Friday, July 10, 2009

Swapping Ski Jackets & Polyprops for Sarongs & Flip-flops


Yes, it's that time!!

Time to swap the Southern Hemisphere for the Northern, Winter for Summer, and happily my Ski Jacket & Thermals for a Sarong and Flip-flops.

Travel is upon me once again - this time in the form of a well deserved(?) holiday.

Shortly I shall be boarding a plane from Christchurch to Auckland, from Auckland to Brunei, and finally from Brunei to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo.

The plans are sketchy, and the people I'm travelling with even more so, but we'll muddle through in the end.

There's talk of trekking, rafting, road trips to old Raleigh sites, jungle visits, bridge crossings (MY BRIDGE!!!) the big wedding of course, and maybe, if we're lucky, the odd roti bread or two.

Stay tuned for Bornean escapades, and be good y'hear?!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Midnight Rocks


There's a quirk of our paticular position here in Punakaiki, which means that when there is a full moon, high tide is always at 12 noon, and 12 midnight.

Seeing as the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes are best at high tide, it is this synchoronising of nature which gives this remarkable show every 27.3 days.

I only learnt of this the other day, and so at my first opportunity, last night, I took to the track with my tripod and camera to see what would happen.

WOW.

It really was spectacular. The sea was pretty stormy, so the blowholes were pumping, the surge pool was a frenzy of white tipped crashing waves, and the whole place was mine all mine.

With 30 second shutter speeds, I was bemused to find that my camera picked up enough light to make the pictures appear like full daylight. I was a little saddened in some way, I was hoping for moody moonlit shots, but I ended up with long exposure shots with stormy milky seas and almost normal looking photos. Very strange.

Make your own mind up!





Saturday, July 04, 2009

Home Grown

The Patch

I have made an important step forward in life in the cabin today.

My veggie patch & herb garden hath begun!

With a bundle of cauliflowers, broccoli, lettuce, carrots, pak choi going into my veggie patch, I should be able to nosh away happily on my home grown veggies in a couple of months time, and flavour them with the oregano, thyme, sage, coriander, rosemary and parsley that I also popped in today.

We shall see whether anything survives!

The Garden

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Feeling Coasty


I was being ribbed a little by those who shall rename nameless in Christchurch, about how I was becoming more of a "coaster" since I have been over here in Punakaiki.

"Coaster" is a term the east coasters tend to use for those of us stuck out here in the wilds of the west coast, normally from an agricultural / mining line of work (and a fair degree of conservation workers now too). Often coasters tend to live a little more remotely, not craft their wordplay too much, dress functionally not fashionably, have a strong sense of community (and thus shun the outsiders a little) and are notoriously bad with the likes of customer service.

I wouldn't say all of these are true of all coasters, but certainly there is plenty of this stereotype of people around. I should also throw in arts & crafts as a bountiful industry over here, for it is the home of jade carving, and there are several very good photographers on the coast, plenty of glass working and all variety of painting and sculpting too.

I'm not ashamed to be becoming more 'Coasty' to be honest. Trying to avoid using 'salt of the earth' as a phrase, but people over here are largely honest, live their lives more connected to the land (some a little too connected as they pull a lot of things out of it for my liking, but hey, I guess we need some of these things they mine), and frankly I get to live in a stunning part of the world.

I was chatting with a guy I met through James (who I work with) the other day, about social & cultural history of the west coast, and it dawned on me that this is probably one of the last areas in the 'civilised world' to have become habitated... Maori would have at the earliest been here in about 1300AD, and they weren't too keen on the harsher elements from what I understand. Yes, they would have foraged and collected Ponamu on the coast, but there would have been little in the way of settlements until the Europeans came here with their agricultural, mining & milling intentions back in the mid to late 1800's.

I like it here, I feel comfortable here, I live a simple life devoid of pressure to buy material things for the sake of it.

"Coasty" is good for me right now.

Power To The People!!


Learnings from New Zealand;

1) If you don't register with the electricity company when you move into a new house, they cut off your power.

2) Calling at 7pm, and hoping for them to flick a switch and reconnect you isn't actually possible. They have to send out an engineer, this costs lots and can take up to 6hrs.

3) I am using 100% GREEN power finally! HURRAH! (I've only just discovered this at this moment). TrustPower, who provide my energy, work exclusively in Wind and Hyrdo power. Now I just have to keep my energy consumption down to save money, not carbon emissions!

Monday, June 29, 2009

White Out


I think I've seen enough snow to last me, well... a winter at least.

This weekend, I teamed up with Em & El (not my El, another El..) and some of their buddies from work, and headed out to Mt Hutt for a skiing extravanganza!

It was awesome to get back out on those slopes and have a bash down the runs of varying steepnesses. I had almost forgotten how much I love skiing. I'm not claiming to be any good, but I do love standing at the top of a mountain looking down over the white rivers that wind their way down the slopes below.

Mt Hutt is probably Christchurch's closest, best serviced ski field, and I thought for a $87 lift pass, not too bad value. Of course if you get a season pass or a discount card it is cheaper, but I didn't so I paid full whack and even despite it being early in the season and only half the slopes open, I still really enjoyed myself.

I skied most of the day with Em & El as we're all about the same level, and we had a grand old time flying down those slopes, riding back up on the 4 seater chair lift, and then flying down the slopes again!! Somehow none of us took a tumble, I think I was just about the closest when I caught an unexpected small rock half buried in the snow. Oh and nearly wiped out a girl who took a very wide arc unexpectedly close as I was flying along. Fun fun.

The day was awesome, and was balanced out to a nice grey with a trip to AMI stadium in the evening to watch the All Blacks play Italy. Of course the boys knocked the Italians off with a fairly comfortable score in the end, but it wasn't the prettiest rugby I've ever watched.

Monday brought around a more leisurely drive back through Arthurs Pass to get back home to the west coast. I got a call from James (our new CVNZ project fella who I work in Punakaiki with) who warned me to pick up some chains as there were weather warnings in force for the road through the Pass. Glad he saved me the hassle of turning around and going back for them, as they were essential!

I've never had to fit or drive in chains before, but it's pretty simple really. I was a little worried about steering as my van is rear wheel drive, and thus the wheels with grip were not the ones which steer the vehicle, but I didn't really have any issues whilst pottering along at 30-40 km/h most of the way from Springfield to Cragieburn.

The views in this snowy world ranged from awesome snow covered mountain ranges to virtual white-out conditions at times, so I pottered slowly but surely west, and eventually made it to the end of the snow/ice-laden road conditions, whipped off the chains and carried on.

When I did finally arrive on the west coast, I realised it had taken me the best part of 6 hours actual driving to make it across what normally takes only 4... so am now pretty tired and ready to sleep for a day. Though I can't - work beckons tomorrow!

Still, it has been a fun-filled, snow-laden, wonderous winter week or so I have had.

I love snow.

Facebook Pics Link

Sunday, June 28, 2009

A Golden Winter Wonderland

Once again it was time to leave the actual coast and venture up into the hills for work. It was time to visit the ghost town gold mining town of Waiuta. The temperature has plummeted since the last time I was in Waiuta, and all those pictures of kids frolicking in snow that seemed so ridiculous now seemed somewhat plausible.

At the bottom of the gravel road into town, we found thick coverings of frost that looked like they had built up over the past week or so – it looked so much like snow I had to jump out and check. The frost was beautiful though, with nature creating tiny formations of ice on leaves, sticks, grass, and so inevitably I began the photography rampage. It takes a little inspiration to get my camera out at the moment, I guess I’m now comfortable in my niche out here on the west coast – I have visited most sites I work in 3 or 4 times at least, and so it takes something different to make me want to photograph the same areas once again.

The frosty winter-y scenes that greeted us in Waiuta brought that change that excited me. With frost and ice on the ground and in the trees, a whole new angle of the old town suddenly appeared. The remnant machinery became interesting again, and whilst we haven’t been greeted by the same stunning sunrises and sunsets as in past visits, the winter sun has been much kinder for photographing close up and abstract elements of both man made objects and mother nature’s finest. I hope you enjoy the resulting photos.

Link to Facebook Album.

And so it is that I find myself on a Thursday afternoon, with time on my hands as we finished up the historic restoration works in record time; 2 fairly major sites that had been inundated by blackberry, gorse and other nasties, now opened up for the public. I just hope that our work shall be followed up and maintained.

Tomorrow we shall be heading through Lewis Pass back to Christchurch to drop off our two volunteers – Dave & Jun – who will go their separate ways. I shall be driving straight past Hanmer Springs and not able to pop in for a soak sadly, a tight time line with flights denotes this.

But, the weekend has promise in store already. It shall be nice to catch up with the gals whilst I’m there, and we have a few plans; Friday brings a night at the movies to laugh at another American remake of classic cartoons – Transformers 2. Some say the first version was pretty trashy, but d’ya know what? I quite liked it, not because it was a masterful remake, but it had a bit of action, some decent special effects, and of course – Optimus Prime. Awesome.

We’re then trying to work out how the rest of the weekend will pan out, but essentially we’re looking at skiing Mount Hutt either Saturday or Sunday. My first time out on the kiwi slopes, and I’m very excited. I haven’t skied in about 3 years now, but I managed to pick up boots, pants, jacket, goggles & gloves all pretty cheaply in the pre-season sales, so I’m raring to go!

It shall be quite the weekend of firsts as I also have tickets to an All Blacks rugby game in Christchurch. They’re playing a test against the Italians, and off the back of a hard fought victory against the French, this could be quite a good one to watch. I think I’ll just stay in my ski gear for this one – it could be cold out in the evening if Waiuta is anything to go by. So all in all, I’m trying to make the most of a little of the winter before I have a break from it. In only 2 weeks I shall be boarding a plane in Christchurch. Christchurch to Auckland… Auckland to Brunei… Brunei to Kota Kinabalu!

Yes! It’s time for the adventures in Borneo to begin once more!! This time I’m limited to 2 weeks of fun & games with my ol’ buddy ol’ pal Chris, the legend that is Hannah, and the terribly bad influences of Yo and Noodle, let alone “Danger” Robinson. Raleigh reunites back in Borneo, with our plans centring around the wedding of Mia and Will (or Noodle and Danger as they’re known to some) in the capital.

Final plans are being fleshed out still, but an Adventure Phase (pre-wedding rafting, trekking or diving) shall be followed by a Community Phase (wedding frivolities, possible reception in kampung-style with dancing, rice wine, and generally silliness), and then finished off with our very own Environmental Phase (post-wedding road trip taking in the seminally important Batu Puteh site as well as a trip back into Danum Valley conservation area to see my bridge and walk across it… so excited!). I expect we shall avoid the ‘greasy dregs’, the ‘bone curry’, and the luncheon meat – possibly upgrading our diet to Roti, Laksa & Mee goreng mamak. I’m excited to see each and every one of these folks, individually and as a group. I can’t think of a better group of people to be seeing in 2 weeks – of course there are a few faces missing from the crowd – but we shall be thinking of them and shall recount our adventures to them at a later date.

Until I reach Borneo’s tropical climbs, I shall keep the coal fire burning, don my beanie & gloves in the morning, and warm my tootsies by the radiator, to stave off the NZ winter freeze. Be good & be happy people, and keep life interesting.