Anne and I have just been down to the beach at Mission Bay. It's blowing an onshore gale and raining, but that wasn't stopping this chap. I think they call this kite-surfing and it looks enormous fun, but also looks to be hard work; they run across the wind at terrific speed.

Well, at least someone is finding the weather congenial.

It's Sunday morning and time to write up the blog, now, where was I? Sheila and Rosemary arrived back at Mission Bay on Wednesday evening from their trip to the Bay of Island. They had a very good time and also had much better weather there than we did here. Thursday and Friday were taking-it-easy days, wandering around Devonport, Auckland and St Heliers. Yesterday, Sheila and Rosemary left for Melbourne, we dropped them off at the airport for the afternoon flight. Before they went, we went down to the beach and I took some pictures of them, saying goodbye to Rangitoto (see photo). The Auckland marathon came through Mission Bay this morning, but by the time we'd managed to drag ourselves out of bed the serious competitors were long gone, they didn't have too bad a day for it, windy, with showers later, but not cold.

While she was here, Rosemary was anxious to get a really good picture of a nice, regularly-shaped Norfolk Island pine, but I don't think she had much luck in doing this. Never mind, we are off for our grand tour of the South Island tomorrow, so I'll keep my eyes open for one to photograph there (I'll blog it, if I find one). I'm not sure how I'll manage keeping the blog up to date while we're away, it will depend on Internet availability at the places where we'll be stopping.

On Friday, in St Heliers, I bought a book, Fatal Frontiers, by Paul Moon. It's a good, sensible history of the decade 1830 to 1840 and covers the run-up to the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi; necessarily, much of it is concerned what happened around the Bay of Islands.

Today, we sighted the first cruise ship of summer, in the harbour at Auckland, it's called The World. I remember reading about this chunk of marine hardware a year of so ago, it claims to be not so much a cruise ship as a floating community where the so-inclined can buy apartments, live their lives and never set foot on dry land, unless they want to. Leastways, I suppose they're allowed to get off if they want to, but who knows?

There is an article on Wikipedia about The World, click here.

Hey-ho, it takes all sorts...

Looking back to an earlier blog, at the picture of the chap about to throw himself off of the Sky Tower, reminded me of an old joke of Max Miller's concerning the options available to someone standing on the edge of a precipice.

It's Tuesday, 24th October and the weather is showing distinct signs of improvement. Yesterday was an enforced lazy-day, but this morning we walked along the sea-front to St Heliers and bought some steak for dinner. Later on we'll be popping up the the New World supermarket to do a big shop (it's always interesting to go to other peoples' supermarkets).

The picture is of a bowl that I bought from a shop in the arcade at St Heliers this morning; it was a most unexpected find. I have one similar to this, Chinese celadon, from Fujian province, Song-dynasty (about 800-years old), but this one has a stacking-ring: the glaze has been turned-off the bowl in a circle so that another bowl can stand inside it for firing, without the glaze welding the two together). I've wanted one of these for a long time. The bowl was found in Indonesia, which is bang-right for wares of this type. Now all I have to do is get it home in one piece.

It's Monday, 23rd October and Sheila and Rosemary got under way for their Bay of Islands tour at 6.30 this morning. The rain has been hammering down here pretty much since they left but here's hoping it is better than this up North. We've just been down to the Belgium beer establishment on the corner of Tamaki Drive for an espresso and a walk in the rain where we watched some Maori lads and their girl-friends playing rugby on the green by the sea-front. Even the Mövenpick isn't doing much business today, which is a rare thing.

Nothing much else to report, except that I've uploaded all of the pictures I took Wai-o-Tapu to Picasaweb. For those interested in boiling mud and steam, see:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nhopton

As usual, click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Sunday, 22nd October. Up early and caught the ten o'clock ferry from Auckland to Waiheke Island for a tour of some vineyards and an olive oilery (I'm struggling here, it's a place where they make olive oil). The two notable vineyards were Stonyridge and Mudbrick. Both produced excellent, crisp white wines and Mudbrick also produced a nice pink wine. None of the red wines sampled were of the best, however. At Mudbrick one vine produces enough grapes for only between one and two bottles of wine. The picture shows Anne, Rosemary and Sheila on top of the hill at the Mudbrick vineyard, sampling the wares. The olive oil facility was interesting, they no longer press olives to make the oil, the olives are mulched and the oil is separated in a centrifuge.

Rotorua

ROTORUA BLOG. Rosemary, Sheila, Anne and I left Mission Bay this morning, 16th October, for our trip to Rotorua. We arrived here in the mid-afternoon and booked into our motel, the Birchwood Spa in Fenton Street, a very nice place (and cheap as well. It has free Internet access, too). We've been to the local supermarket to stock up on food and plonk and just at the moment we're sitting down discussing our itinerary for the next few days. As expected, the place pongs strongly of H2S and I noticed that the trollys at the supermarket were all corroded and rusty; it evidently rains dilute sulphuric acid here.

Tuesday, 17th October, at Rotorua. After breakfast, walked about half a mile up the road to Te Puia, the Maori Cultural Centre in the Whakarewarewa Valley. This is the great Rotorua sight, with boiling mud, steaming vents and geysers, including the famous one, Pohutu, which was performing nicely during our visit.

Wednesday, 18th October, at Rotorua. Up early (for us) and drove south for about 30 km to Wai-o-Tapu, another thermal region. This one really does have everything, including a terrific thermal lake called the artist's palette. Later in the afternoon we returned to Rotorua and went to the museum there, a converted Edwardian spa with good exhibits on the history of the spa, the eruption of Tarawera in 1886 (which destroyed the famous pink terraces and white terraces nearby), local Maori and local people. The museum is set in a fine garden; oh-so-English the book says, quite rightly.

Thursday, 19th October. From Rotorua we headed up to the Coromandel Peninsula and found a place to stay on Buffalo Beach, Whitianga, with the most wonderful views of the bay. By the time we'd settled-in it was too late to do much more than walk around the town, very pleasant, and go for dinner at an Italian place around the corner, also very pleasant.

Friday, 20th October. From Whitianga to Auckland, spending some time at Hot Water Beach. This is a nice enough beach in its own right, but it also has hot springs that bubble up under the sand at low-tide. People dig baths in the sand and bask in the hot water, which is sometimes much too hot. We didn't do this, but we did stand up to our knees in the sea and wriggle our feet down into the hot sand, the very hot sand in fact, a few seconds was enough at any one time. From Hot Water Beach back to Auckland by the western coastal road, just too pretty to describe.

So, a terrific trip, with some longish drives over some highly interesting roads.

Now for the pictures, not in chronological order I'm afraid, Blogger has its own ideas about where things should go. (1) Rosemary digging for hot water at Hot Water Beach; (2) Anne with her feet in hot sand at Hot Water Beach; (3) Rosemary at Rotorua; (4) Sheila, Anne and Rosemary at Rotorua; (5) Rosemary and Anne at Wai-o-Tapu; (6) The old spa museum at Rotorua; (7) The Artist's Palette hot lake at Wai-o-Tapu.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

We collected Sheila and Rosemary from Auckland airport on Wednesday early evening and brought them here to Mission Bay for dinner and an early night; relatively early that is, they were still operating on Sydney time. Since then we've all been having a fairly restful time, recovering from our travels and wandering about locally around Mission Bay and St Heliers. The weather is improving all the time, the southerly wind has dropped in strength and it is getting much warmer. In Sydney we experienced what the locals call a 'southerly buster', a wicked wind that dropped the temperature from 30-degrees to 18-degrees between lunch time and tea time. Down here, of course, southerly winds are bad news, they blow straight from the south pole (or that's what it feels like). Sheila and Rosemary have both been cooking, which has improved to quality of our eating beyond measure.

Today, Saturday 14th October, we all took the bus into Auckland centre and spent some time looking around the shops in Queen Street (the main drag). After that we went for lunch at a restaurant in the Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. From here, the views over the harbour are tremendous and the food was good, too. The launching pad for the Sky Jump is on the same level as the restaurant and we were able to watch several apprehensive candidates for this experience throw themselves off of the tower, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The drop is something like 200-meters I think, and the descent is controlled by a fan, but the victims are held for a minute or so in front of a observation gallery on the floor below the launch pad, to dangle about while friends and family take pictures.

In the afternoon we took the ferry over to Devonport and rambled about the little streets doing nothing in particular, but fun for all that. Then back on the ferry and by bus to Mission Bay. This evening, Anne has been making booking on the Internet for our little tour of the central North Island, which will now begin on Monday.

The pictures show (1) a jumper about to take the plunge from the Sky Tower; (2) all of us on the boat to Devonport (I'm reflected in the window); and (3) at lunch in the Sky Tower restaurant.

FINAL SYDNEY BLOG.
Here are some more pictures, taken in Sydney and at the Blue Mountains. (1) Flying foxes hanging asleep in the trees at the botanical gardens; (2) Gwyneth, Robert and me, taken at Katoomba Park; (3) Gwyneth, Anne and Robert, also taken at Katoomba Park; and (4) Rosemary, Sheila and me, taken at Darling Harbour (I think!).

THE SYDNEY BLOG. We flew out of Auckland on Tuesday, 3rd October and arrived at Sydney three hours later, crossing three time zones on the way. I'd always talked about flying up to Sydney, but in fact it is pretty much due west of Auckland, about 1800 km due west (Anne says it was only two time-zones, plus an hour's difference for daylight saving, in force in NZ but not yet in New South Wales). We stopped at the Sir Stamford Hotel at Circular Quay, which is a decent sort of place in Macquarie Street and very convenient for most of the city-centre sights. Circular Quay is where the harbour ferries arrive and depart and is part of Sydney Cove. The opera house is sited on one little headland of the cove and the harbour bridge springs off of the headland opposite, from an area of very early English settlement called The Rocks. It seems that in days gone by The Rocks was another Hell-hole of the Pacific along the lines of Russell (see below) but redoubled in spades.

On the Thursday evening we went to see Handel's Julius Caesar at the opera house. After a shaky start things came together well and the performance was very enjoyable. Castratos are a bit thin on the ground nowadays, so the lead was sung by a counter-tenor, well enough, but on balance I'd have preferred a mezzo. The acoustics of the opera house are good, but the interior of the place is disappointing, pure 80s provincial performing arts centre in style. The opera house is due for an overhaul that should bring the interior into line with what the original designer of the place intended. This can't happen soon enough.

The week that we spent in Sydney was just about long enough to do the things that we wanted to do. On one hot day we took the ferry to Manly, which is a pretty little town with beaches on the harbour side and on the ocean side (the town is on an isthmus). The beaches on the harbour side are family-orientated and the ones on the ocean side are where the big breakers roll in from the Pacific and where the surfers go. We did a couple of very pleasant short walks here. As for museums, well, probably the best of them is the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This has a good collection of recent Aboriginal art, together with works from Europe (16th to 20th Century) and Australia (18th to 20th Century). A couple of good painting by Stanley Spencer too, including Christ at Cookham and a view of fields near Cookham, looking from what appears to be Strand Castle, towards Maidenhead. We dug these same fields for gravel not so long ago, I think. Also in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, some good Chinese and Korean ceramics. The Australian Museum has a good natural history collection, but it's a very run-down place that desperately need some money spending on it. The Nautical Museum had some exhibits of interest, including a full-scale replica of Cook's ship, the Endeavour; tiny and solid, it looks as if it would sail like a haystack. The botanic gardens, just round the corner from the opera house, are a fine introduction to Australian and Pacific flora and are not to be missed, especially the hot houses. In a large tree a colony of flying foxes are roosting, hanging upside down from the branches and sometimes squabbling over their places.

On Friday, Anne's cousin Robert and his wife, Gwyneth flew up from Tasmania for the week-end. We met them for dinner on Friday evening at a well-known fish restaurant at Darling Harbour, not far from their hotel. Food excellent and the (Tasmanian) white wine even better. It's good to see old friends again, they were at our wedding in nineteen-hundred-and-frozen-to-death (1968, to be precise) and even though we've seen them since then it was still good to ramble on about old times. Note to myself: send R&G copies of the wedding photos. I amazed myself by remembering what Gwyneth was wearing at our wedding; a willowy blond in a green corduroy dress, hey ho. On the Saturday, Gwyneth and Robert hired a car and took us up to Katoomba Park in the Blue Mountains, where we took a cable-car across a gorge with waterfalls and on to a little walk to a viewpoint overlooking a spectacular wooded valley, all beautiful, with a blue haze (said to be finely-dispersed oil from the eucalyptus trees) over everything. Oh, and on the way to Katoomba we passed through Penrith, home to the famous lakes. Had the old firm won the first prize on Busman's Holiday we would have gone here fifteen years ago, the lakes are water-filled gravel pits, now landscaped and made into Olympic standard rowing trenches. Never mind, we eventually made it under our own steam. On Saturday evening we had dinner at a restaurant on Sydney Cove, near to the opera house, and said goodbye to Robert and Gwyneth, who were flying-out on the next day.

On Sunday we met Sheila and Rosemary, who had just arrived from Brisbane, for dinner at Circular Quay, and had a jolly time. The next day we bumped into them on the Quay and we did a tour of the fish-market, very impressive. After that we split up and Anne and I took a tour of the Maritime Museum. In the evening we met again for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Paddington, near to their hotel. It was BYO, so we stocked-up with a couple of bottles of magic grape-juice before we went in. Food and wine very good, not to mention, also very cheap. Made arrangements with Sheila and Rosemary to collect them from the airport at Auckland on Wednesday, they'll be stopping with us at Mission Control for a couple of weeks, which will include a tour of the central North Island (the boiling-mud places, for example). We flew out of Sydney on Tuesday and had an uneventful trip back to Mission Bay, suffering a little from the three-hour time-shift again.

Now for the pictures, from top. (1) Standard picture of the opera house and part of the bridge; (2) Anne, with a couple of nuts (Dorman-Long's finest, these help to anchor the bridge to the sandstone bed-rock); (3) Nick and Anne in the gardens of the governor's house; and (4) Sheila at the fish-market. Anne has the decent pictures of Robert and Gwyneth, so I'll post a couple of these here, later.

Monday, 2nd October. Gosh, what a day! We've been confined to the house because of the weather, we are having torrential downpours with the odd bit of thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. So, perhaps not a bad time to do a little more blog-writing. Just now, during a short break in the rain I took a walk along the sea front, which I expected to find deserted, but no, the kids from Auckland (mainly East Asian) were there, on the beach, taking pictures of each other under umbrellas.

We are flying out of Auckland to Sydney tomorrow, for a week-long visit. While we're there we'll be meeting Anne's cousin Robert and his wife, who are flying up from Tasmania for a couple of days, going to the opera (Julius Caesar, by Handel) and also meeting my sister-in-law Sheila and her friend Rosemary, who will be coming back to stop with us at Mission Bay.

That's about it for now, but Anne says that every blog should have a picture, so the one at the top is one I took a couple of days ago during a visit to a Gannet colony at Muriwai, in the Waitakere Ranges.

Yesterday, Sunday, 1st October, was our Rangitoto day. We caught the nine-thirty ferry from Auckland and arrived on the island at about ten. From the jetty we walked west for a few hundred metres to have a look at the historic baches, chalet-style holiday homes built in the 20s and 30s (some of these are being preserved as little monuments to an older way of life). Then we walked back to the jetty and took the well-used footpath to the summit, a walk that took about an hour and that took us from sea-level to an elevation of about 260-metres. From the highest part of the rim of the crater (pay attention, you should know this by now, Rangitoto is a volcano) there are good views of Auckland, Devonport, the bridge, the harbour and the islands, not to mention Mission Bay. From the summit we walked east, towards the wharf at Islington Bay. Up to this point the weather had been fair, but from the slipway at Yankee Wharf back to the jetty used by the ferry it rained, quite hard at times. The first half of this part of the walk was also hard going, very rough underfoot and pushing through wet foliage too, so we were quite relieved to arrive back at the jetty, a bit tired and soaking wet to boot. Total distance walked, 13.2 km, nothing really, but over some rough ground. I kept a GPS track of the walk and plotted it on a 1:50,000 map, see the picture. Our track is the red line with the arrows showing the direction of travel. When we arrived back in Auckland the heavens opened, with thunder and lightning as well. According to the radio this morning there has been flooding and landslips in the Auckland region overnight, worse in the western parts. Anyway, the truth of it is that despite everything, including Anne falling over and cutting her knee on a lump of lava, we both enjoyed Rangitoto immensely.