MC 242221 dated 21-03-1970

(Above): Once upon a time in 1970 a new union was formed and duly recorded by the Dept of Home Affairs. Today we are 44 years from that point, I thank and congratulate my partner for her tenacity, thick skin and faithfulness for such a ling time.

To mark the commemoration of our 44th anniversary, we made a simple pilgrimage in the form of a repeat trip which we undertook just over three years ago in 2011, to Wellington Waterfront and Central City. I would also make use of my Supergold pensioner’s card for the first time.

(Above): I simply flashed the train conductress my superannuation card and she issued me with this free pass. Cheap at the price, thank you.

(Above): We drove down to Waikanae station and parked outside in all-day free parking. No security guards, no shady characters, no loiterers, just parked cars. The station is spotless, and the lady in the ticket office most courteous and helpful. When we arrived, our train was standing waiting, and at precisely 9:30 we glided out of the station, headed for Wellington, about 70 kilometres to the south.

(Above): The train inside and out is in pristine condition, with the latest electronic next station indicators, current time and automatic voice information and safety announcements. The stations for the various lines a-la-underground-style shows our Kapiti line in olive green with stations in sequence: Waikanae, Paraparaumu, Paekakariki, Pukerua Bay, Plimmerton, Mana, Paremata, Porirua, Kenepuru, Linden, Tawa,, Redwood and then Wellington.

(Above): The scenery outside is varied, colourful and interesting. The moon even obliged and appeared in this one. Thank you, Mr Moon.

(Above): On the right-hand side (western), one can see State Highway 1 far below and the well-known Kapiti Island across the bay. 

(Above) After an hour on rail, through tunnels and over bridges and mountains, we approach the end of our southward journey. We plan to spend most of the day just lolling around the streets and take a look at the Botanical gardens above the city again.

(Above and below): Jeanette stops off at Shed No.5 and at the Info board at Queens Wharf for a photo.

(Above and below): I waited at Dockside in the waterfront and at Plimmer Steps in Lambton Quay. Guy with top-hat and tails, with the hound is John Plimmer, English settler and entrepreneur, is said to be the Father of Wellington.

(Above) Cable Car Lane off Lambton Quay is a short passageway between main street shops to the cable car station, with the able car leading up the steep mountainside to university residences and the Botanic gardens and planetarium at the very top. Here I find that my Supergold Card buys me a free ride to the top and back. Nice.

(Above): View from the driver’s cabin with all the electrical switches to enable the upward journey. Everything is spotlessly clean, and the vehicles move in superb silence up and down the steel rails. On our previous blog by Bloke On The Bus, there appear a number of photos taken in 2011

(Above): We travelled up and down in cable car number 2.

(Above) Morning tea at the Boat Cafe at the top cable car station. Very good food.

(Above): Jeanette outside the Wellington Planetarium.

(Above): Do you have the time? As easy as, you imply stand on the calendar day/month, with your back to the sun, and your shadow will point to the correct time. It’s a tad before 12 noon, according to the sundial at her wrist.

(Above): On top of the hill stands this Krupp Gun. It was manufactured in Essen and served the German army throughout 1914-18. The crest of the Prussian Foot Guards Artillery Regiment can be seen on the top surface of the barrel. The gun was captured near La Vacquerie in France in 1918 by the New Zealand Division. At the end of the war, many pieces were sent back to NZ as war trophies, and this gun was gifted to the City of Wellington in 1920 in honour of the soldiers from the Wellington District.

(Above): One of the city street scenes. Please refer back to our 2011 blog by Bloke On The Bus for other shots.

(Above): The Wellington Cenotaph (also Wellington Citizens War Memorial) a short way from parliament at the intersection of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street. It is the focus of Anzac Day (25 April) commemorations in the City, every year to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire during WWI

(Above): The well-known “Beehive” the common name for the Executive wing of the NZ parliament, situated at the corner of Lambton Quay and Molesworth Street.

(Above) Wai-Titi Landing. This monument represents at Treaty Agreement between Te Atiawa/ Taranaki whanua to commemorate the significance on this landing ground area.

(Above): After a very pleasant and eventful day we arrived home to such a wonderful surprise. A special delivery by our postman in the form of a carton by post from Durbanville South Africa. Sender Mrs Frankie Jones. What s huge surprise, what we can only describe as a monumental labour of love and devotion – a huge king size bed crocheted overthrow blanket -  a comforter, I’m told. Jeanette was so overcome with emotion, it took a full half hour to get her back to normal speech. And Frankie has made it in the Duck Egg turquoise colour which matches all the colours in the bedroom-to-be.

G-Man Report

Some weeks ago, you may recall, I introduced the G-Men, namely Michael Jackson (so-called “Jacko”) and Justin Bieber (the so-called “Beebs”). They are not really Government Men, they’re Goats on long-term loan from a neighbour.

(Above): Black and white horned Jacko nibbles at a leafy snack. He would do well in a rugby scrum and is forever shunting his G-Mate out of the way – friendly nudges in G-Terms, I guess.

(Above): Skinny old big ears, Brown, tan and white Beebs grins for the camera. He is an avid eater and a great little runner. The friendliest goat you could ever imagine.

(Above): I am please to report that these people-friendly and snack-hungry darlings have settled in extremely well and have started making their little community on Goat Hill.

(Above): Jacko absolutely loves being hand-fed crunchy leaves and juicy peaches and apples, but take care, don’t drop the snacks to the ground – Jacko simply doesn’t do scraps off the dirty ground.

(Above): Beebs is the more agile and adventurous of the pair, and is frequently to be seen near the bottom of the hill (about 50 metres down) among the yummy thorny brambles – not sure if he’s find many berries there, but he is gradually consuming part of the landscape there, so it must be reasonably tasty, I suppose!

(Above): Jacko stands at the top of the Hill, looking down at fellow G-Man on the brambled slopes. Not sure of whether he feels like any brambles to day?

Going Nuts

After the disappointment of discovering that the bountiful chestnut tree was laden to capacity with sterile and shrivelled fruit, it was an extra pleasant surprise to encounter the start of what appears to be a reasonably good 2013/14 crop of walnuts from our walnut tree, whose fruit have started to mature quite quickly.

From early childhood, we only knew walnuts as part of the Christmas fare, once a year when packets of mixed nuts were bought and served as festive snacks. Occasionally, one would buy the odd packet for inclusion in trifles and selected baking.

Although Bianca did not keep an accurate record of the 2012/13 walnut delivery, she recalls that there was quite a bit of eating that took place during the harvesting and preparation processes, and that “a number” of bags of nuts were stored in the deep freeze – if fact, as evidence, the last bag is still preserved there!

(Above): The walnut tree, centre of left, with the light green leaves is located in a good sunny spot  in the Secret Garden. It does not lend itself to any sort of climbing, so you need a stout pole with a hook to gently shake the upper branches. Then mind you head, or a hard nut might land on your nut.

(Above): Spot the Walnuts.  Ripe fruit which is fully mature or part of a windfall on the ground among the leaves are not so easy to detect when one is visually challenged. I tried to find errant nuts, wearing my reading glasses and crouched over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but still failed to see some of them – luckily, we’ve got younger family members who can spot a needle in a haystack. Needless to say that we’re not searching for needles.

(Above): In the past, I have not been exposed to walnut trees. This out of focus –apologies – photo, shows the stages of development of the walnut. On the tree, a dark green berry starts swelling and changing colour first to a lighter shade (1) and then a leathery brown (2), which pops open and expels the nut in a textured brown husk (3)

(Above): Bianca and Brynn arrived from a trip to the Secret Garden, with a basketful of peaches and walnuts.

(Above): The first step of the treatment was to clean and disinfect the husks before opening. You can never tell which dog has done what on top of the nuts, or perhaps the possums have been there spreading their germs. So, we scrub and rinse in clean water containing a dash of bleach. All the black afterbirth “hair” gets removed from the husks, hence the dark colour of the water.

(Above): The cleaned and towel-dried fruit ready for the oven, are allowed to air dry for a while.

(Above): The nuts are spread out on a baking tray in a single layer to dry and toast evenly in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. This minimises any bitterness which may be present. The nuts can also be shelled and then roasted in the oven or toasted in a frying pan on the stove top.

(Above): The first crop of this year’s harvest yielded a quarter kilo for freezing. The rest has been consumed by the nut-workers!

A Healthy Smack to Come Right…

Sitting in the lounge watching Sports News after supper last night, Jeanette suddenly lets out a shrill exclamation, pointing behind us:

“Look what Bennie’s brought in!”

In the middle of the carpet lay a cute prickly baseball, like an enlarged hand-grenade waiting to detonate, with Bennie standing proudly over it, tail wagging at his achievement.

About a week ago, in the middle of a dark and wettish spell, this very same scene enfolded, and ended with Clayton incarcerating that particular prisoner in a plastic laundry basket in the garage, ready to be banished to the paddock next door at first light. Alas, next morning, we were stunned to find that the critter had escaped up the steep slippery plastic wall of his cell and over the parapet to freedom!

A hulk on the Thames in readiness for transport to Australia and the like.

So, to avoid a repeat performance by this Houdini, Clayton went off to fetch the Philip Pirrip-style hulk so that the banishment process would not be delayed. I reached for the torch/flashlight, which had just arrived from Cape Town in our shipping load, to accompany the prison-warder on his Australia-like journey to the outer fence at the bull paddock. Tyler decided that he would also take a look, to see what the paddock looks like, under the cover of Night.

Night. Dark night. Reikorangi dark. A darker shade of dark, once you go beyond the line of the trees.

Tyler appointed himself as chief torch-bearer by democratic process, and strode ahead, illuminating the upper branches of the trees and investigating the undergrowth at the edges of the pathway, like an ack-ack searchlight illuminating the blackness. No untoward critters to be seen, especially other errant hedgehogs on whom we might unwittingly tread. Bennie remained in close attendance, most interested in the fate of his prey.

Almost at the destination fence. The torch goes out without warning and we are plunged into Reikorangi darkness. Only Bennie can see where he is going. Bugger.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Our chief torch-bearer bashes the torch against his free hand a few times and we are once again in the world of the seeing.

“This torch is one of those things from the eighties,” explains the 1997-model young man, emphasising the decade as if it belonged to pre-historic times, “Granny told me all about those olden days, when you had to bang things with the flat hand to get them to work. Torches, radios and even television sets sometimes needed a sharp smack on the side to get them back in working order. They even had to push motor-cars to get them to start sometimes. Can you imagine?”

Yes, I thought. Can you imagine?

In today’s world of touch-screens and instant automatic everything, perhaps the eighties do seem a bit antiquated to the younger generations. I’d forgotten how we used to smack our black-and-white when the picture went entirely snowy. Thanks for the reminder, Tyler.

A Day of Ups and Downs

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those days. We awoke to a calm morning, with a few powdery white bits of fluffy clouds above, not a sign of high winds, tropical storms or torrential downpours as most of the top part of our Island had been receiving in the previous 24 hours.

During general conversation over coffee on the patio outside the conservatory, amid what appeared to be an invasion of those little white butterflies (those cute ones which insist on laying their nasty little eggs everywhere), there were casual remarks about the weather, including this one:

“Doesn’t this feel exactly like Mauritius? I could live with this, as long as I could wear a T-shirt and shorts – not dress up to go to work…”  That was at about 10:30 am.

By lunch-time there was an ever-so-slight breeze, pleasant but not enough to mask the obvious fact that the temperature had risen quite a bit, and then some more. Thinking back, I recall that no-one actually used the words, but it had turned quite hot and summery. This persisted through most of the remainder of Sunday, with the grey colour of the increasing bank of clouds deepening to what I’d call a Light Admiralty Grey 697. The gentle breeze continued to come and go at times.

We watched the News at Six, and I was not surprised to hear Jim the forecaster, in his summary of the day’s conditions, report that the highest recorded temperature for March had been recorded on Sunday in Paraparaumu (our nearest large-ish town) about 10 km away. The temperature had been 30ºC!

How conditions changed, as dark set in.

Lusi showed what she was made of: wind and rain. Fortunately, she was kind to us on the Kapiti coast and our treatment was but a fraction of what the Northerners had experienced. In contrast to the previous night, which had been bathed in brilliant white moonlight, Sunday night was fully overcast and everything outside was painted in a dark shade of black. Very dark shade.

The trees behaved like a crowd of people with Afro’s having wild hair-drying sessions, in sudden gusts, frequently continuously for some time. The sound of doors slamming was an indication that we should check all the windows and make sure that all the hatches were battened down. Now and then wind-driven rain pelted down against the window panes. It was still dark outside. Very dark.

This morning in the calm after the storm, so to speak, I strolled around the garden inspecting for any nasty damage.

(Above): Thankfully, no damage worth noting at all, simply evidence that Lusi had produced wind gusty and strong enough to dislodge many (autumn) leaves and a few branches.

(Above) Next to Goat-Hill, overlooked by the towering pines, the ground is quite matted with a new layer of brown pine needles, like dirty dandruff from a huge hairy head above.

(Above): More evidence of the wind. A large number of little green chestnut “hedgehogs” lay strewn across the lawn.

(Above): Even though the peach harvest has never looked promising, one of the trees shed some fruit during the night. Less food for the birds.

Later, on a stroll down the road, we encountered the Kents Road bridge, we encounter a veritable carpet of pine needles.

(Above): A large branch from a tree on one of neighbour Shane’s paddocks lies across the fence into the road at the intersection of Ngatiawa and Kents Road.

(Above): Lusi’s litter strewn across the shoulder of Ngatiawa Road.

Finally, the end results of Lusi’s contribution to our drinking water supply? 29mm measured between 7:00pm Sunday evening and 7:00am Monday morning. This translates into an inflow of approximately 8,700 litres – not overly indulgent, but fairly generous for this time of the year, for which we are grateful. I took a dip of the tank, and the rod shows a reserve of 14,720 litres . Taking into account our water saving measures, this means about 25 to 30 days supply.

Lusi Moves Downwards

(Above): Tropical storm Lusi due north of the North Island at 7:00pm 14 May 2014

(Above): Lusi due west of the Northland with strong onshore conditions on the east coast north of Auckland. The eye has moved a considerable distance in the last 24 hours,

(Above): The eye of the storm, which has since been downgraded, lying to the top left corner of this image. On this evening’s News at Six, we saw reports that the coastal town of Paihia (bottom right corner) was lashed by downpours and Lusi’s  high-speed winds for most of the day.

In Reikorangi, we had a hot humid day ahead of the expected easterlies. Late afternoon, we experienced a few boats of gusty winds, but nothing extraordinary to write home about. Some huge raindrops fell a short while ago, prompting me to take a dip-reading of the drinking water tank ahead of the anticipated showers: 6,409 litres

Lusi in the Sky without Diamonds

For the last couple of days, we have seen threats of a tropical  cyclone developing North of New Zealand, named Lusi.

©http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-184.92,-34.12,1024

The deadly cyclone is expected to hit northern New Zealand tonight, with the brunt of the storm to be felt across the North Island tomorrow as it tracks southwest just off the coast of the country, before hitting the South Island on Sunday. Severe weather warnings have been issued for Northland, Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Nelson and Marlborough.

Northland could expect 80mm-100mm of rain by tomorrow afternoon, MetService said.

At Waikanae we desperately want rain for drinking water. Desperately, but not that desperately that we would want to risk a cyclone. Thank you very much. I would hope that we get the same as Northland, say 80mm, but without the high winds, though. Please.