Surfer Girls Mount Beach

Harbour Dawn

Perfection

Main beach Mt Maunganui

Mauao Animals

What you doin up here?

 Rabbits, dozens of these guys are really destroying vast areas of the Mount (Mauao). They are even becoming very comfortable with humans. I counted 30 in the area!

BANG!.......Or Carrot (a specially spiced one)

Sorry not really in good taste but something needs to be done.

Exotic Walkway

Yatton Park Greerton

This Evening At Our Beach

Well not "our" beach but the one at our back door.

Sugru

This looks like really useful stuff. Not sure if it is in NZ as yet

Preserving Heritage

Christchurch earthquake damage. All efforts went into preserving many of the old buildings where there was a chance of restoration.

Genius Cake Art

The wooden pellet and the cans are a cake! Yes all edible. Amazing.

Made by

Cakecraft Cake and Decorating Supplies, 122 Grange Rd, Otumoetai 

Tauranga, New Zealand

Inspiring or Frightening?

FEST series - Aggy's reunion highlight video from fest series on Vimeo.

Crumpet

Poor old Crumpet she has got a cancer!

She is on chemo so we are all hoping she responds well.

Thomas Started Football

Skills training.

Playing for Otumoetai

Red Toadstool

Otherwise known as Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria)

This toadstool used to be used to kill flies when it we ground up with sugar and put out as bait.

Hence the name.

These guys are plentiful in our bush this time of year.
Spot the spider...

HSBC Sevens World Series Cup

Rob with "the" cup

Background

Bush Walk

Grace and I went bush on the weekend.

Part of the experience was a steep and long climb and slippery steep descent.

On the way up (me in towing mode) Grace was bent over exhausted, moaning and complaining then came a classic comment "I wish someone else was me" classic!

Once at the top all was forgotten.

Back down in the gully we took photos of each other to remember the trip.

Heading down. Note the steep descent to the right of the orange marker.

At the bottom

 Rock art!

 Old bugger!

Pop, I Want To Be A Photographer

So I lost my camera. Grace took some impressive shots quickly adapting to the technology I have spend  half a lifetime learning. Looks like the old boy may be redundant sooner than I expected! 

North From Mauao

Late evening with North rock island (with red beacon) and Mayor Island (Tuhua) on the horizon.

Codd Bottles

During November 1978 I went scuba diving in the Tauranga harbour with a good friend . This was a drift dive starting at the Matapihi rail bridge right down to where the road bridge crosses the harbour today.

We drifted along the bottom with the outgoing tide.

There has been a large storm that must have stirred things up because the harbour bottom had changed since our last dive (we used to repair moorings so were familiar with the area).

I was lucky to find three old bottles during that one dive and one of them had a marble in the neck.

The bottle sat in my library shelf for 36 years until recently.

While having dinner at a Japanese restaurant a few weeks back I was shocked to see them bring out a bottle of lemonade to my granddaughter as it had a marble in the neck! What's more, from memory, it looked mighty like the old bottle I had at home.

Afterwards I quickly went and pulled my old bottle out and compared it with the one we had brought home from the restaurant. They were very similar in more ways than just the marble in the neck.

Research followed.

My old bottle is approximately 128 years old (from 1888-1897) and the Japanese one is currently made by a company KIMURA for a lemonade known as Ramnue (see page 21 in the linked article) and to me it looks like it was made to the original patented design. (see page 8 in the linked article)

Now it turns out that these bottles (called Codd bottles) are not rare and are collected in all their various forms around the world.

I found an article that nicely tells the story. 

Link to story

The bottles.

128 years separate these examples. You can see my old bottle must have been semi hand made.

The story linked above does mention the Japanese version.

6.50 Thursday Morning

Tauranga harbour

Skygate

Paint Guys

Between us we have over 80 years in the New Zealand paint business.

What a ride!

Grace At Te Puna Quarry

We had fun exploring some new places at Te Puna Quarry Tauranga.

One of the original quarry diggers is preserved and the kids love it.

 Freezing water full of creepy stuff

  The shoe fence 

The Cloud

Is this it?

More Autumn McLaren Falls Park

So stunning this year

 This guy gave me a hell of a fright. All was quiet and still them BOOM x4 he popped up just across the water. But note all his decoys stuck into the paddock. He missed by the way!

The Grand Kids

Grace came to the dawn parade at the Mount this ANZAC day.

This is her story. I think I am the little guy with the yellow hair (read no hair just a glo)

Thomas had his first football game last weekend and he scored a goal. Wow!

New Zealand Tui

Brilliant colours this time of year

Otumoetai Water Front

Early this morning. These trees were here when I was a kid living on Beach Rd 58 years ago. It was a swamp then and we used to go exploring right in this very spot

Swans Tauranga Harbour

Tauranga harbour at sunrise today. Click on image

Tauranga Container Port

We have 7 cranes at work now at the Tauranga terminal. Not that long ago we were all amazed when the first crane broke the skyline over the Mount wharf

Getting Wet At McLaren

Someone needs to show these three how its done! Like you need to be in the river before the fun begins..

 No lessons needed here. Head right to the rough stuff.

Another good stop off at McLaren Falls Park Tauranga

Old Album

Ken and me with our little sister.

Ken & Francie

 Me and Francie