The lesser mabinogion

I had new glass put in my shower screen today, and now my bathroom smells like old smelly socks from the anti fungal silicon stuff they used.
The glass guy told me not to worry about it, because it’ll go away in a couple of weeks or months.

wonderful, I feel so much better.

Nick just came and made a cameo appearance, just long enough to have coffee and see my trip photos before buggering off to go to a band practice…maybe next week we’ll actually get something done….
And now…I don’t know what I’ll do…maybe I’ll go do some music by myself…

….and not really anything to say…

It’s windy, but I guess not as windy as it was in Melbourne last night, so probably not worth mentioning..although they are warning us to stay inside and away from windows, so maybe it’s noteworthy afterall….I’ll let you know if a tree falls on me….again.
It’s cold too – I get back from New Zealand to come back to cold. That I didn’t expect, but I guess it’ll pass.

Went and saw a concert at Caitlin’s school today – was mostly singing – her class did a couple of singing pieces, and a dance piece, and other classes mostly did singing. The year 5 and 6s did a cut down performance of War of The Worlds, which was pretty good – but I can’t help thinking that they should have had that separate, and gone the extra mile to turn it into a full blown production.

…got things going on in my head right now that I kinda need to work out, but this isn’t the place to talk about that sort of thing.

Anyway, still can’t be bothered doing anything, and am considering having a bath and going to bed….

Now that I’ve figured out how to turn the huge Quicktime files I get from my camera into something a little more web friendly, here are three short videos from my time in New Zealand.
The rocky Kapiti coast near Wellington (697KB)
On the road to the Tawhiti Museum, showing Mt Taranaki (1.21MB)
An impressive model train at the Tawhiti Museum (2.34MB)

Yesterday was another do nothing day – just bought some souvenirs and gifts, and then pottered around at home all day.
In the evening I took Estelle, Craig and Anjali out to The Bollywood Stars – an Indian restaurant that they often go to. Dinner was very nice, and very filling, and the coffee afterwards was also very good.
Afterwards we accidentally watched Joe Dirt on TV.
I’ll never make that mistake again.
Then I accidentally also watched Dusk to Dawn 3 – another experience I would rather not repeat.

This morning it was time to go, so I packed everything up, said my goodbyes and headed off to Wellington.
The drive was completely uneventful, but still rather pleasant.

On getting to Wellington, I drove around the city centre for quite some time looking for somewhere to park – It was a public holiday there, and not much was open, but somehow it was still very hard to find a park. Eventually I stumbled across the Civic Centre, and parked under the Library – which if I’d known to look for it would have made parking really easy.
I then just wandered around for a bit – the idea was to find a nice cafe somewhere and have a fairly leisurely lunch as I had about an hour and a half to kill before taking the car back.
Wellington is a really nice city – I’m going to have to make a point of making a dedicated visit to it next time I’m in New Zealand.
In my wanderings I came across the Dymocks on Lambton Quay, and it’s huge…the shop front makes it look rather small, but it goes back a looong way.
I also peeked in the Whitcouls a few shops down, and it’s even bigger – two floors of bookshop!
Sadly I didn’t really want to be spending any more money by that point, so I didn’t indulge myself at either store.

My quest for food was pretty much thwarted. It was a public holiday, and most places were closed, and I had decided that I was NOT going to settle for Starbucks or Mc Donald

Yesterday we headed up towards New Plymouth
Our first destination was the Tawhiti Museum near Harewa.
The Tawhiti museum is pretty much made up of dioramas of varying scales – quite a few lifesized ones, and hundreds of little miniature ones, all very detailed.
Unfortunately, since I started taking photos absolutely everywhere, I didn’t really read any of the descriptions, so I suspect I’m going to have to go back there another time, and leave the camera behind.
It was really worth the trip though, and anyone visiting the Wanganui or Taranaki area should go have a look.

Next we carried on in the general direction of New Plymouth – and stopped at the Pioneer village just outside Stratford.
The pioneer village was a little disapointing, as whilst they had a whole lot of old stuff – it wasn’t really presented very well all the time.
For example, in the printer’s builing, there was just a jumble of printing type equipiment without really any description of what it was, when it was from or what it was used for.

The Hospital display was a little disturbing too – In one of the rooms there was a bucket with a couple of legs from dummies labled “Spare Parts”, and nearby was a stuffed cat with a label saying “Hospital cat – waiting for the last tonsil”.
There was a skeleton in a cupboard in another room, and a nurse lying on one of the beds smoking a cigarette….
I had the distinct feeling that it was the sort of place you didn’t want to be caught in after dark.

After the pioneer village, we headed in to Stratford for lunch – which was the best Fish & Chips I’ve had in years.

After lunch we decided we couldn’t be bothered carrying on to New Plymouth, and headed back home.

Photos here.

Well, yesterday my one real goal was to drive up the Para Para highway to Raetihi, and maybe if time allowed circle the mountains and come back down the desert road side.

The Para Paras were still showing signs of the storm in February – there were a number of places where the road was down to one lane, due to the other lane having relocated a few hundred meters down.

It was a fairly peaceful drive – a bit grey, but I’ve come to realise that even when the forcast is for fine weather, they don’t really mean it untill at least midday.
I stopped briefly at Raukawa falls to take some photos – I had remembered being able to climb right down to the foot of them, but was unable to find out how and had to settle for the lookout.
The rest of the drive to Raetihi was pretty uneventful, until one moment, having finally emerged from the Para Paras, I looked to the right and suddenly there was this bloody big snow covered mountain beside me.
I didn’t realise it was visible quite so soon, so it rather took me by suprise.
I looked for somewhere to pull over so I could take a photo, and that started off a couple of hours of driving a few metres – seeing the mountain again, and looking for somewhere to pull over.
Fortunately I managed to restrain myself enough to actually get somewhere, and after reaching Turangi, decided that there was enough time left for me to attempt to get to Taupo.

Taupo was Taupo – as fake and touristy as ever, and I only hung around long enough to pay 40c to go to the toilet (yes, it’s THAT touristy) and take some photos before turning round to try to get back to Wanganui by fiveish.
The drive back was extremely frustrating – I spent the whole time with either someone practically attached to my rear bumper whilst I was doing 10ks over the speed limit, or stuck behind someone doing 80 in a 100 zone, with 100km between passing lanes.
But I got home eventually – and even on time (I was just getting out of the car when Estelle got back from work) – and managed to get more photos of the mountains, but from the other side, and some pcitures of the Mangaweka gorge too on the way.
I also had a Near Tui Experience in Mangaweka – I was just going to go sit down for a bit after taking the photos – and right above me in the picnic table was a tui, in the branches of a Kowhai tree – but by the time I managed to get the camera out again, and turned on, it had flown away. I had to make do with just a couple of close ups of Kowhai flowers….which is a pity, because a Tui on a Kowhai branch would have been just about as New Zealand as you could get…

After I got home we pretty much turned straight round and went out to Estelle’s parents’ house for dinner.
Dinner was very nice, and very filling, and we came home and pretty much collpased.

Many mountains, lakes, rivers and sheep here.

normally I’d be sorting out and uploading my photos right now, so I could write up what I did in the morning…
but I drove about 600 kms today, to Taupo and back, and 137 photos later, I’m buggered, and right now if I see another panorama of a mountain or a lake, I’ll probably scream.
dunno if I’ll be able to update in the morning either – ’cause we’ve got a potentially full day planned.

Yesterday I did very little, I slept in till about ten, and then just sat around the house for a few hours – and spent some time chasing bumble-bees round the flowers with my camera, with mixed success…heh

I did go back up to Durie hill to get a better shot of the memorial tower though – I’d tried on one Wednesday, but when I stitched together the parts it always came out bent. Yesterday’s attempt was much better.

Then I went back to the avenue and found a cafe to have some coffee in. I went to the Cracked Pepper, and had a capuccino and a rasberry and white chocolate brownie – which was very, very nice. It was a chocolate fudge brownie with little pieces of white chocolate and rasberries in it…yummy

In the evening we went up to Virginia lake so I could get some photos of the fountain at night. I got a couple of okayish ones, but mostly I moved the camera so much that there’s just a colourful blur against a black background. I’m going to see if I can find a cheap tripod today.

Pictures here

Apart from tripod hunting, today I’m going to head up the para para highway, and depending on how long it looks like it will take me, probably head across the national park, and then back down the desert road. Maybe. We’re going to Estelle’s parents’ for dinner tonight, so I’ll need to be back on time – so I’ll just see how far I get.

I got sunburnt.
In Wanganui.
In October.

Yesterday I spent the day wandering around the city. I had originally planned to park in Victoria Avenue and wander down it, but it occured to me that whilst I had some New Zealand money – I didn’t have any change.
So instead I went to the mall – The Mall here being about half the size of Kippax Fair for anyone that knows Canberra, although it does have a rather large “The Warehouse” store – which replaces the K-Mart that was there when I was last here.
I grabbed a postcard for Caitlin from Books and More (the NZ Post run bookshop that Craig works for), and was served by Craig, who demanded lunch in exchange (well, not really, but he did suggest that I might shout him lunch).
Craig’s lunch break was still an hour and a half away, so I set out to go wandering.
I left the car at the mall carpark (free parking), and headed back to the avenue (The Avenue is Victoria Avenue – originally the main street through town, but now it’s the main shopping area, as these days Wanganui is more of a destination than somewhere you pass through).
I bought myself a 2005 Wanganui calendar from a New Zealand gift store – which on later reflection has quite a lot less good photos of Wanganui than I thought, and quite a lot more relgious references than I thought. I think I’ll just make my own calendar from my own photos.

It started raining at about that point, and continued to do so as I walked up the avenue, but by the time I got to Ingestre street, it had stopped again, and it looked like it might stay stopped long enough for me to risk breaking the cover of the shop fronts – so I headed towards Wanganui City College.
I grabbed a couple of photos of the school, and then headed down St. Hill Street towards Wanganui Intermediate.
It must have been lunch time by now, as there were kids hanging around near the fence of the college – I got to see the familiar site of a boy in a blue uniform pushing another boy in a blue uniform, and enjoy having them call out and insult me as I passed. Yup, they can change the name, they can invite girls, but it’s still Wanganui Boys College at heart.

As I walked past the main gate, I passed a group of girls, one of which called out “Hello”. And as always in that situation I had no idea if she was being friendly, or somehow making fun on me..I said hello and carried on without slowing down, to hear her friends telling her “He thinks you’re weird!” as I walked off…heh.

I passed another group of girls further down – this lot hanging around a tree by the fence, smoking.
I’m sure the smokers were a little more discrete when I was there, but maybe I was just oblivious…
Another “Hello!” as I passed.
Actually, I think it’s a form of entertainment, they stand by the fence to see how many passers by they can unnerve…

Reached the end of St. Hill street, and turned right on to Dublin Street, and walked past Wanganui Intermediate back to Victoria Avenue.
Then I headed back down the avenue, but when I reached Majestic Square, I decided that the weather was definitely holding up (in fact it was hot and sunny by this point), and went up to Queens Park to get some photos of the gallery and the libraries.
Having got all the photos I wanted up there, I walked back to the mall, and arrived in perfect time to meet Craig.
We went to the Rutland for lunch, where we both had a BLAT (bacon, lettuce and tomato, with avocado) Apparently Wanganui grows a lot of avocado, and you get avocado with everything as a result. I have no problem with that.

After depositing Craig back at the mall, I just kind of drove around and let the road take me where it would.
It took me to the cemetry.
The cemetry was rather pleasant – I’d never really been there before, but it was nice and sunny and full of trees and flowers and old head stones – I didn’t make any serious effort to find a really old one, but there were a few late 19th century ones around.
I took a few photos, and then decided to head out to Castlecliff beach.

Castlecliff is a subburb with a not too good reputation in Wanganui – so it was rather amusing to pass a sign that said “Welcome to Castlecliff, the Holiday Lifestyle Subburb” I wonder if the person that came up with that was serious…

The beach itself was windy, deserted and bleak. Bleached white driftwood on black iron sand, like bones amongst the ashes of a scene of destruction. But then it’s always been like that.
It’s one of the few public beaches I know of where dogs are actually encouraged – it’s marked as a “Dog excercise area”, I’m not sure I’d actually take a dog there though…they’d probably get bitten by a katipo when sniffing at some driftwood…either that or stand on broken glass…
Castlecliff beach is probably one of the reasons why the prospect of living near a beach has never particularly excited me. I DID live near a beach, and the beach sucked.

Kai Iwi beach which is a little out of town is a bit better, I might go have a look there at some point.

After Castlecliff, I headed back into civilisation, and up Durie Hill, to the Memorial Tower, which was errected as a monument to those that died in World War 1.
Wanganui seems to like remembering wars. There’s the War Memorial hall, and the Queens Park Monument, and the two longest streets in Wanganui – Anzac Parade, and Somme Parade that follow the river on the east and west banks respectively.

I got some good aerial shots of Wanganui from the tower, and also from the lookout, and then hopped back in to the car (after accidently trying to open someone else’s generic small grey car) and went over to Bastia Hill, to get some pictures of the Water Tower.

The Water tower is probably the most significant Wanganui landmark, at least for someone growing up in Wanganui East – where no matter where you are, or what you’re doing, you always know where the tower is, it’s blue green dome watching over you…
It’s kind of similar to the feeling of the Telstra tower in Canberra, except that whilst you always know where Telstra tower is, it’s much further away, and so doesn’t have that same feeling of immediacy that the Water Tower did.
I’m not sure whether or not I could cope with living in a city that didn’t have at least one omnipresent tower watching over the population..

Unfortunately there’s no general access up the Water tower, despite its numerous viewing platforms. I guess they didn’t have to worry about public liability insurance in 1827.

Next was Wanganui East, and the necesary drive down Raine Street….I was going to take some photos of 78, but it didn’t feel right…so I carried on, feeling kind of uncomfortable and had a look at Wanganui East primary school instead.

The school was looking very good – I probably couldn’t have picked a better time to see it. Fortunately by this point school was well and truly finished, so I could take some photos without raising any eyebrows.

It was at this point I noticed that somewhere in my travels I’d lost the leather belt / sash thing from my coat. I vainly hoped it had fallen out in the car…but nope, so it’s gone.
It kind of bugged me in an abstract way, but I was in too good a mood to let it bother me too much – I’m sure I can find a replacement somewhere without spending too much – it’s just a strip of leather, afterall.

Anyway, the final destination for the day was Kowhai Park – probably the most fun public children’s playground ever. Exactly the sort of playground that Canberra doesn’t have.
There’s mountains to climb over and through, see saws that look like snakes, swings hanging from the tenticals of sea monsters and giant octopuses, and slides everywhere.
Climb up the back of a brontosaurus, and slide down it’s neck. Climb up the inside of a clock, and slide out of it. Slide down the front of a boot, or the back of a whale, or out of the turret of a castle, or into the hold of a pirate ship.

Besides the swings and slides and merry-go-rounds in the main children’s play area, there’s also a castle and pirate ship in a little fenced off area surrounded by a mini railroad.
You get to the castle and pirate ship via a footbridge over the train tracks.
The castle was looking a little sad – graphitti covered, and strange coloured paint inside that was out of place against the grey exterior, and I’m sure they never really intended the creepers to completely cover a couple of the turrets they way they did, but it still fulfilled its task of being somewhere for the slightly older kids to climb up, and run around the battlements, slide down the slide out of one of the turrets, and then over to the pirate ship – without first drowning in the moat.

The pirate ship was looking in pretty good shape, it must have been painted recently.
Every child should have access to a pirate ship and / or a castle to play on when they’re growing up. I think it’s a fundamental requirement and any city without one, should be looking for a suitable site RIGHT NOW.
Not that that will ever happen in Canberra, unless someone makes a two foot high one out of yellow and blue and red plastic…..bah

The park done, I was pretty much exhausted, having done more walking in one day than I had probably done in the last six months combined, so it was off home to rest.
We had pizza for dinner, and I spent most of the evening sorting out the days photos, which can be seen Here.

Today I am probably just going to spend what’s left of the day recovering from yesterday. I might go try to get a better exterior photo of the memorial tower, and maybe find a cafe somewhere to sit and read and have a coffee..

Why is it that you can never sleep the night before you have to get up obscenely early to go somewhere?

I woke up nearly every half hour, and lay awake from 4:30am through tll 10 to 5 when I figured there wasn’t any point waiting the last ten minutes for my alarm.
I actually managed to get everything together and get myself ready with plenty of time to spare, and got to the airport fine.
It was quite a nice fine clear morning in Canberra – unfortunately it was rather crappy in Sydney, and pretty much anywhere that wasn’t Canberra – as we flew pretty much the whole trip to Sydney in a depressing damp grey shroud.
There was a fair bit of turbulence on the way in to Sydney too – infact I was feeling rather sorry for myself and not looking forward to the prospect of hopping straight on to another plane. Especially not since the plane to Wellington was only a 737 which pushed the travel time closer to four hours…
I was especially overjoyed when they warned us before boarding that the flight was very full, and that anyone with bulky carry on luggage should give it to a flight attendant to stow.
But fortunately it wasn’t that bad, and I had more room than on the Canberra – Sydney flight, as there was an empty seat next to me.
Had a nice Chicken thing for lunch, and watched the movie.

The movie being Spiderman 2 – which was rather awful. The first one was pretty good, but that was just laughable in a lot of places – the stopping the train bit was pretty bad (the train’s buckling under the straing, bits of buildings get ripped off, but it STILL doesn’t slow down), and probably the most ridiculous moment was the 3 year old kid hoisting Peter up in the burning building…ugh…but anyway, it was something to do, but I probably would have been better off just reading my book.

We flew in to Wellington from the south, and got a brilliant view of the top of the South Island as we flew over Cook Straight
But as we approached Wellington, I noticed there was something wrong.
I was seeing the sun reflected off the water, and the sky was still blue.
I almost wondered if I’d got on the wrong flight or something….but nope, it was actually fine and sunny in Wellington (I have proof!). I think this is the first time in my memory that I have seen the sky in Wellington – and the tops of the hills too for that matter…heh

gah!, Craig’s computer just crashed so I lost half of what I was going to say.
Can’t be bothered retyping it so I’ll sumarise.

The trip up to Wanganui was pretty pleasant, it was rather suprising how completely familiar everything was – I knew exactly where I was going and recognised everything, even though it has been 9 years since I have been in the country (and did not travel that particular road when we were here that time), and 12 since I’ve lived there…
I found Craig & Estelle’s place fairly easily, and arrived there at about 8:00pm NZ time.

Photos are here

There’s also a short movie of the Wellington coast stuff – but at the moment it’s a 20Meg quicktime…I’m going to see if I can find a way to compress it a bit before I upload it.

Anyway, that’s all for now, today I’m going to wander around Wanagnui a bit, I’ve been remembering all sorts of places I want to see or get pictures of…