I have been undertaking my recent activities at a very casual pace and now is the time to liven things up as we move towards Xmas and summer.
When in Auckland I spend the odd night camped in my big back yard - known to a lot of you as the Auckland Domain.
During a recent stay when parked near the Wintergarden I was rudely awoken in the middle of the night by a raucous bunch of film technicians. They had arrived very early to set up for a shoot in the morning. I had no option but to vacate their film set.
My adventuring in and around Auckland has taken me to a number of regional parks. These are great places to park The Bus With No Name for a night or two. I happened to be at Tawharanui Regional Park, about 80 kilometres north of Auckland, when an earthquake hit Vanuatu. A tsunami was forecast for NZ and the over-zealous park rangers evicted me from the campground and insisted I headed for higher ground. Any resultant wave was so small it failed to trouble the myriad of sophisticated recording instruments scattered throughout our oceans.
Getting up close and personal with nature in the Wenderholm Regional Park resulted in this shot of a handsome young tui gathering nectar from flax flowers.
A highlight of recent times was a return trip to the far north for the Hokianga Country Music Festival. Revelry was centred on the Opononi Hotel and other venues included the pubs of Omapere, Rawene and Kohukohu. The event brought out some of the local cowboys who had a bit of a shootout at the pub.
They made their getaway on their trusty steeds.
Apart from smoking dope, linedancing is the most popular pastime in the far north. Everyone dons a cowboy hat and boots and rips into it with a vengeance, boot-slapping to the mangled strains of Dolly Parton.
I had my own cowboy hat and boots, plus my tokotoko stick, so I joined the linedancing troupe. I instantly created chaos with my unrehearsed moves which seemed to be 180 degrees opposed to those of the local country folk.
In the far north minor irritations get dealt with promptly and with rural flair. I extracted a wobbly front tooth with this pair of pliers!
The Willie Nelson look had developed through autumn and winter.
The arrival of spring and the promise of a bevy of summer beauties demanded a haircut.
The arrival of spring and the promise of a bevy of summer beauties demanded a haircut.
Note how I have miraculously converted a host of six-packs into rippling blubber!
The next couple of months will be spent on Great Barrier Island. I will ship The Bus With No Name on the vehicular ferry and I hope to spend December and January on "Barrier Time".
Merry Christmas to you all and I'll talk to you again in 2010.
Good luck to all your families.
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