FSO celebrations

I'm glad Doreen posted a few suggestions for our topic for this week - Celebrations.  I haven't been able to focus my thoughts on this one.  

Then yesterday afternoon I saw the first spring flowers and it dawned on me, the greastest celebration is that of life itself.

A little later, just as the sun went down I saw others out celebrating life:

Here's to life!

To see how the rest of the FSO team celebrate, just click here.  And why not join us in showing us more about your town each week.  You can find out more here.

Now that's a face!

Kohukohu

I think you can click on the photo to enlarge it

Kohukohu is a delightful little town on the banks of the Hokianga Harbour.

According to legend, the history of Kohukohu begins with a visit from Kupe on his return voyage to Hawaiiki. Angry at the food from the hangi being insufficiently cooked, he cursed those responsible using the word "kohu". Hence Kohukohu.  The word "kohu" also has two other meanings - "misty" and "basin". As misty mornings promise a lovely day, this is my preferred meaning.

The first recorded European to enter the Hokianga Harbour arrived in 1819. By the 1830's the area was the heart of New Zealand's timber industry- the harbour was a busy port with often seven vessels tied up at once.


For nearly one hundred years Kohukohu was an important milling town.  Over the decades, a number of Kohukohu's commercial buildings have been lost to fire, but fortunately many historic and attractive buildings remain on the hillsides overlooking the harbour.

Kohukohu's people, buildings and beautiful setting make it an ideal place to appreciate the warmth and charm of small town New Zealand.

Oh, and coffee at the Waterline Cafe, built out over the harbour - another legend!

The Day After

Life along the creek is returning to normal.  

In most places the creek is back within it's banks.  

The ducks are happy.

My first ever collage leaves room for improvement. 

I'm usually quite happy if I know I will get better at something,

it's when I think I will never improve that I get frustrated.

Right!  Now back to playing with that collage thingy.

Idiot proof phone and floods

See this little old phone?  Not very fancy, is it?  It’s a bit battered and well worn but let me tell you for longevity and reliability it wins the prize.  It does everything I need a cell phone to do, make calls and texts when I ask it to which isn’t often  and works well as an alarm clock.  And it’s idiot proof.

You can leave it sitting on a fence post from 2.30 pm on a Saturday until noon on Monday and not just in any old weather.  Between 9 am yesterday morning and 9 am this morning we’ve had 98 mms of rain (close to 4 inches). 

When I was preparing for bed last night I searched high and low for my phone/alarm clock.  When there was no ringing heard after I rang the number I thought it had dropped out of my pocket while we were watching the car rally on Saturday.  With the heavy rain at the time I thought it would be history and there wouldn’t be much point in looking for it.  But this morning I remembered where I had last used it – and where I had left it. 

Driving in to work this morning I was surprised by how flooded the creek was, told myself I must have slept through some really bad weather.   There was water over the road in a few places and I resolved to come home early if it started to rain heavily again.  I was hardly settled down to my daily tasks when the skies opened again.  Usually when there are floods around I ring my son to find out how bad it is here as the weather can be quite different in town but I thought my son, d-in-law and the kids had all left last night for a few days on Mt Ruapehu in the snow.    So I played it safe and headed back home.  I needn’t have bothered really.

 

Where the water had been over the road in the above spot a few hours earlier, there was still a bit of the road above water.  It won’t take much rain to bring it back up though.

Neighbours along the road had the boats out on either side of their access road. 

I was past the worst flooding parts of the road so could stop and enjoy the difference to the landscape. 

I often vow and declare I am going to take photos of the potholes approaching this bridge and send them in to the council road maintenance department.  The bridge is only one lane and it’s impossible to get on and off it without hitting a couple of those pot holes.

When I got to the corner the farm sits on, I was turning left to go up the side road to see how bad the flooding was down the back of the farm and thinking to myself I had best go for a walk down there when I got home to make sure my son had heard the heavy rain warning and moved the cattle off the lower pastures.  So I was quite surprised to see him on the farm bike. 

And this is what the back of the farm looked like.  The creek goes off to the left at this point but the water is rushing over the right hand bank and spreading across the farm. 

Danny was moving the cows off the farm down to the leased run-off.  A run-off is an additional piece of land, not usually directly connected with a farm.  Danny was lucky to find a near neighbour who wanted to lease out his farm, he grows crops there to supplement the dairy herd, runs the young stock there and moves stock there when he doesn’t want them ruining good grass by tramping it into mud.  (I find it quite hard to explain some things that every rural Kiwi just “knows”.)

So Dan missed out on the snow fields trip.  Such is life for a farmer!  You can ask your neighbour to do a few chores around the place while you are away but coping with floods is beyond what one expects of even the best of neighbours – and ours are the best.

Two churches on Sunday - Whirinaki

The latest information I could find about Whirinaki gives its population as 200, 90% of which are Maori.  The local school is Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Te Tonga o Hokianga.  Hope I got that right, quite a mouthful, huh?  It is a Kura Kaupapa Maori school which teaches fully in the Maori language.

The name means "to lean against a support".

Historically, the area was raided by Te Roroa in 1810 or 1811, during the Musket Wars, during which all  inhabitants of Opara village were killed.

We were surprised to find two churches, one in Jackson Road and the other Chris spotted while we enjoyed a cup of coffee from our flasks after visiting there.  

The first looked very impressive as it towered above the road. 

^{But it wasn't so impressive up close.  Nice coloured windows, though.}

We spent quite some time wandering around the graveyard. On our travels visiting the churches of the north, wherever there was a graveyard attached to the church, we invariably found the graves of more interest.  Here I found many that captured my imagination.  Some seemed right at home in rural Whirinaki, others looked slightly out of place:

Little St David's church, was much more modern and spotless.  There was even a little dog house with a cross on top and after we'd been there a few minutes the master of the dog house came along to check us out.  

As we were discovering, the inside of many of the churches in the Hokianga feature beautiful timber, in this case the pews and humble forms for the faithful.   The curtain across in front of the altar was something I've never seen before.

So two churches this Sunday.  Next week we will be in Rawene.

Rally Day

You know the road you travel daily is a "tough drive" when it is selected to be one of the roads used for an International Car Rally.  Not only that but the roads in our area are described by the rally officials as the "fastest gravel stages in the country".  

The International Rally of Whangarei is open to competitors contesting the 2010 FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), 2010 FIA Pacific Cup, 2010 Vantage New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC) or 2010 Stilo Top Half Series, and has attracted a 67-strong field for the two-day rally.

 Even those like me who have no interest whatsoever is car racing become excited about the rally passing our front gates and plan for the best vantage points.  When I printed  out the route the rally will take (and even a list of the drivers, so we'd know which country they were from as they went past) I was surprised that the corner on which the farm sits is prominently marked as one of the "Prime Spectator Viewing" spots.  They even sell tickets to these prime viewing spots! 

In exchange for volunteers’ time to help run the event, which uses 285 kilometres of gravel roads in the Kaipara and Whangarei districts, the rally returns a share of the revenue from sales of spectator tickets to the community groups.  A share of the revenue  from ticket sales is also returned to the community.

In the Whangarei area they aim is to raise $3 million in three years to build an oncology unit in Whangarei so Northland’s cancer suffers can be treated closer to home.  So the rally is a significant event in this area.

The road was closed on Thursday for the recconnaisance stage.  But I managed to leave home before that happened (the organisers gave us plenty of warnings about the road closures), then stayed in town and went to the movies with Chris.  We went to the Whangarei Film Club to see "This Way of Life",  a truly lovely NZ documentary.

Friday night my daughter and son-in-law arrived with my grand-daughter Jami who was keen to see the rally action with her cousins.

Saturday morning we were out at the road by 8.10 am.  I now know the road closed at 8.10 am but the rally didn't start till 10 am.  But I didn't know that then! It was still a bit foggy that early anyway and we could barely see down the road to the bridge.  But it was very pleasant waiting and watching the fog lift.  Various safety vehicles went flying by, all travelling much faster than we are accustomed to seeing, some with sirens blaring and lights flashing.  One of these stopped and told us we would have to stand back behind the security tape they had put up earlier across my driveway.  So we moved into the paddock behind the fence.

Justine clowned for our entertainment and sang us a song or two.

I had plenty of time to set up my camera (fancy stuff, huh?) - and go back to the house for more coffee.

Time also for Jami to walk up the hill to meet Georgia and walk back with her.  Love the tandem footprints in the wet grass!

Bill went back to the house to fetch us some chairs - and we waited some more.

Finally we heard the first car, we could hear them coming for quite a distance as they came down out of the hills, around the corner (where one spun out) down a little hill, over our little white bridge then up through the corners towards us.  The first car was definitely red  and I think this may have been the second or third but it was the first I managed to get in the frame.  I took lots of photos of empty road!  And sometimes when they got airborne (on the corner this car is approaching) I got too excited and forgot to take a photo at all!

I fluked a couple up close but it hardly looks to be moving - and believe you me it was...fast!  Before we knew it they were disappearing up the road into the distance.

The cars passed through twice, once in the morning and again at 2.30 pm.  The road had been cleared of loose metal by then and the cars appeared to me much faster.  We had decided to move positions to down the back of my house for the afternoon viewing and I thought this would be a good spot but although it gave us a view of the cars flashing past as they approached the corner from the right (about 20 metres back past where the car is in the next photo) it was pretty tame so we returned to the paddock out front.  Crew from APRCTV had set up there and declared it was as good a place as any, and they film rallies in all the participating countries. 

I feared for this guy's life a few times but he said you get used to it.  Look where he is, right on the edge of the road and you can see the marks on the edge of the road where a can went a bit astray in the morning session.  I told him that but he seemed unconcerned. 

APRCTV camera crew man and his serious equipment.  The photo at the top is thanks to one of the crew.

So, yes, we really enjoyed seeing the rally go past our gate for the first time and hope they come back this way again next year.  Maybe they will find better (read worse) roads!  The girls were over it by the end but Georgia perked up after she was allowed to take photos with my camera.

And thanks to her I have what I think is the Shot of the Day.  The sweeper car went through signifying the last of the rally cars had gone by and the road was again open.  And hot on his tail were the avid followers.  Imagine seeing four cars at one time from my front deck!!  Another first!

Some left overs

Wandering around town on Thursday with my camera I passed a lovely old house which is the busniness premises of David Reed Homes.  The door knob and knocker caught my eye so I decided to ask could I take some photots.  There was no response to my knock on the door, there was a For Sale sign outside, I looked through the windows, saw nothing, and presumed the company had already re-located elsewhere, so felt free to go ahead. You knpw what they say about people who ass-u-me!

I was down on my knees getting up close and personal with the door knob (maybe I should change the wording of that?) when I heard a man's voice behind me.  I nearly jumped out of my skin and spluttered about how I'd knocked and was going to ask permission.  The man was charming, probably more than a little amused at my embarrassment, said there was no charge on photos of his door.

A little while later, when I stopped to take photos of the trolleys outside the supermarket an entirely different stamp of man asked me what the hell did I think I was doing?  I explained just taking photos of the trollies, I'm mean it was pretty obvious!  He went on his way muttering that there were crazies like me everywhere these days!  Unlike earlier when I had been embarrassed, this time I just thought that was hilarious.

Feeling quite pleased with my life as a "crazy" I headed down to the Town Basin for a cup of coffee.   Dancho, the lovely Bulgarian waiter at Reva's, agreed to pose for a photo back in November when I was collecting photos of faces.  (I still think he has the most fabulous face!)  He always remembers me and when I said I wanted a very "pretty" cup of coffee he seemed to guess why.  I was disappointed with the shot of the coffee but happy with the one I got of the sugar bowl.  Isn't life like that?  You never know what's going to make you happy until you find it.  And, in my case, it's nearly always comes as a surprise.  

The photo may have been disappointing but the coffee wasn't and where better to sit and drink it?

Another shot I got that I liked was this one.  I am so attracted to solid, old rusty things with lots of character.  (No offence intended for any of my friends, by the way!)

FSO - Urban Macro

As explained by GingerV ..... in our towns are many features that we see from a distance and think nothing of. it could be a line of pine trees on main street or Lights along a path.... but what makes them beautiful.... close up is it the pine needles or new cones on the branches? or the metal work of the light posts.... or the grain of the granite on the city hall....?

I took the first three photos when I was out last Sunday and wasn't too sure exactly what would constitute 'urban macro'.  I hope they are close enough as, until yesterday, I've been too busy with a new computer to take any others.  Then yesterday afternoon I had a little time to kill in town before going to the movies and the trolleys at the supermarket took my eye.....and then I stopped for a coffee!

To see how urban macro is done by those who know about these things, just have a look here.

Thanks to the Town Blogger Team  for the topic.   You guys are doing an amazing job!