A Decorated Bridge

This bridge in the centre of Whangarei has been completely painted with various New Zealand icons and some poetry and has, so far at least, remained tag-free.  I wonder if this says something about providing pleasant environments.

Austin A40 Countryman

I was driving in the centre of Whangarei when an Austin A40 Countryman drew up beside me.   Dad had one of these and the design was, in my view, superb. Apart from the aesthetics of the clean lines designed by Pininfarina the car was very much more practical than anything of it's size in that ear that I can think of.  Mind you I doubt that any of the A40s of that era (The A40 Mk1 and 2 were produced between 1958 and 1968) were originally produced in yellow!

 

 

It's not going down hill it's just that I was holding my camera at the traffic lights and got it wrong.  The slope was too great to correct with Picassa!

An Evening Stroll in Whangarei

One evening after work Pauline and I decided to go for a walk along the banks of the Hatea River in Whangarei through the Parihaka Scenic Reserve a designated 45 minute walk (if you are not Pauline and I with our cameras).  We decided to leave one car at the far end and then drive to the start and return to the start in the car we'd left.  So the stroll to the far end took possibly twice the designated time.  Then we reslised that the keys to the spare car were still in the car at the start of the walk.  So we walked back to the start - a little more briskly (refreshment and loos featuring strongly in our minds by this time).  It was a wonderful walk in a thickly wooded area.

 

An 'extreme fitness' group on the other side of the river

   

The ducks seemed less concerned

 

The river looking to it's mouth

   

A fish!

And sparkles for Adrian - without a filter!

Whangarei Town Basin

Before we set off on our journey North I had a few days to do my own thing whilst Pauline was at work.  I spent some time in Whangarei.  I have blogged on The Town Basin before but I do think it is worth another few shots:

   

It's a Small World

Last September CJ, Jo and I went to Carr Farm and in a gift shop there saw some metal artworks.  I had never seen them before and wsa very taken with them and bought one which now sits in my Eagleton home on the outside of the bathroom door.  CJ was very taken with one particular one of some fish - it's the last one on his post (see Carr Farm above).   When I was in Nautical Trenz in Whangarei Town Basin last weekend I saw exactly the same fish artwork that CJ had fallen in love with.  So there you are.  Travel from one side of the globe to the opposite and you can buy exactly the same unusual piece of artwork - made somewhere in between no doubt.  It is a very small world these days.

The Town Basin, Whangarei

It seems hardly possible that a week has passed since I was staying in Northland and a week and two days since I took these pictures in Whangarei.  How time it doth pass so quickly.  These were taken in the Town Basin in Whangarei.

The large and the small

 

Whilst there's nothing new in a group of new 'old' shops on the water front these have been very well done and there is a superb gift shop called Nautical Trenz (of which more later)

 

I love the detail and superb quality of this public bench

 

 And every public place has to have a clock - especially for Scriptor there is a blue post box next to the red and grey one at the base of the tower

The Sun Has Got His Hat On

Going back to Friday afternoon in Northland and our trip down the Whangarei Heads  we came across this delightful shelter at the waterside.  Well actually the shelter was pretty ordinary but, as is so often the case in New Zealand, it was decorated splendidly.

 

Whangarei Heads

I landed in Whangarei around lunchtime.  We set off to explore the Whangarei Heads: the area to the East and South of the town on the eastern side of the Harbour.  Frankly there was so much to see and so much to tell you about that these postings will be spread over the next week or perhaps even more and will be interspersed with postings from Whakatane and Napier.

Welcome to Whangarei

I had a wonderful weekend up in Northland.  Never having been North of Auckland before I wasn't sure what to expect.  I've see a great deal of the country from Auckland south to its southern tip on Stewart Island and the one thing that anyone will tell you is that this is a country of considerable variety and beauty:  glaciers and fjords, sub-tropical rain forests and scrubland, volcanos live and dead, long sandy beaches and sea cliffs.  The variety never ends.  So I really had no idea what to expect in Northland except, of course, the inevitable beauty.  The hop on a Beech 20 seat twin turbo-prop from Auckland to Whangarei takes 35 minutes officially but, in reality, it took considerably less.

Coming into Whangarei from the South I had my first glimpse of what I came to know as the Uppity Downity Mountains.  The hill under the arrow became particularly significant.

 

Welcome to Whangarei and my weekend's adventure

Off To Northland

I leave on the 11.40 plane for Auckland and then from Auckland to Whangarei.  The pronunciation of that name varies depending upon the speaker.  Most of the newscasters seem to call it Fan(g)eray.  The g is sort of silent.  Unfortunately I can't really use phonetic code.  Some people call it Whan(g)eray.  Some call it Fan(g)erie (as in pie).  Anyway that's where I'm headed.