Hawkes Bay cleanup

 We spent the first few days of November on the East Coast of the North Island in the Hawkes Bay area for a little get-away. They are getting back to normal after the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle back in February. There were lives taken, homes lost and so many roads and bridges destroyed.

Much of the devastation was not due to the water, believe it or not. The cause of most of the problems was--is--due to logging slash washing down the hillside and filling up riverbeds. Slash is all the bits and pieces that loggers leave on the ground after they fell the trees and move on. So much of it has been scooped up, some farms just covered with the piles with no place for crops.

For some reason, pine trees grow seven times faster here than any other place, even if the quality is a bit lower, so there is a lot of logging going on. For years, we have seen slash on the hillsides and wondered why it's not sold (or even given away) as firewood  since most homes outside of the big cities have a fire burner for heat.

Here are some photos...

At the mouth of the Mohaka River

Slash still caught under this bridge.

Obviously, the laws concerning slash are being reviewed.

These are just the sad side of our trip. Happier photos are on my photo blog!

River of Words

Queenstown lakefront

Along the wall is a ribbon of words.

 WAIPOUNAMU (poem down by Queenstown lakefront)

by David Eggleton

Hoisting history on his back like a sugar – sack,
The swagger strides along greenstone trails.
All night the crib creeks are humming home,
And drowned towns float in their canvas shrouds.
They are just the ghosts of their original selves,
An emotional investment looted by snow-melt for,
Schemes to answer the question of illumination.
To tap this yearning for a golden age,
Singing shepherds held wisps of tussock
Which curled like lighted Chinese joss-sticks
On the fan – tan tables of sly-grog dens,
Frozen in that glacier known as the past.
In the forgotten graveyards, hair grows into grass
While wind sifts the sweet vernal over and over,
Like diggers letting gold dust pour through their fingers.
The Kingston flyer is chuffing
On the great Northern Railway to Wakatipu,
John Turnbull Thompson cut the run holders loose
With a panoramic survey and the confidence of a faith healer
In the middle of Queen Victoria’s royal century,
When the boom-time harvest of Celtic place names
Seeded central like a nouveau-Hiberian dialect
From Balclutha to Glimmerburn to Glendhu bay.
Winter arrives on time in a glitz blitz of powdery snow.
The hoar frost in a Quartztpoils of ice crystals
Turning weeping willows into frozen chandeliers.
Some strung the coils of number eight into fences
As trail bikes took to the state highway with a roar
And the rain shower passed a plume
Over small towns that are hardly seen for hills.
Tarns prickle with bubbles from upland soakage
at the start of Wakatipu on mounts Humboldt and Forbes.
Pasture stands four- square
To the intersection of lakes Hawea and Wanaka, from where
Nat Chalmers shot the gorge in a flax raft with his guides
After descending Mount difficulty in flax sandals,
The first Pakeha to see Lake Wakatipu, for which he paid
Reko and Kaikora a three legged pot – Te Kohoa!
Viper’s bugloss is the honeyed heart of the hive and veranda shadows are dark as delphiniums.
The four-fold path of the farmer leads to hot and cold taps, the meat-safes a Muslim bag, but the kerosene lamps gone
The way of aunt Daisy’s and uncle scrim’s voices on the wireless
Or goals from the boot and pine-tree when rugby took a capital.
Braids of rivers run dreadlock plaits from a taniwha’s
Stone head, so his blind eyes spurt waterfalls
and his chest is the sucking valley of a mudslide,
when swollen rivers heave against mountain flanks
and sinkholes laden with silt roar old man floods here!
He’d ride the whaleboat molyneaux from its tributaries
To the sea, or disgorge the matau of its spears and hooks,
If they hadn’t drained the hydro-electricity, way back.
Rivers rule our lives, gurgling, puddling, dripping,
Working the lake country round like a greenstone,
Turning out a tiki of interlocking curves flowing
Into Waipounamu, which breathes its green glow,
Of purple grape froth trickling a ripe roses scent
And beetroot palate into our salad day memories.
Views of the lake in its many moods: sometimes quiescent,
Like a windowpane stippled with rain, behind which
Cucumber leafage and swollen twigs revolve, and you
Can imagine fridge-full’s of rare home brews,
Or spiced-plum brandy, tots doled out to travellers;
Sometimes waves snapping fierce enough to whip out
All the tent pegs in canvas-town, with a wind able to upturn a wedding marquess’s trestle tables tomorrow.
Days of wooden coach wheels bumping out of Ida valley on the old Dunstan road in journeys of the pioneers.
Days realising meteorological balloons into a delicate apricot sky
In this landscape we invent, as it invents us –
From rock flake and spring water, from a skiff of froth
Tumbling over a weir into the afterglow of the Aurora.

somebody's darling

 

It's amazing how big the human heart really is and this is one instance that has withstood the passage of time, even if it isn't all true. 

Click here for a letter that explains the graves.

I must be getting old

There is not a lot of stuff on tv here that interests me and Hubby doesn't watch much at all. One thing we watch most evenings is 'The Chase' but the adverts for even that one hour make me wonder about society. It seems that little by little, the world out there has forgotten how to share and now it is sending the message that making yourself happy is the most important thing in the world.

*A couple rush their kids to bed so they can enjoy Maccas delivered without sharing with the kids.

*I don't even remember what the ad is for (that's how annoyed it makes me), but a lady pulls up next to another car and looks--just looks--over to the car beside her with a kid in the back seat rapping to a song on the radio. Kid's mom looks over, smiles with a snark and turns up the radio and joins the singing.

*A grocery store advertises the pans you can get there with several people out-and-out lying to someone on the phone so they can stay home and cook.

*And, then, there is the ad with people being disappointed about their choice of car because someone they know bought the car that they really wanted.

I know these ads don't represent most of the world, but it's sad that they should be sending such self-absorbed messages.

And then the shows that make a mockery of marriage:

*Married at First Sight

*90 Day Fiancé

Goodness, what is this world coming to?