To Christchurch and departure (to see the journey in sequence start by clicking March 07 on the blog archive list)

Jewel like lake Tekapo

A Mt Cook carraige at Fairlie museum

Fairlie Museum photograph of the MT Cook transport. Conne & M always rode 'box'
which is thetop seat looking backwrads. It was licenced to carry 14 passengers.

Lyttleton Harbour.

Sumner beach near Christchurch which Connie visited by steam tram and remarked
on the locals enjoying the pleasures of the beach as they still do today.

A very Victorian pose by Victoria, Andre and Ina at Margaret Stoddart's cottage.

Warners hotel where Connie stayed now being converted into a Novotel.

Christchurch's new gallery of contemporray art.

Christchurch Museum, visited by Connie who was very enthusiastic.

I used to teach Maori culture here in 1962 beleive it or not!

On my journey back to Christchurch, via the turquoise coloured lakes of Pukaki and Tekapo , I stopped at Fairlie after a 2 hour drive – a journey that took Connie 3 days by horse and carriage. I went into the Fairlie Museum for a quick visit only to spend at least an hour talking with the Curator there. An excellent display of horse drawn transport gave a feel for the discomfort of Connie’s expedition, and started our conversation that then ranged through farming, the economy, the nature of travel, her ancestors in Scotland etc. When I said that I had been the Mt Cook Schoolteacher in 1962, she asked if I therefore knew Sandra Burke. Well Sandra was the only girl in my 5-pupil school and it turns out that this lady’s daughter had become a good friend of Sandra in their later schooling. Another expected co-incidence?

Well they do keep cropping up, and here in Christchurch my first stop has been to call on Veronica Larsen. She contacted me from NZ many years ago asking where she could obtain a copy of my Dye book ‘The Colour Cauldron” She added the information that although she now lived in New Zealand, as a child she had lived for a few years in our farmhouse, Newmiln, in Scotland which at that time had belonged to her grandparents. A co-incidence that became even greater when I looked at her Christchurch address; she lived just round the corner from my home in Christchurch, indeed we later worked out that the corners of our long gardens actually met at the stream that ran between the properties. Had we known each other in 1962 we could have chatted over the garden fence! It is good to keep in touch and like so many ex-pats Veronica still relishes talk of her’ homeland’ and has just given me a photograph of her family outside our front door at Newmiln taken about 1900.

With A few other haunts and artists to meet I must start packing for my departure from here in 2 days time.

I am now concluding this blog in Tasmania not having had any time before I left New Zealand. My last two days in Christchurch rushed passed . At Lyttleton, a short drive from Christchurch, which Connie recalled as lacking interest and surrounded by brown hills I had a very different experience. Meeting artists, Victoria Edwards, Ina Johanne and Portugese visiting artist Andre Guede. We had a glorious sunny day and took the ferry across to Diamond Harbour enjoying lunch and tea in the colonial properties and gardens there. The little tea house of painter Margaret Stoddart interested me as her style of painting is very similar to a work we found at Connie’s house. Margaret is another woman artist undervalued in her day and now being’ re-discovered’. I will check out the work again when I get home.

I also caught up with Michael Reed at the Polytechnic art school. We first met at Impact 5 in Tallin 2 years ago. It was interesting to hear how the art school / education system in New Zealand is facing many of the same issues and restructuring and funding cut backs as In Scotland and indeed other countries. The Arts generally feel pressurised everywhere by the need to tick enterprise based boxes.

Most of the old Christchurch buildings in which I attended lectures in the 60’s are now converted to either residential or tourist related art centre uses. Christchurch has a very sensible development programme which retains old buildings but allows modern ones to co exist in what some would call a jumbled fashion but which I find exciting and refreshing. They don’t do pseudo historic, its either old or new. The museum which Connie enjoyed and in which I did a teaching stint in 1963 is still small -as Connie liked it- with some really excellent displays. My final event was to attend a talk by Gary Hill at the new glass fronted Contemporary Art Centre. The talk was very slow with more emphasis on describing the physical appearance of the work than its intent, but the building is large light and impressive.

As I flew out of Christchurch heading for Melbourne we flew right over Mt Cook. The turquoise lakes of Pukaki. Tekapo and Ohau sparkled like jewels and Mt Cook itself shone white with glaciers on all sides. The pilot dipped the wings and told us to feast our eyes as even they rarely saw it as brilliantly as that. My camera of course was in the overhead locker so this is my final memory of New Zealand which I will just have to carry with me until next time.

UPDATE January 2011

The Exhibition 'Paradise No Exit' about this project took place at Birnam Institute in Perthshire in October 2010. Images can be seen at www.sugrierson.com ( Installations, Paradise No Exit)

From Queenstown to Mt Cook

McKenzie country with turquoise water

Cromwell area vineyards

Now a proper school with 2 classrooms, a swimming pool and 3 teachers

My form of transport in the 60's !

Early morning Kea attack.

End of Hooker glacier a popular 3 hour trek.

Sunrise on Mt Sefton- the view from my bedroom in 1962 and 2009.

Sunrise on Aoraki Mt Cook.

Driving up from Queenstown to Mt Cook via Cromwell reminded me of the one overwhelming memory I have carried with me of New Zealand. A beautiful day of sun, blue sky and crisp landscape saturated with subtle gold, blue and green hues. . At every place one stops there is a feeling of a relaxed comfort with life lived at a suitable human pace. It is a land that is full of peace and promise. I know that people still have everyday worries but this does seem to be the ‘Paradise’ that generations have come to the southern lands to find. ‘Paradise’ was a word Connie used easily, I much more cautiously. Unlike ‘Eden’- an objective and unchanging place of perfection, ‘Paradise’ is more of a human aspiration than a place. It changes under our own mental constructs, a dreamland with a spiritual dimension – the ultimate alternative therapy perhaps? Today was a ‘drive through’ Paradise, collect your visual ‘fix’ and move on.
Actually I moved on to two perfect days at Mt Cook, as Connie said, how could they have changed the dramatic mountain’s name to that from the beautiful Maori name Aoraki. Actually they now often use both together.
I decided against the usual tourist options of helicopter landings and jet boating, and decided to spend my time re-walking the tracks and trails I had known in 1962 when I was the schoolteacher here – a wooden hut and 5 pupils – albeit a bit more slowly now. Actually I think that if Connie was a young traveller today she would have done the opposite. She simply couldn’t resist an adventure, being devastated that she couldn’t try out the metal bucket on a wire rope that the goldminers used to cross the river . Today I think she would have been a bungy jumping, para-glidong, jet boating and mountain biking backpacker.

I particularly enjoyed the walk up Govenor’s Bush. This used to be just a worn footpath but is now a well maintained track that started right behind our little school – now a car park for a day shelter. There was and still is a viewpoint at the top, where the children and I often used to sit on sunny days to look out over the valley below and the high peaks around and talk about the plants, birds and geology that surrounded us. We sometimes talked of the wider world that lay outside of this “Paradise’ as these children would soon move off to secondary school in the cities and needed at least some level of preparation. I once saw a back-country rabbit trappers child sit underneath his desk in terror when first introduced to the experience of school. Paradise has its price.
Keas, those destructive but very human-acting mountain parrots are endangered but still thriving at Mt Cook. Gathering outside the warm hotel kitchen at sunrise every day, they fought, squabbled, screeched and cackled as they competed in their attempts to vandalise every vehicle and unwatched container in sight. Surely such determined birds could never become extinct. I remember from when I lived here before, being woken every morning with them taking turn to slide down the corrugated iron roof screeching as they went, terrorising the huge macho local dog, and watching them unpeg the washing from the line, only to carry off selected items for later destruction.
I hope my photographs might describe Aoraki better than my words.

To Paradise from Queenstown

Notice today at the notorious skippers gorge 'road'.

Connie and 'M' went down the gorge in a 2 pony trap probably like this!

Burning a ton of coal each crosing .TSS Earnslaw on Lake Wakitipu.

From TSS Earnslaw. The 'fast' vessel she knew was soon to arrive.

No comment.

The Kingston Flyer.

KEA, a possible rescue bird with a broken wing but showing a hint of the bright red underwing. Totally destructuve , mischievous and intelligent birds.

A ten year old Tuatara, very long living and the most ancient reptile on earth. Known from 23 million years ago.

Queenstown is a total tourist heaven, every thrill and adventure is available here. Mountains, ravines, fast flowing water are all available for jumping off, crashing over and soaring above. All the adrenaline you can produce can be can be stimulated for a fee. And for those of us less inclined to such excess there are walks, sails, drives and flights on water, land and air. Endless accommodation, trips, food, retail excess and printed information.

But then this morning it was wet, so I went for an easy option while I checked what the day would do, and went to the bird park so that at least I will have seen a Kiwi and and a Kea while I am here. There was a talk advertised for 11am so I went and found a dry seat under the tarpauline cover to wait. I glanced round and thought the profile of a woman in the row behind, just visible under a large waterproof hat looked familiar. A few glances later when she too finally looked round and It was true. This was Ian and Meg, friends of ours from England whom we hadn’t seen since they came up to Scotland for the midsummer Millenium party we held at Connie’s house in 2000! It seems we have been in the same places a few times lately and not met, now here we were sitting feet apart under a wet tarp in a Queenstown bird park. Those inevitable coincidences again. We ate a really excellent dinner together by the waterfront last night with a lot of catching up to do. As the day was improving I abandoned the birds and headed off up the lake side towards Paradise a small location that Connie had reached with much more difficulty than I. She had gone to the head of the lake by steamer – complaining at the new one that the owners were buying which would go more than 20 miles an hour to the ruination of the peace and tranquility. She stopped at Kinloch – where the old house still stands- then over to Glenorchy on the other side, then she had gone by Mr Aitken’s horse & carriage criss-crossing the outwash gravels of the twin rivers the Dart and the Lees. Even today the final 37 km to Paradise was on poor gravel road and involved fording several streams. I tried to get to the head of the road, a long way past Paradise but finally met my match with one ford that was just too deep for this little car. A man in a huge 4x4 came past and said just make sure the doors are closed and don’t stop in the middle . I watched him go across and realised this is not what you are meant to do in little rented cars so waved him on – he had kindly waited to see that I got across safely - and turned back. Anyway I had reached Paradise , just 2 houses, and cant say it quite lived up to my expectations although the scenery round about is truly amazing. I stopped to take a photograph and spoke to a young woman with 2 dogs who had the thankless and lonely task of pulling up the poisonous Ragwort plants. I asked how farming could be profitable in such a remote place and she said her boss made his money from Film companies wanting to shoot films and adverts here and that the cattle and horses were hired out as ‘extras’. A very new form of farming. Actually she also told me that she is coming to the UK in a few weeks hoping to find work on Organic farms so I gave her our contact details and she might yet end up collecting our eggs in a few months time. Another inevitable co-incidence?

Today ( and ~ I really still dont know which day it is) if the weather holds I think I am off to take a trip on the renovated steam ship TSS Earnslaw, that dreadful boat that replaced Connie’s more sedate version, and which hopefully does go more than 20 miles an hour.

It is now evening and I did indeed have a lovely cruise across the lake and back. A splendid old boat which now carries huge numbers of tourists. There is full access to the engine rooms and bridge and the old salons have been meticulously restored. Tourists , walkers, mountaineers and hikers began the invasion of these parts in earnest around 1900 and before, and we are seeking the same thrills today – only bigger, better, faster and more dangerous. And we come in far greater numbers. For now. New Zealand has now become very financially dependent on the tourist industry and the world wide economic recession will take its toll. So far it hasn’t been felt as most tourists had booked and pre-paid their holidays before the recession arrived, but next year might well be a very different story . There is not much optimism right now.

I also visited the Southern Lakes Museum in Arrowtown where the very helpful archivist helped me to track down the exact type of carraiges that Connie wouldhave travelled in. However you look at it - comfort was not an option!

Te Anau – Manapouri

The now 'easy walk' along the smooth footpath that was then the awful coach road at Manapouri

The Manapouri river where it joins the lake where Connie sketched and 'photo'd'.

I worked as a waitress at the Te Anau hotel for the Christmas holiday in 1962. Apart from the fairly small hotel there were a few houses, a village store and an airstrip in a field out the back. The woman who filled my car with petrol this morning also lived here then and remembers riding her horse up what is now the main street. There has been huge development here in the last ten and especially the last 5 years with over 2,000 permanent residents and with at least 20 motels plus camp sites and day trippers on their way to Milford , who knows how many visitors. The airport is now 5 miles out of town but I remember coming in on a little Cesna plane and having to make a low pass to clear the sheep off the strip then hop over the fence, go round the one and only tree and regain enough height to get back in to land before the sheep returned. I also recall my alarm as the pilot said with true kiwi irony as we went sideways round this lonely pine ’ geeze someone’s gonna hit that bloody tree one of these days’. I guess today’s expansion has a lot to do with the so called ‘Lord of the rings effect’ and the trade expansion with Asia. I drove down the easy road to Manapouri where Connie had sketched and photographed, then on to Kingston where I joined the renovated steam train for a one hour round tourist trip to Fairlight . As we gently rattled along sitting in the luxury of what would have been the leather padded comfort of a first class compartment, I never the less felt quite shaken about. Think then of Connie’s hearfelt description of their journey down to Manapouri from Te Anau , “ We breakfasted at 7.30 and were off soon after 8 in a 3 horse buggy. Language fails to describe the jolting ( to use a totally inadequate word) which we underwent in those 12 miles – sometimes there was a track, sometimes none, sometimes ( and that was the worst of all) the road was being made; imagine a mountainous ploughed field with a stone quarry thrown in and you will have an idea of what we trotted over’ They even arrived late and missed the launch and the outing they were aiming for. Later she says ‘ We got back about 7, and it says something for the way the human body is put together that so far we have not discovered any displaced organs or dislocated bones. Though I am afraid the shaking was more than was good for ‘M’. Driving the easy road into Queenstown I reflected a lot on the nature of travel, why we do it, what human need is satisfied and whether there is any difference in that desire now and then. Why do we feel more impressed by high mountains than flat plains, by skyscrapers rather than bungalows? Is it scale and awe, the fact that we are overwhelmed by the greater height, but if so then why not feel intimidated rather than uplifted. Actually I think it might be more about hardwiring in the brain, that we simply react to verticle lines more than horizontal, to moving more than static and maybe even the ‘pure ’colour of green or blue is addictive to the visual cortex in some way. Of course the sense of escape from everyday life has a lot to do with the importance of travel. Some think the genetic heritage of connection with the land is still dominant but perhaps even more, a natural human curiosity is alive in us still.

Dunedin to Milford

View of Dunedin from Tolcarne on Maori hill

February decorations Invercargil

Sailing into the Sterling waterfall Milford

Keeping the camera dry!

Milford sound - actually not a Sound but a Fjord

Entering Milford from the sea

I have to start with a correction. In my recent Dunedin blog I said I had located the house Tolcarne. But when I was leaving my Motel the owner informed me that I had gone to the wrong school - she insisted it was at the Girls school not the boys. She was right, I rushed off up the hill again and found the location. The house itself is no more, but the garden, the hill, the view and the bush are all still there. The site is now a boarding house for the school and must be total five star accommodation with the most stunning panoramic views of the city imaginable. i was welcomed in and invited to take photos and video footage. However this delay made me an hour late for my meeting in Gore with Lindsay and Sarah old friends from Yorkshire who happened to be passing through the same small town on their way to the World Gliding Centre in the McKenzie basin. From Lindsay I got more information about the huge herds of cattle I had been seeing all crammed into single paddocks ( fields) with totally empty fields all around. He says this is all about sophisticated grass management. Each day after milking the herd is turned into a different paddock. Apparently the Rye grass gives maximum nutrition between the 2nd and 3rd leaf stage. If it gets eaten down to the one leaf stage it takes too long to grow back and if it gets to the four leaf stage it is usually left and turned into silage. By rotating the entire herd they keep the grass constantly between the 2 and 3 leaf stage and thus get maximum nutrition from it. This can all be tested and shown in graph form so that the farmers can know exactly the state of their grass every day. Pretty sophisticate stuff, and the resulting milk products including dried milk powders are being marketed in China and the far east. I made a quick visit to Invercargill after Gore and was really amazed at its size. It has spread out for miles along all the incoming roads. But best of all here were the Christmas lights - still up at the end of February. What I find hard to understand is why they need them at all. Christmas here is in mid summer with bright nights so why the dreary British snowflakes and Santas? Connie said that at least at Invercargil there was nothing and no-one to see. She was a social person but clearly had her limits . Now I am in Te Anau after another long drive through rolling hills and open plains, I felt for Connie who did the whole journey on the box seat of a horse drawn carriage. Even she complained a little but could still appreciate the golden tussock. She would really hate what I am doing today. Tired of driving I have booked onto a tourist bus and boat trip to see the wonderful Milford Sound. Although she did visit the sound on board a cruise ship which offered all manner of entertainemnt, dancing, music, picnic, regattas and even a late night firework display with the firing of reverberating cannons set as a spectacle against the dark cliffs, still she said that though the trip was very well organised and though ' everything necessary is provided there is no herding, or abominable guides.' However she felt that the size of the ship and lack of time ashore meant that she did not experience the place as fully as she would have liked. I have to say that although i agree with her sentiments there was a shared experience of place and comraderie that came from our trip today. An in depth experience it was not, but is there another level of experience that is also valid, shared, caring, international and happening within a strict conservation programme. It rained and blew for Connie and it did likewise for us today. I have done this trip previously in perfect weather and I have to say that this was a more vivid experience, there was a greater feeling of the darkness, threat and grandeur than before. daily

Wildlife 2 Dunedin

Royal Albatross

Royal Albatross

Penguin burrow

Penguin nests in snady bank across the road

Sleeping fur seal

NZ sea lions on sandy beach

un squashed dead possum

Grandson Eddie sent me an email with my instructions of what I was to look for. To granny, thanks for your email. New Zealand sounds great and i hear that within one day you will head for the Southern islands. Well i wonder that you may see some marine life;i have done reasearch on animals in New Zealand and i think it would be great if you saw a Fin whale. Its about 20 metres long and 80 tons, making it the 2nd biggest animal on earth,and can be seen around the coast of islands. Another way you can tell it apart is that when it breaches (jumps out of the water), it can lift its whole body into the air like a dolphin. I would also reccomend the New Zealand sealion, which you can see easily if you canoe amongst them in beaches.However there is one animal i would reccomend a lot that is quite easy to see if you know where you can find one, and that animal is: a kea. they are a dark greenish colour, live in the mountains and can make a lot of noise and havoc! If you see any, please take some pictures of them if possible. Wishing you a great time in the South islands. From Eddie. I am afraid I havn' t been on the ocean to see whales or canoed among the sealions but I think Dunedin has put me a bit further up the in the wildlife credibility stakes. I declined to pay to look at a few captive penguins but by walking to the northern heads of the large Dunedin harbour I did see some yellow eyed penguins swimming among the seaweed. They are too nifty to get a photograph though. I did better today on the southern Taiaroa heads of the same harbour which is host to the only mainland colony of Albatross. These majestic birds sailed around the sky like huge gliders. While at the heads I almost tripped over a slumbering fur seal which seem to go into a total coma of sleep and are totally camouflaged in the rocks. Tourists were within about 1 metre and it kept sleeping soundly, infact the only way we even knew it was there was when it snored - probably just snorting actually. At that place little blue penguins have their nests and come ashore quite late every night. However when filming one of their burrows I heard the kitten like mewing which told me that there were babies inside and this was right at the side of the visitors car park. Wildlife and tourists really do have to accommodate each other here. Perhaps not such a good coalition is with possums. So far I havnt seen a live one but have come across a good few flat ones on the road. Today however I found one beside the road which had been killed by a glancing blow only, so at least I got a good look at its curling tail and wonderful bushy coat. Oh yes and I DID see sea lions at Oamaru on my way south and they were sleeping on sandy beaches. I wont see Keas until I get to Mount Cook but will keep looking.

It is interesting that although Connie was a keen sailor and spent a lot of time in New Zealand on the water she never mentions sea life or even native animals at all. From her diary her passions seem to have been food and plants in that order!

Kaiteriteri to Dunedin

Lewis Pass

Holiday Park cabin Rakaia

Boulder with cracks filled with crystals

Moeraki Boulders

Olverston House

The title of this blog indicates a journey from the top to almost the bottom of the South Island. Connie traveled to Christchurch by steamer and then on to Dunedin by train so I didn't have many specific places to visit . From Kaiteri I traveled south via Murchison and the Lewis Pass with a lunch stop at Hamner Springs. Weather damp. I decided to by-pass Christchurch because I was invited to take a seminar at Dunedin College of art.

I hadn't intended to drive quite so far but I just didn't find a suitable place to stop. Eventually I found a great cabin at Rakaia Holiday camp south of Ch Ch about 9 hours after I set out. These cabins are very well equiped clean and cheap a real feature of New Zealand. Next day it was an easier drive to Dunedin via the amazing Moeraki Boulders, great mud balls being exposed by the sea from the mudrock cliffs. It was difficult finding a room in Dunedin, apparently this is the main tourist month in the south so I am now trying to book rooms ahead. A piece of advice for travelers if you are coming this way, do pack a wide variety of clothes, it will be hotter than you expect, colder than you expect, wetter or greyer than you expect, and thats probably all in the same day!

Dunedin offered me some more answers on Connie's trail. In Dunedin she stayed at a house called Tulcairn which is now a boarding house at Chalmers School. It seems to have had a good few additions over the years and the surrounding bush has certainly disappeared although the steep roads she records are still as heart-stopping. During my trip I have also been trying to find out more about a painting found in Connie's house. I had identified it as coming from the brush of Dorothy Richmond who we know had stayed at the House at Arisaig and whom Connie had first met when staying and travellng with members of the Richmond family in New Zealand. I had seen a very similar painting at a temporary exhibition at Te Papa Museum on a previous visit to NZ. I hadn't really made the connections then but had noted the work. This visit I hoped to find out more. In Dunedin I decided to visit Olverston House a large Edwardian home with all original contents. Now this whole story is full of co-incidental events to the extent that this one seems almost inevitable. When I had visited Maggie Atkinson in Nelson she had a book about New Zealand' most famous woman artist Frances Hodgkin and in it I found the very painting I was looking for. The book ascribed it to the Theomin gallery in Dunedin, but I could find no record of this gallery. From visiting Olverston I not only found the actual painting hanging on the walls but also discovered that its then owner David Theomin had commissioned the work from Frances when he met her on a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1902. Still be be discovered is when and why Dorothy painted exactly the same orange seller in Tangier because we know that she was not there at the same time. We know from Connie's journals that Dorothy was very friendly with Frances and that they both visited Tangiers although not at the same time Not only that, but at Olverston I found a large etching exactly the same as the one now hanging in the front porch at Arisaig , and orginating from Connie, by Scottish artist James McBeth a really gloomy prognosis called the " The harbour of refuge'. I never liked it but now at least feel I should look after it a bit better, Just how and when did it come to his home in Dunedin? via Dorothy or Frances perhaps or could he have known Connie? Well tomorrow I am off to Te Anau intending to meet up with friends Lindsay and Sarah Maclane from Yorkshire for a lunch at the tourist centre in Gore! The weather forecast is for torrential rain over the whole country.

Kaiteriteri

Having just had a remarkable and perfect day I can see exactly why Connie devoted so much of her diary to this area. On one hand it is quite like the west coast of Scotland at Arisaig which she so loved but you have to add sun, azure sea, subtropical bush, and sandy beaches and coves that seem to go on for ever. This day more than any other made me contemplate the differences between then and now. Then, I think that destination was what mattered, now, it is the journey. Then, they took time to savour the experience to enquire about and remember the details , now we see the spectacle, experience the thrill of a short engagement with the place and the achievement of having been there. I wonder if as a humanitarian, and as an arts crafts follower she would be able to see how in sacrificing the depth that was enjoyed by a few privileged individuals then, we now can offer this experience to the much wider and international community now.

One great excitement today was when our catamaran tourist boat was joined by a dolphin riding in front of one of our twin bows. He - or maybe she- had so much fun swimming at speed on its side, upside down and rolling over and we passengers were allowed on to the bow of our boat to take turns to watch. When we eventually speeded up the dolphin went under the boat and re surfaced at the stern leaping in the wake of the boat before finally giving up. For us it seemed very special but in reality I think it happens almost every day. We also saw some baby seals but at Arisaig they are so much closer and more numerous.

Our boat visited all the bays and island that Connie mentioned but I didn't get ashore. I did however decide to get off the boat and walk one section of the long Nelson walkway. I chose the section described as the most beautiful but what it didn't say was that it was also the steepest. taking so much time in photography I decided I would have to really push on if I was to get to the boat pick-up in time, only to discover that I had actually done it in far loess than the allocated time. Surely i will have a lost a few pounds there! But striding through the bush, even if I didn't have time to sit and stare and sketch and contemplate, I was accompanied all the way by the songs of the cicadas and the occasional burst of song from the bell-birds and the frequent interruptions of the cascading streams bursting their way through mossy rocks and fallen logs.

Now I have been asked to give a talk to students at Dunedin art School in 3 days time . I am in the far north of the south island and that is is in the south so now it means a couple of days hard driving. Connie travelled this part by boat so it is also a blank in her diary.

I will be back in touch soon