Celebrating the Past

A Reunion for 1976

Last weekend Margaret and I travelled to Northland to attend a reunion of the 1976 intake of students at Bay of Islands College in Kawakawa, where we were both teachers.

On the way up we stopped for a walk and rest at Rangiriri, close to a large roadworks project straightening State Highway 1.

This is the view looking east from the school gateway.

When we got to Paihia, we stayed in a cottage at Te Haumi, the beach immediately before Paihia town.

This the view looking up the harbour towards Opua and the wharf and marinas. When I lived there a group of us built a boat ramp at the other end of this beach, to ease the pressure on the ramp at Waitangi. Our old concrete slab is still there. I don't know how much use it gets now, but it certainly improved our popularity with the locals in those days.

This is the view at the northern end of the beach one afternoon, complete with doggy-doos bin! We are looking across the Bay to the area between Opua and Russell.

We spent a morning in Kawakawa sitting in the Trainspotter cafe watching the train run down the middle of the State Highway, and then visiting the Grass Hut shop, where we bought a calendar of prints by Hundertwasser. The shop is owned and run by one of our former pupils.

The reunion itself was fun: the students are now in their mid-fifties. We were also able to re-acquaint ourselves with the school buildings, and with the ten or so fellow-teachers who are still young enough to turn up.

On the way home, we had a stop at Orewa.

This was an older shop on the main road along the beachfront, towards the Auckland end.

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This Friday the U3A Sketching Group met at the Te Rewa Rewa Bridge to try our hands at getting it on paper. It proved to be a real exercise in perspective because of its curvaceous design!

So I walked down the walkway a little way to get a more side-on view and eliminate the perspective problems.

Saturday we took the grandchildren to the Multi-ethnic day at the racecourse. Some of the time we sat in the grandstand and watched the dancers performing on the stage. I did a quick, rough sketch of the scene: