Whew!

Now that the election is over, and we can leave the politicians to get on with their part of the job, I can get back to communicating with you in the world of cyberspace.

The highlight of the process for us was the organisation needed to run an art auction. Margaret was leading a fund-raising team, as part of the campaign committee, and the auction (and dinner) was one of their activities.

We ended up with a very attractive painting by our friend Brenda Fawkner of the donkeys at Santorini, which we bid for successfully. The fund-raising as a whole raised over $10,000 for the election campaign under Margaret's enthusiastic and careful leadership.

So I got involved in helping them and that was fun as well as some effort.

....

As I type this I am listening to what is my favourite CD: Dick Hyman/Ralph Sutton. A performance of jazz piano standards by these two highly accomplished players. I first heard them on National Radio many years ago, enquired who they were and bought the record. Every so often I put it on the sound system and enjoy it again.

Best of all the tracks is their version of The world is waiting for the sunrise, which I heard that life-changing afternoon on the car radio.

Talking of music, we went to a performance by the Ars Nova Choir, New Plymouth's best choral group during the Arts Festival here a couple of weeks ago. They were accompanied by a small orchestra and conducted by the Community Music Director, Christopher Luke. We have several friends in the choir.

The performance was at lunchtime in a tent erected in the centre of town for the festival - seating around 250 people. The programme was modern arrangements of Gospel standards (spirituals) climaxed with When the Saints go Marching In.

....

Now back to the theme I was on before the busyness of this year caught up with me: our South Island tour.

A sketch or two

Arrow Junction, 

a couple of kilometers from Arrowtown, is where Terry and Karen have their 1880s stone cottage, where we stayed while on a recent South Island tour:

This sketch of the cottage was done from a photo after we got home.

A few days later, from life, is this of the spot in Brooklands Park where we were married 40 years ago last Wednesday:

In our neighbourhood, just round the corner really, is this historic puriri tree:

And not too much further away towards the sea is this street, where Margaret lived when her family first moved in to town from working on farms. The bridge crosses the 1907 rail diversion which was built to avoid the level crossing of the main street on which several fatal accidents had occurred.

One sunny afternoon I sat in the back yard and sketched our macrocarpa bench and its surroundings:

And while we were in Auckland Margaret and her sister went shopping one afternoon, so I produced this still life, in charcoal pencil and ordinary pencil:

One recent Sketching Group meeting was held in the Art Cafe at Toptown. Here is the view across Gill Street:

A Tour in the South, Part 2

Roads

Across Lake Brunner you can see the fault running along the base of the hills. This photo is taken from the train slowing down into Moana, and shows that southern roads are not all uniformly smooth seal.

Moana is a holiday village with a heritage railway station and other structures looked after by Heritage New Zealand.

There is a plentiful supply of road-building materials in the south, so most of the main roads are in great condition, as this shot of the Lindis Pass shows.

As you get nearer to Christchurch, the proportion of motorhomes falls and the number of heavy transport vehicles increases, so the state of the road gets rougher.

A lot of work has been done in Christchurch itself to restore the actual road surfaces, but locals are still confused by daily changes to the opening and closing of streets in the central city.

Entering the square from the south

A block west of the square..

At Wanaka we stopped off at the Warbirds and Wheels Museum:

My father had an even older one of these when I was about seven years old! We were able to travel 50k each month on the one gallon of petrol we were allowed under the wartime rationing system. You started it by swinging the crankhandle in the front. When my Dad bought it, second-hand, it cost him $10.

Near the Austin 7 is a car such as the President of the USA, Roosevelt, might have used - Teddy, in 1910, not Franklin, 1940. The chauffeur had to get wet! And guess who changed the tyre when they had a puncture? I can remember holdups like that in the Austin.

This is the suspension bridge across the river at Ophir, one of the historic goldmining villages we visited.

An even older bridge sits beside the highway on the Pig Route between Palmerston and Ranfurly.

Look carefully and you will see the abutments and arch stones are mortared, but the schist rocks that form the superstructure are not secured at all. All care and no responsibility when you are transporting gold!

A Tour in the South, Part 1

Mountains

This is Mt Cook on Easter Monday from the Hermitage. We reached Twizel that day from Arrowtown, and because the weather was clear we went on to see the Hermitage area. You have to take your opportunities in both hands in mountain country; we know from the numbers who visit us here in Taranaki and leave without a glimpse of our mountain!

The Southern Alps are quite different from the volcanic Taranaki though. I had read about the way the Pacific Plate pushes up over the Australian Plate and forms the Alps, just like the Swiss Alps or the Himalayas. But I was not ready for the new details we learnt from the Tranzalpine commentary when we took the train trip from Christchurch to Greymouth and back.

Such as that the Southern Alps are the fastest growing mountains anywhere. And that if they were not weathering at a very fast rate they would be several times the height of Everest.

At one point on the railway line just south of Lake Brunner, between Otira and Greymouth, the train is travelling along the fault at the base of the mountains. An earthquake like the Kaikoura one at that point could shoot most of Westland into the Tasman Sea!

Fortunately the weather was good for most of our trip, and we had views of snow-tipped or bare mountains from the plane on the way down,

from the Canterbury Plains

from the road to Glenorchy,

and from Wanaka:

Today's Sketching Group U3A

This morning we met at the Bach restaurant at the lee breakwater.

First I sketched the view from our window:

Then I went outside to join others:

The opposite direction was interesting too:

The wind was getting up so I looked for a more sheltered spot and found three other sketchers busy:
Ailsa, Erin and Tui:

Then I tried a more detailed study of my surroundings:

All this in a little over an hour. What do you think?

Good weather at last

Waitangi Weekend

provided great weather, with fine, clear days, and very little breeze. We had a family get-together, with relatives from Auckland joining us.

Saturday we went to the fair at the Tupare Gardens. This reserve is excellently maintained by the Taranaki Regional Council.

Morning Tea stop was at the tennis court, where several stalls had been erected.

Further down the hill, a Swiss Band was entertaining the visitors with Swiss and Bavarian music: two guitars and two accordions, helped along by tuba, trombone, and for one item an alpenhorn.

Sunday we all gathered at the Seaside Market at Ngamotu Beach and I managed to catch a few of the individuals enjoying the sunshine or watching the kids playing on the playground equipment or driving the dodgem vehicles.

    

Our Western Neighbours

Our suburb of Welbourn stretches south along the eastern side of State Highway 3 from the Boys High School, and includes localities on the western side as well to the site of Highlands Intermediate School.

On the west of the highway for most of its length is the New Plymouth Racecourse and Pukekura Park.

Further west again is the suburb of Brooklands, named after the farm in the area which was owned by the King family in the nineteenth century. The homestead area of the farm is now Brooklands Park. The house was burnt down many years ago and only the chimney survives.

Here is my sketch of the site drawn from a park bench at about the spot where forty years ago Margaret and I were married, on a beautiful May morning. Behind the chimney one could almost see the Brooklands Bowl over the brow of the hill.

Both the King boys grew up in this house. Newton founded the stock and station agency which bore his name, and Truby was the founder of the Plunket Society.

In Coronation Avenue just south of here is this impressively maintained house where one of our friends was brought up.

One day last week, grandson Spencer asked me to teach him to sketch by drawing the house across the street. Here is the result: