Parramatta Park

Yesterday mum, Sally, Emily and Zoe went to Parramatta Park. It is a large area. The muddy Parramatta River flows through.

The main feature is the Old Government House. The park and the house go back to the 1790s.

The girls had a good play on the swings and things and a walk in the park.

Napier - Part 1

Napier, having a population of over 50,000 is designated a city. It is on the sweeping Hawkes Bay. It was planned as a town in 1854, but in 1931 it was virtually destroyed by an earthquake reading 7.9 on the Richter scale.

Most of the buildings before 1931 were destroyed by fire, but over two years the town was rebuilt during the peak years of the Art Deco style.

Unfortunately it would seem that this country has little concern with history. I have seen it written that nothing here is worth preserving because it is not old enough. There are many Art Deco features in Napier, but much has been allowed to come into disrepair, destroyed or modified.

We, that is Sally, Ian, Zoe, Emily, mum and I flew in to the town on a twin prop plane. This makes it the first time that mum and I have ever flown on anything other than a jet.

The girls travelled quite well. It would be the first plane ride that Zoe would remember. Emily perhaps won't remember this trip quite the same.



The flight took us over some rather bleak ranges.




I am always pleased with the detail of my aerial photographs taken without image stabilization using a standard lens. The following image is a very clear one of the moment when the wheels touched down.

The plane landed on the tarmac of the small domestic airport and we were soon through.

After the flight we were in convoy of cars. Ian had the SAT NAV in the red Toyota Camry and so I followed behind, with mum, in the silver Camry and parked outside our holiday home. Both cars had air con and automatic gears. This was in a very quiet area 'near the airport'. The open Pacific Ocean was a short walk over a browned grass and a gravel beach. From the horizon their was nothing but water between us and America. It was a peaceful ocean at this point.

Napier has a reputation for being sunny and dry. But, that did not take into account the arrival of the rain gods from Nottingham. I did try to persuade the grateful residents to bow down and worship us and bring offerings of gold. The chap next door just laughed.

Out accommodation was good. Mum and I had the upper floor with a bed sit room, en suite and balcony. The Clark family had two bedrooms off the kitchen, lounge and spa bath area.This arrangement worked well.

This is our room with balcony looking over the sea.

Once we were settled I drove out to Napier with mum, Sally and Zoe. We got to the sea front where there were certainly Art Deco signs. The central promenade gardens were like many UK seaside towns.

The beach that we saw was somewhat disappointing, being made of grey gravel that was just becoming black sand grains. Zoe enjoyed this and mum enjoyed collecting the white drift wood that was prevalent on the beach.

We made a visit to a shop called . Here we came face to face for the first time with deadly 'possum'; destroying scourge of the kiwi bird in the country. This group were on top of a mini singing of their victories.

On our return we came upon a beautiful example of Art Deco. This was labelled 'National Tobacco Company'; being known as the from the 1950. It is now a gymnasium. Cool!!! I made a return a visit on Thursday and was able to photograph some of the interior.

I finished the day with a photograph of Napier Harbour taken from our balcony.

Crystal Mountain and Botanic Gardens

Today we went our separate ways.

Mum, Sally and Emily went off to the Botanic Gardens and Ian, Zoe and myself went off to Crystal Mountain.

The range of charges was daunting.

Crystal Mountain is an area some distance away in Auckland. It is trying to be a theme park for adults and children, but it fails in being a theme park and children friendly. It has number of activities for children, but these are hourly and children just won't wait. There is a roller coaster which Zoe went on, a tractor train, which we had to give up on, pony rides, crystal panning. There was also a display of crystals and a well stocked crystal jewellry shop.

We regrouped at the house and had a leisurely afternoon. It was too hot to be out for long. UV burn times, with blocker, were extremely small.

In the evening Sally and Ian went for a meal in Parnell while we baby sat. When Sally got back we sat and watched the first episode of 'Boston Legal' - strange but enjoyable, with William Shatner playing a comic part as an aging head of a law firm.

It is now Sunday morning, the day is starting, the sun is starting to blaze and we are promised temperatures near to 40 C with burn times of 3 minutes. Keeping cool and out of the sun is the priority. There is no actual air conditioning, but the heat exchanger between the roof space and the house is on and I expect all the fans will soon be buzzing.

Dining Out

On the same Wednesday we, (Ian, Sally, Mum and me) were invited out to dinner. Karen, who is Sally's child minder had told her parents about us and they were keen to meet us. Ted Worthington was an ex-pom. He has lived here for 50 years, having left the ship on which he was serving at the age of 23. He had worked hard on various jobs such as fruit picking and eventually bought a small fleet of fork lift trucks at the height of the building boom in NZ. His wife was a blond Kiwi named Dianne.

Ian drove us to quite a 'normal' home in Mission Bay. It had the usual steep drive. It ended at a car porch containing a BMW car and a Mercedes pickup (neither brand new). We were shown into a small room at the end of which appeared to be an illuminated beer pump. We were offered a complicated array of beers or wines and nibbles. It became obvious that we were in a small bar room. It had imitation black oak beams. Around the edge were genuine horse shoes. There was hunting horn, a stack of old vinyls. Pictures of boats, airoplanes and trains. Ted knew the writer of the ancient railway magazine. There was an old picture of a mansion in Colney with an old Bentley out side the door. Ted now has an old Bentley in the garage. I did not quite catch whether it was the same Bentley that was his father's one outside the house in the picture.

Before we left we were asked what we would like to drink and Ted busily loaded up a bottle bag. Ian drove Sally, Mum, Karen and I down into Mission Bay we parked and made our way into a fish restuarant where we were seated at table for 7.

Ted arrived and there was a load pop as the champagne cork accidentally flew out of the bottle in the bag that he was carrying. He plonked down the wine and asked the waitress for glasses. They said that they did not have enough. Ted refused one of the glasses as it was dirty; was annoyed that there were not enough glasses and strangely enough a whole batch of clean wine glasses appeared. The restuarant did sell its own wine, but in NZ it is quite normal for customers to have their own wine and use glasses from the restuarant.

We had a good meal of snapper, chips and salad and having had good time and arranged to sail with Ted on Thursday we went back home arriving about 9. All was quiet and we went to bed.

The Row

Last night I had the most almighty row with Mum. She had gone to bed concerned about food. She would not settle she kept getting up and down, putting the light on, reading and prowling about. I wanted to sleep. I had this amazing row speech in my head. It cannot be repeated here or anywhere. In the morning it turned out that she had been asleep all night. Perhaps I was too, but I'll never be sure.

Mum as gone out with Sally and the girls for a school dental check up. When they get back I will go off to work with Sally and bring the car back. Then we will set off across the Harbour Bridge towards Devonport (This is the Kiwi naval base - I'll try and count the ship). Here I hope to be closer to the yacht race. It is time to revisit Mt Victoria.

Now to find out about Facebook, crashed car and snowmen.