MMPhoto: March 2015

Mar 31, 2015

Beautiful Millbrook

Resort near Arrowtown. A stunning place to stay.

Lots more coming on this trip.

Mar 30, 2015

Mar 29, 2015

Old Wagon Wheel

Old wagon wheel outside the Cardrona Hotel

Mar 28, 2015

William Gilbert Rees

Looks over tourists as they do what they do in Queenstown in 2015

A big difference to what he would have expected or experienced.

His story

William Rees

Otago Icons

Cardrona Hotel

Been there since well before the mountains were formed.....

Everyone welcome

Dunedin and the Speights brewery some time in the early to mid 1900's

Taken from a picture on the wall of the Irish bar in Queenstown

Grace Out Riding

I was nicely surprised to see this picture arrive in my mail this morning.

She looks a little out of her comfort zone but happy.

I think many young girls (especially) are attracted to horses. My older sister spent much of her younger years with horses including competition.

Go Grace...

Mar 26, 2015

Mar 25, 2015

90 kph Landscapes

While hurtling along in the bus between Queenstown and Milford Sound, fighting window reflections and fast moving subjects, these shots taken through the window!

click on pics for larger versions.

Mar 22, 2015

Central Otago Roads

Visitors to this region, especially from overseas, are getting into trouble and having some terrible accidents.

Last week we had the good fortune to spend a week traveling around Central Otago.

Several things struck me. Relatively low vehicle intensity with plenty of time to check out the big scenery (big mistake!). Just when you look away around the corner comes a fleet of vehicles with drivers doing exactly the same thing!

The roads look long and flat but wrong again they undulate and wander.

Then at night, especially when its wet, the roads are really dark and the road reflective signage (truck loads of it) is so distracting and confusing even we struggled to cope (48 years driving experience all over NZ).

Its no wonder visitors have trouble.

We did see a classic and really scary example of bad driving as we came into Glenorchy.

On a blind corner a tourist (fairly obvious) did a U turn within 50 meters of a blind corner to his right as he just swung out onto the road not looking in either direction!

Following are a few shots I took from the back of the bus with a telephoto lens as we traveled back from Milford Sound.

Roads wander

Click on photo to see Batmobile

And undulate

Then here they come

Mar 21, 2015

Sun Strike

From the top of the high cliffs around Milford Sound Fiordland

Mar 14, 2015

90 Not Out

Robyn and I were privileged to be invited to lunch to celebrate the 90th birthday of Trevor Martin our close neighbour. Trevor is a real gentleman with an amazing past career in cricket umpiring and a current deep interest in sport generally.

The story is in the link below and here a few pictures I took on my phone camera.

We wish Trevor all the very best for his years ahead.

Trevor's Story

Trevor