Blast from the pasts and scanned memories

When I went up North to Mangonui I took a scanner with me to pick up some family photos from my mum.
In 1987 my daughter and her mum went to England as part of a prize from a competition Sue had won. The trip coincided with Madeline's grandma and grandpa visiting family in Liverpool. Maddy was 6 years old and had a surprise party given to her.
Once she had consumed all the goodies she went into hyper-state and hurtled around the semi-detached back yard like a antipodean Alice in Wonderland. Being the only little person amongst doting grandparents and aunts and uncles the excitement was almost too much. The final part of the Alice in Wonderland bit was when she caught a train to Mousehole in Cornwall saying farewell to her grandparents.








We then flicked back another generation to find a photo of myself at the age of twenty attending a show put on by the Tokoroa Operatic Society - The Belle of New York. It shows we were all young once. And then finally a picture of my mother having lunch in Kensington Gardens London with my older brother (who still is older somehow).
"Fill my cup what boots it to repeat,
How time is slipping beneath our feet,
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,
Why fret about them,
If today be sweet."

Heading North to the top of the Country

From one end of the country to the other - had to pop up North to Mangonui to deliver a piece of glass from out of an old kiln for my mum's garden! The glass is retrieved from the bottom of a decommissioned industrial glass kiln and is rare because it only comes out at the end of the life of a kiln. Makes a great garden ornament.

Mangonui is at the very top of New Zealand's North Island approx 4 1/2 hours drive North of Auckland. Maori named it Mangonui after a chief discovered the harbour hidden within a bay (Doubtless Bay) when he was led there by a giant shark. (Mango - Shark; Nui - big!) It is a fishing village guarded by two large hills at either side of its entrance - which 200 years ago were fortified pa's or Maori villages. The local tribe is called Ngati Kahu.
Mangonui is famous in New Zealand because of its Fish and Chip shop out over the water. It is, apart from being one of the earliest Maori settlements, one of the first areas settled by Europeans and as such as some lovely old colonial architecture.
My kids both attended the local school in the 80's and 90's and my daughter had her first job in the local grocery store - also on stilts out over the water. June is mid winter in NZ and the weather in Northland is never really cold (unlike Southland) but it sure gets stormy. So the photo of the wharf is on a dark and stormy day. In the summer it can get nicely hot and dry and as such its a great vacation area. During the winter the place gets very quiet with just the locals keeping the place ticking over.

Queenstown 2008

Wow went down to Queenstown for a couple of days. Queenstown is 2000 feet above sea level with a lake Wakatipu which is another 1000 feet deep. So even though this lake is in the mountains the lake bed is below sea level! The mountain range is called the Remarkables and the only thing you can say is that they are!
The weather was cold but fine and the clarity of the air was unbelievable. Right at the back of town is a gondala that shoots you up a near vertical mountain to give you the view above.
Rented a car for 24 hours and drove up into the mountains. Came across an amazing vineyard/Winery in the Hills - Peregrine Wines. They have built the winery under a huge wing roof with a very modernistic structure while also maintaining a very traditional Southland landscape with the old farm buildings
While we were blown away by the setting we also hugely enjoyed the wine tasting!
Went on to Cromwell a little town famous for its apricots. The Old Town was deliberately flooded in 1993 in order to create a hydro lake (Lake Dunstan). Some of the old buildings were moved to lake edge while others are partially demolished or half buried in shingle by the lake edge. Everywhere you look are mountains and water its a totally different land than the North Island of NZ.

We stopped off at the Kawerau Bridge on the way back to Queenstown to check out the bungy jumping into the gorge. We missed our opportunity but hope to get back there after the winter and explore more. Finally went back to Lake Wakatipu and looked out across the Lord of the Rings country and felt like ineffective hobbits against the range of serried mountains. Next summer we are back with hiking boots!