The Birdmen of Russell

Russell is a lovely town just down the road from Bill and Toni's place. Each July they hold a Birdman contest off the local dock.

What amazes me about these things is how very few of the contestants really try to fly. how difficult can it be? Just fit a gyrocopter onto a bike and away you go. the guy who tried to take off backwards was the only one trying and he nearly made it. His wings filled with air and he nearly caught a big gust which would have lifted him, however, he overbalanced and didn't quite take off.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Zion Wildlife Park is about an hour's drive south of Bill and Toni's place so off we went to view the white tigers and Barbary lions.

Zion, the big guy shown at the top is the actual lion used to create the model and digitised image for Asian in the film. It all smacked of a good day out. However, the reality was somewhat different. We expected to drive round the grounds with the doors and windows locked while man-eating beasts sat on top of the vehicle hungrily eyeing up the smaller morsels fixed into their travel seats - we'd acquired a son of a friend who had business that day nearby.

The animals were largely kept in surprisingly small cages and, although they seemed healthy enough, the layout and conditions were hardly 21st century animal husbandry. One cage held about 10 or 12 lions and at feeding time they went quite ballistic, jumping on each other and fighting to get to the gate for their feed. Once they had each bagged a lump of dead meat they quietly settled down to their feed but the crowding was a bit worrying.

The guy who owns the place, Craig Busch, has a popular TV programme, The Lion Man, which makes him out to be a veritable Florence Nightingale to the big cats but he's also famous for a bit of 'domestic' after he arrived home one night to find his partner in bed with two guys. A beautiful quote from his trial for beating her up was, 'He walked in and grabbed his partner by the hair, though the couple tried to calm him and explain things weren't as they seemed, the court was told.'

Yeah, right! Neither is the Wildlife Park.

Bay of Islands

OK, not much writing for quite some time. I spent two and a half weeks on the road of which three days were supposed to be holiday. 'Supposed' because I spent a lot of the three producing feedback against a proposed 'Staffing Realignment' which has the potential to destroy everything we've done over the past few years.

I spent some days in Auckland with our team going to the World Youth (renamed Junior) Championships in Mexico and I must have had a good effect because we were totally outstanding! Then I drove about 3 hours north of Auckland to Kawakawa for a Northland camp. Going to Northland is a bit like being a missionary because they don't have a big population, many pools or a lot of heated pools so many of them can't train year-round. However, their results aren't as good as Canadian Summer Club results so something isn't working well.





Bill and Toni have taken a 12-month rent in Okiato overlooking Waikare Cove so I stayed up there for a few days. There are a couple of very friendly, HUGE goats and life is idyllically gentle.

There are oyster farms nearby so we dropped in at Orongo Bay to buy some one evening. The 'shop' (hut) on the waterside was deserted but there was a nice note on the counter, 'Boxes of 25 in fridge; please leave $20 in the grey box.' Bay of Islands is a civilized place.

I had brought a very nice bottle of Ata Rangi Craighall Chardonnay 2006 from Martinborough and, paired with the oysters, it was stunning. I can't think of a more perfect complementary duo of culinary delights.

Strange and Weird Things

Yesterday I drove reasonably aimlessly around and visited Pukaha Mount Bruce which is a wildlife sanctuary. The weather was mild drizzle so most of the aviaries were silent and, in most, no birds could be found. However a kokako was on show and agreed to pose for this picture.

A good thing was the kiwi nocturnal house. Kiwis are nocturnal characters so wildlife sanctuaries reverse their day by lighting them up at night and having them in near darkness during the day. This convinces the kiwis they are living in the northern hemisphere and they happily wander around sticking their long beaks into the ground foraging for grubby things while visitors goggle at then through the glass walls of their 'homes'(after allowing the advised ten minutes for their eyes to adapt to the 'night'. But:

This is due to their long beaks, which have nostrils at the end of them. As the length of a birds beak is measured from the tip of the beak to the nostril, the Kiwi has the shortest beak of any bird.

Of course, as the nocturnal house was dark I couldn't take any pictures (flash not allowed).

Female kiwis must have a hell of time as their eggs are about six times bigger than expected for a bird of their size and leads to speculation that they may originally have been much bigger, almost reaching Moa proportions..





Today the x-Cook Strait fairies were cancelled because the weather was too bad but over the hill in the Wairarapa it was quite nice until after lunch when the rain arrived.

I took a drive through Gladstone and the surrounding areas and found some rather strange things popping up in fields and on fences. the countryside reminded me of Ladner in places and rural Ohio in others. I tried to include Stonehenge Aotearoa but I was too early - visitors from 2pm!

Here we have a big bull, a mushroom, a blue Cape Cod house (very unusual for NZ), a strange what appeared to be a chimney, a mailbox, a welcoming gate, a commemoration of an aviator, his plane, a crashed cyclist, multiple signposts, a pink Christmas cracker, a broken house, a really, really broken house, a Meccano man, and some llamas who were quite affronted that I took their picture.