Waitakere

Today we visit the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, west of Auckland. This is a regional park of more than 17,000 hectares with much native forest and rugged coastline. This land is called Wao-nui-a-Tiriwa (The Great Forest of Tiriwa) by local Maori. Annual rainfall is more than two metres. Although much of the forest has been destroyed in the past, there are still some nice remnants of the original dense rainforest with large specimen of kauri Agathis australis, rimu Dacrydium cupressinum and kahikatea Dacrycarpus dacrydioides.

Although the first efforst to protect parts of the area date back to 1894, it was not until 1941 when the Auckland Centennial Memorial Park was established, commemorating Auckland’s first 100 years. This covered only 3000 hectares. This area now forms the core of the regional park.

We start our visit at the iconic Arataki Visitor Centre, to acquire some more information on the region. This is a most beautiful Visitor Centre, that gives great views of the southern part of the park.

Then we head for the beach at Karekare. This beach has become quite famous because parts of the movie ‘The Piano’ by Jane Campion are filmed here.

Next we do the Auckland City Walk in the Cascade area at the end of Falls Road, along a good grove of Kauri.

(Much more information on the kauri at conifers.org).

Finally we visited the gannetry at Muriwai. Gannets Morus serrator are large seabirds. Breeding on the mainland is quite rare. But here at Muriwai they do. It means that you can have beautiful views of the gannets (and their chicks) from the viewing platforms, just above the nesting spots.

(photo by Kees Aalbers)

more pictures in our Dutch blog.

Gerben and Kees have arrived!

Wilma and I arrived in Auckland on Monday 16 jan., after two days at Miranda Shorebird Centre!
Read my update of the en-wiki on the centre!

The morning of Tuesday the 17th Wilma and I visited Auckland Domain. We saw the “Wintergarden”(glasshouses).

Here the baskets with Fuchsia (e.g. Fuchsia ‘Golden Anniversary’) are in full flower.

At the nursery we meet Colin Bradshaw. We have met him a couple of years ago and he still works there.

Gerben en Kees arrive according to plan:
Tuesday 17 January 2012 – 12:50 at Auckland International Airport.

After picking up Gerben and Kees we climb Mount Eden.
Unfortunately the weather is rather bad at their first day in New Zealand.

After Mt Eden we go to the hotel. We stay at Kiwi International Hotel.
Address: 411 Queen Street, Central Business District, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand. Tel. +6493796487
It has no kitchen (like a youth hostel), so we’ll have breakfast at the bar, and dinner in town.

In the afternoon we do the (traditional) visit to Devonport and we climb Mount Victoria to overlook the Harbour and enjoy the view of Auckland in the distance. Dark clouds are moving in our direction.

The cloudy weather creates interesting opportunities for taking photos. For instance at the Devonport pier.

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(for some additional information and images: see our wv/db-blog (in Dutch).)

Farewell to the South Island

Very early this morning we boarded Arahura, one of the vessels of the InterIslander ferry. We sailed through Queen Charlotte Sound. We saw the sun rise.

We crossed Cook Strait and we arrived in Wellington. In Wellington we visited Otari – Wilton’s Bush.

Tomorrow we’re heading north.

Ahuriri Valley

The Ahuriri Valley. A picture tells more than a thousand words…..

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Pehiri Road

After three working days it was time to do something else. Last week we went up the Ruakituri road and now we tried another one in the surroundings, the Pehiri road. On this cloudy day we drove the Tiniroto Road to the north and before Waerenga-O-Kuri we went to the left. After one minute a car came from the other side. The next hour we didn’t see any! There are several stations along the way and you could see the difference on the land. Some farmers did clear the land properly, read: all trees were gone, only paddocks for sheep and cattle left. But others farmers had left a lot of native trees and did some extensive farming. A special sight and behind every corner it was a kind of surprise what we should see next.

View on the hills along the Pehiri road

We crossed many small and large rivers (the Hangaroa river was one of them) and the road went on for more then 32 km, before we reached Tauhunga, another 15 to reach Rere on the Wharekopae road. The first and the last 10 km were sealed, in between was dirt road. After all those years in NZ I am still impressed by the distances some people have to drive to reach their home (or to reach a sealed road or a village to buy bread and milk).

A gum tree along the road was full in flower, but the flowers are very small

So we took the Wharekopae Road to the right and after 10 minutes we saw the trees of Eastwoodhill. We almost never come from this side and we were surprised by the good look we had on the Millenial Wood. So Dick tried his super panorama photo’s again and see below what became of it.

After our lunch we went in the arboretum, ofcourse to the pinetum.

Michoacan pine, with his elegant long drooping needles

There are so many beautiful pinetrees here. The pinetum is on a steep hillside and october 2010 there has been a slip and part of the pinetum and the brown track came down. The track is now changed for normal visitors. But we knew the old way and tried the rubbed track. Dick told me to see it as an adventure, but it felt more like a goat climbing along the hill.

Pinus engelmannii on a cloudy day

The arrival of the Queen of Sheba

Press the arrow on the left to start the show………

The eleventh of the eleventh of 2011! Not exactly at 11:11, but a bit earlier….
It was raining at Gisborne Airport. But the skylarks were singing.

A short delay, and there it comes. The metal bird from the sky.
I was there, and I felt a bit like the people that lived in this area at the moment of the arrival of the first Pakeha (the white people). They saw a big ship on the horizon, like they had never seen before. They thought it was a moving island, or a very large bird.

And out of the big bird that lands on the platform people show up, like they never saw before. They thought it were Gods. Well. There was one Goddess on board the ship.

And she arrived. Without any luggage. That had got lost somewhere on her trip around the world, and would turn up 3 days later……
But apart from that, she was fine, my Queen, my beloved Wilma.
O, how happy I was to see her again. And how happy was she, to see me again.
I’ve been here in New Zealand for quite some time now, and I really missed my sweetheart.

So I was waiting for Wilma, and the people of Gisborne were waiting for that rain. They needed some rain for the plants and the trees, and to fill up their water tanks.

In the afternoon, when my lady had been sleeping a bit, we went to the presentation of the Masterplan of Eastwoodhill, for the next 100 years. That is a very interesting plan, and I’ll tell more about it shortly.

Just a question and the answer

Who knows what this is…..

It is in the Oak Paddock. I think it should not have been taken out of its protection, by the way!

When the flowers have fallen of the seedpot changes to this:

And of course…. Karin knows the answer (see the comments below):
Lonicera involucrata var. ledebourii. We’ll inform you soon about the taxonomic ins and outs of this species.
In the catalogue I find: Lonicera involucrata (Richardson) Spreng. (cat. nr. 1991 294 #1565). It also gives the donor: Rosemoor! Quite interesting.
To be continued

An exciting Sunday morning

8 o’ clock. It’s a nice Sunday morning. I’m just having breakfast, meanwhile reading a Dutch newspaper (on the computer, of course) about Greece, about Berlusconi, about peace (or civil war) in Syria, and I’m listening to one of Händels Concerti Grossi. I look through the kitchen window to see a visitor arriving – a visitor from the sky, landing right beside the cottage.

The helicopter came to pick up Diane, to inspect some work they’re doing on a crop paddock and on removing scrub. I was invited to join the flight. So moments later I was flying above my breakfast.

We flew over Lake Kaikiore.

(click on the pictures to enlarge – click on the back-button of your browser afterwards)

And along the driveway.

In the distance we could see Tiniroto (the tavern).

Here we fly back over Lake Kaikiore again. You can see Lake Karangata in the distance on the left.

And then to Hangaroa River.

Back again to the Homestead.

And only minutes later the fast bird is gone again.

If you enlarge the pictures, you’ll find out that most of them are not really sharp. The heli is moving rapidly, and I didn’t ask to open the window! But they give a good impression of this short but very exciting adventure.

For more pictures:
see my Hackfalls-blog
and the blog of wv & db in nz (Dutch subtitles)

Mahia

Today I came down from Gisborne, and I first went to Mahia Peninsula. I wanted to see if Karen and Calvin still have their bach there (see this post of 2010).

Well. It looks like they still have it, but they were not there. So I left a message. The first message I dropped today.
Actuallly they don’t live at the peninsula, but on the small area that connects the peninsula to the mainland. It took me a little bit more than an hour to get from Gisborne to Mahia.
I took my time to enjoy the beautiful views on the road between Nuhaka and Opoutama.

This is one of the places I really love in NZ. Coming from Nuhaka the road dives under the railroad overbridge, and then the ocean lies in front of me. A beautiful beach, and some real steep rocks. In the distance is Mahia peninsula.
(this panorama made with Hugin software. That’s a very good program, open source of course. Rrecently they released a new version. You need a powerful computer for it).

And this is the view in the opposite direction. Mahia builds the northern edge of Hawke Bay. So here we overlook Hawke Bay in southwestern direction.
(Hawke Bay is the name for the body of water. The region is called Hawke’s Bay (Region). See: TeAra Encyclopedia of NZ)

I then drove “home” to Tiniroto, via Wairoa. That took me one and an half hour. So I did my driving today.
I dropped some shoppings at Sam & Damian’s place. They live at Noble Campbell Road, Tiniroto. Beautiful spot. Sam will cook a meal for the workers tomorrow. Sam and Damian weren’t home either. So that’s were I left my second note today.

Long live the Sallies

Yesterday I discovered that today the Salvation Army in Gisborne had its 125th anniversary. A big event. The National Youth Band of New Zealand was here to play – in the streets; and in the evening they gave an exciting concert in the corps building in Gladstone Road.