I’ve not posted for a few days due to being on a long walk, the Heaphy Track – which you will hear about presently. This seems a long time ago, therefore. This scene is in Collingwood, a small town in the extreme top-left corner of North Island. I had another nice shot of a sunset, but that seemed rather cliched the more I looked at it, and I like the composition of this one.
Officially so. As voted in, in 2012, by the people whose opinion counts in this regard. And a damn fine pub it is too – the Sprig and Fern on Milton Street, in Nelson, at the top end of South Island. The sign to the right is worth reading.
Nice photos as they are I feel that both of the last two days’, being taken in the evening, haven’t captured the brilliant light of this place – particularly as it is having unusually bright, warm and settled weather at the moment (apparently their whole summer has been good). This was taken on the second day of my walk round the Rakiura Track, a 25-mile yomp through, well, rather a lot of forest actually, but this moment the light did open up.
This is pretty much how I imagined New Zealand was going to look. I had to walk several miles north of Oban to find it, on the Rakiura Track (see my post here, on my other blog), but here it is, on a spectacularly beautiful evening.
First night on Stewart Island: not only the most southerly place I have been, but pretty much the most southerly place one can go. Only the very bottom of South America, the Falkland Islands (or Malvinas), and Antarctica are further south than here.
Evening entertainment in Oban, the only settlement on Stewart Island, consists either of going to the one pub, or hanging out here on the dock waiting for the penguins to turn up. We did see one. But as is often the case, it turned out more productive to photograph the crowd and not what the crowd was waiting for. (Incidentally, having got to know her a little tonight, it turns out the woman to second right here is a highly accomplished photographer in her own right, far better than me – see her blog here.)
Since I took this photograph I have been speculating about the reason why this item of clothing exists, and I’ll be damned if I can work it out.
Still, it was more interesting than anything I could find in Invercargill tonight. On to Stewart Island tomorrow.
The city of Dunedin is dominated by this institution, the oldest university in New Zealand I believe (and pronounced o-TAH-go, not o-TAY-go). I spend a lot of my life on university campuses and can authoritatively state that this is a particularly fine example of the genre.
Incidentally I just about tolerate the car that has sneaked into this shot. I bet you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of cars that have appeared on this blog. I think virtually nothing ruins an otherwise pleasing shot more than there being a car in it. With the exception of vintage ones, they’re all identical, ugly, boring and vastly over-rated machines. OK, rant over.
Could have offered up photos taken from the plane, but there will, I’m sure, be plenty of New Zealand landscapes coming up over the next few days, and I also got a good shot of Auckland but that’s also a theme used a few days ago. So here’s a photo taken of the plane. Here is everyone plugged into their little worlds as we fly over the Tasman Sea.
Having never actually been to Torquay, UK, I was today taken to its namesake south of Geelong, where a spectacular beach – just one of many such beaches in this country – fringes the Bass Strait. I like the way the light catches this forest of blue plastic triangles beside the walkway to the sands, part of a dune regeneration project.
Although I flew into Melbourne yesterday I’m not actually staying there this weekend, instead, I’m hanging out in Geelong which is a smaller city a bit further round the bay. I’m staying with an old university friend I haven’t seen in about ten years since she emigrated out here for work. There’s not an awful lot to Geelong but, like the rest of this country, it does have some cool wildlife. I was stalking this heron for a good 20 minutes from along the path by the bay near the marina, and got a few good shots, but this one I chose because the reeds just beneath the water give it a sort of texture, and the S-shape of its neck is just beautiful. It’s the second heron to appear on the blog and the first one was beautiful too.
Being 42 