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.