Going Deco

Last weekend I met up with a friend from Melbourne who is a bit of an Art Deco fan and we went to the Art Deco Festival in Napier. The city was devestated by an earthquake in the early '30s and a lot of the buildings were rebuilt from scratch in the style of the time.


The festival is fantastic and most people really get into it. You have never seen so many hats, braces, parasols and fur stoles in one place,


not to mention fabulous cars, buses, tractors and bicycles.



Then on Sunday morning there was the Box Car Derby and these were not your old orange boxes, we are talking serious vehicular design and yet more serious outfits.

Back in Melbourne...

for a birthday party and a conference but also for coffee

and another coffee
and this lovely fellow now has a new home in the forest in our children's area thanks to my business card being pulled out of a box. He's coming to Auckland in a 'diplomatic pouch' and is then being driven to NP.

Happy walking

I'm back!

Back from the hikoi and back on the air. I spent all of last week doing a travelling family reunion. Descendants of my G G Grandparents Kotiro Hinerangi and Alexander Gray gathered from all over the country and overseas to visit places of significance to the family. We started in my backyard, Normanby down in St Taranaki then travelled up to Rotorua, on through Auckland and up to Waima and Russell in the Hokianga/Northland. It was a fabulous week and I now have a whole tree full of cousins and aunties and uncles that I never knew about before including this lot. The photo was taken at the rugby club where we stayed in Rotorua which was turned into a temporary marae for our stay, if you look carefully you can see the mattresses and pillows stacked in the background.

We stayed on marae the whole way and I can tell you that I come from a family of champion snorers including some juniors aiming for the 'best new talent' award. God bless the person who invented ear plugs!


Our last stop was a day trip to Russell where Kotiro and Alexander are buried. The quickest way to get there is the ferry from Pihia and on our way back we saw these waka that were practicing for Waitangi day celebrations.

Artists outdoors

The stone carvers are back and this time with friends! Carvers from all over New Zealand and some from overseas are here for the Stone Symposium - 3 weeks of carving on the foreshore then an exhibition and auction.

The stones get trucked in from a local quarry and lifted into place by forklift then the carvers get stuck in. There is an enormous amount of noise and dust but the results are stunning and the best bit is you can go every couple of day and watch the progress.

I'm not so sure about working outside on some of the days we've had but on a good day there can't be many better place to be.

New Year's (+ a week) resolutions

Make better use of my gym membership

(that little red line is waaaay too close to the 7)

Get serious about the garden

untidy is one thing but I have to confess this is probably closer to feral

Blue Moon

We saw the new year in with a blue moon