diamond. Next year, Elton John.

On our way to Sileni Estate. The Hawke’s Bay region is famous for its syrahs and sauvignon blancs.

See the duct tape on the rear windows? That’s because our discount campervan rental has no screens. So we make our own.

Maria frolics in the fields of Alpha Domus.

The entrance to Craggy Range.

This is the actual craggy range, across the road.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Rotorua, we visit the nearby National Kiwi Hatchery.

This is a stuffed kiwi – real kiwis suffer extreme stress when a flash goes off by accident, so photography is not allowed around the live birds.

Note the size of the egg compared to the size of the kiwi. Ouch!

It so happens as we arrive, a pair of rangers are transporting a three-month-old kiwi to a new home in a national park.

This particular kiwi hatched during the visit of Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle (AKA the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.) They select the name ‘Tihei’, from the Māori Tihei mauriora, which means ‘sneeze of life’. (Every kiwi hatched here has a name. Over a thousand so far.)

So Sneeze is belted in and whisked away in comfort, as befits a bird of royal patronage.

Let’s face it – New Zealand avian fauna is not very exciting after the technicolour riot that is Australian birdlife. But we love kiwis.

After arriving in Auckland, we spend a few days seeing the sights, including the architecturally impressive Auckland Art Gallery.

We pick up our campervan, home for the next few months. We name her ‘Kiwi’. I suggest ‘Kate’, after Kate Sheppard, the woman responsible for New Zealand being the first country to give women the vote in 1893. (For comparison, women in Switzerland got the vote in 1971.) I am overruled.

Note the homemade awning constructed from a cheap tarp, a couple of tent poles, and numerous bungee cords.

We head out of somewhat over-Sinified Auckland for the Coromandel Peninsula.

New Zealand is very scenic.

The east coast experiences a gold rush in the 19th century. This leaves towns with many Wild West-style buildings.

We take a shortcut known as ‘The 309‘ across the peninsula. Among the sights we see are herd of free-range pigs. Good old NZ pork on the hoof.

The twisty gravel road passes through some nifty rainforest.

 

 We drive down the coast, then inland to Matamata and camp by some hot springs.

Campgrounds are expensive in New Zealand. Almost double the price of Australian campgrounds. No wonder so many people stick to ‘freedom camping’. (Not our thing at all. If you can afford a motor vehicle, surely you can afford to pay for amenities like hot water and electricity.)

Sight or Insight of the Day

Because we are in the area, we visit the set of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. It is extremely touristic, that is, wildly popular.

It’s actually quite a sight. The story of the site’s discovery by Peter Jackson on this lucky family’s farmland is a tale in itself.

Maria, with little cultural reference to JRR Tolkien and his work, is dubious at first. But eventually succumbs to Hobbiton’s charms.

 

Welcome to New Zealand.

After over a month, we are back on our random rambles.

We flew back to Canada for a family emergency. Back again, now in the land of the long white cloud, New Zealand.

We’ll be brief for this entry, as we get back into the swing of things.

But first, let’s recap our last few days in Melbourne. We visit the top of the Eureka Tower.

We also visit the Botanical Gardens.

In Fitzroy Gardens is Cook’s Cottage, transported brick by brick from Yorkshire.

We have lunch again with my old friend Philip.

In keeping with our Ned Kelly interests, we visit the Old Melbourne Gaol. This the site of Ned’s hanging.

It looks virtually the same as in this contemporary etching.

We fly from Melbourne to Auckland. In Auckland, we don’t even leave the airport – we fly directly back to Ottawa.

Fast forward to late January. Resuming our journey in NZ, we come across this in the streets of Auckland.

So at least we’re caught up to our arrival here. More to come.

Sight or Insight of the Day –

We run into people we know from Ottawa on the streets of Auckland.

As we walk down Queen Street, we hear our names called. It’s Yves. Yves and Darlene are good friends of my brother and sister-in-law, Joanne.  (Darlene and Joanne are cousins.) We knew they were on a cruise in this part of the world, but it seems unlikely our paths would cross. Kudos to Yves for recognizing us among the throngs of the city.

How improbable is that? We celebrate by going out for dinner.

From Hobart, we drive north.

We stop for lunch in Tarraleah. In the nearby fountain, a momma duck herds her ducklings.

On our way towards the west coast, we visit the Wall in the Wilderness. This is a project of sculptor Greg Duncan to carve a mural in wood describing life in this part of Tasmania. They have a strict ‘no photos’ policy, but fortunately, Google once again comes to the rescue, as you can see here.

On our way to Strahan, we pass through Queenstown, a former mining area.

Below is Tas, our two-week campervan rental. He – yes, he’s a ‘he’ – is actually an upgrade. Much newer, but lacking in character. And an un-ergonomic configuration that has us banging our heads daily and tut-tutting about the user-unfriendly design.

The approach to Queenstown is a windy steep road – lots of fun.

After a few days in Strahan, we drive to Cradle Mountain.

We never get to see it like this. For the entire time we are in the area, we endure gale-force winds, torrential rain, and temperatures hovering around zero. Fortunately, there’s a comfy lodge to hang around in during the day.

We drive through the mountainous region around Mount Cradle on our way to Launceston.

Unbelievably, we run short of wine. We visit the Josef Chromy winery to stock up. Tasmania produces excellent pinot noirs.

Our caravan park has two horses, Lauren and Greta.

Greta enjoys an apple she mooches off Maria.

In the middle of the country is the historic small town of Ross.

We make our way to the Freycinet Peninsula.

We take a little sea cruise around to Wineglass Bay.

Along the way, a pod of dolphins head for our boat and surround it with their sleek, torpedo-like forms.

They seem to enjoy racing alongside – and in front of – our boat.

We make another wine stop at Devil’s Corner.

This happens to be the first Tasmanian wine we try on arrival. By a happy accident, we come across it unplanned on our drive south.

More mountainous scenery.

We spend some time around Richmond, another historic town. It contains Australia’s oldest bridge, completed in 1825.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania part two

In the small coastal town of Swansea, we find this seasonal decoration of  Santa’s sleigh being pulled by kangaroos.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

A brief report on our first few days in Tasmania.

First thing, we plan to visit the MONA. We discover it’s closed on Mondays. We change tack and head for Port Arthur instead.

On the way, we come across the Unzoo. This turns out to be a fabulous place to see Tasmanian devils close up.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” ― Shakespeare, The Tempest

Poor devils – they’re plagued with DFTD, which threatens to wipe them out. Devil facial tumour disease only appeared in the 90s, but is taking a severe toll on the Tasmanian devil population. It’s rare that a species becomes endangered through nature itself rather than through the shitty behaviour of humans, but this is the case.

They’re cute, but not exactly cuddly. Anyway, they don’t look anything like their Warner Brothers namesake.

Although they do share unspeakably powerful jaw strength. According to Wikipedia:

‘The Tasmanian devil has the most powerful bite relative to body size of any living mammalian carnivore, exerting a force of 553 N (56.4 kgf).’

We carry on to Port Arthur. Originally a dreaded penal colony, it is now a pleasant place to walk around.

Hobart is a pleasant small port city. Very civilized.

Eventually we arrive at the MONA. This place is astounding.

Most of it exists underground, carved out of the living Tasmanian sandstone.

It’s private. It is founded by a local Hobart man, David Walsh. He made a lot of money as a gambler. He has no background in the art world. And he has built an institution – no, that’s too stuffy a word – the man has built a space-where-stuff-happens-that-is-endlessly-fascinating-to-experience. We need a new word for this.

New York, London, Paris, Berlin (and Sydney, and Melbourne) – eat your hearts out. You have nothing like this.

Below is UK artist Richard Wilson’s ’20:50′.

‘… a room flooded with engine oil. A waist-high barrier extends into the room allowing viewers to walk into it without touching the still, black mass. Museum staff repeatedly tells viewers not to touch it. ‘ – Marcus Teague, BROADSHEET Melbourne

I saw this at the Saatchi Gallery in London decades ago. </End of art brag>

This is an interesting experiment.

The MONA combines bleeding-edge modernism and the shatteringly unconventional with a total and utter lack of pretension. (This last is a very Australian aspect.)

It’s kind of like Louisiana north of Copenhagen or the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands – if you’re never in the area, you may never know they exist. Then you stumble across it and think ‘Holy shit! Why have I never heard of this place?’ Assuming you’re the artsy-fartsy type, of course.

The irreverence carries on in the signs asking people not to trespass in the vineyards surrounding the MONA.

and another…

Also in Hobart, we visit a replica of Mawson’s huts. Douglas Mawson was an Antarctic explorer and geologist from South Australia.

A fascinating man. He goes to the Antarctic with Shackleton, leads several other expeditions filled with derring-do, traipses around the outback doing  pioneer geological surveys, then continues on in a career as a respected academic. Like Indiana Jones with an Australian accent.

A landmark of Hobart is the Tasman Bridge.

This was the site of a catastrophic accident in 1975.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania

This work at the MONA blows us away:

It’s by a German artist, Julius Popp.

A science gallery website describes it like this:

‘In BIT.FALL, information is represented by words generated by a computer program, based on a statistical algorithm. The program filters relevant terms from the current stream of news on the internet, and transmits the values to the control unit of BIT.FALL. In a split second, BIT. FALL releases hundreds of drops at specific intervals, creating a ‘waterfall’ of words. Each drop of water thus becomes a liquid and transient ‘pixel’ or ‘bit’, the smallest unit of information. ‘

So the words that appear are based on whatever’s trending on the web.

The words are crystal clear, but immediately dissolve into a mist, leaving you waiting for the next one. We stand watching this for ten minutes.