Author: Peter Peryer

This author has written 801 articles

Stony Batter, Waiheke Island 2008


 
Back here in my studio in New Plymouth and in the
peace of the New Year holidays, I’m able to trawl
through some photos that I took a couple of years ago
but not ever printed them up for show.
 
Here is one that I took on Waiheke Island.
 
The graffiti is old, dating back to the Second World War.

Fuchsia

 
 
A few days ago I visited friends in Devonport.
 
In their fecund garden there is a fuchsia, chest
high at least, consequently the flowers are pendulous, hanging in a way that
enhances their sculptural nature.
 
This flower is a first generation descendent
of a specimen that flourished on Herald Island,
in the upper reaches of the Waitemata, under
the Harbour Bridge, bearing right towards
Whenuapai, Hobsonville, and Kumeu and below Greenhithe
near Paremoremo.
I lived there for several years
and this flower has come from there.
 
HMS Herald named it when they went on an exploratory cruise while having brought
the Treaty of Waitangi down to Auckland from the Bay of Islands for signing and had a few days to spare.
They were able to circumnavigate Herald Island then, now there is a causeway and heavy
silting although snapper still come up here to breed. The mangroves too
are flourishing and they support an abundance of life.
 
 

Invercargill 2

 
 
Another photo from my time in Invercargill.
 
Even though I lived near this swan it took me a
couple of months to really notice it.
 
It is about three stories up, perhaps two.

Invercargill

 
 
This afternoon I have had an opportunity to fossick around
in my computer.
 
My main computer is now a Mac but I have only recently, well
within the last two years anyway, changed over from PC. The PC
files have been transfused into the Mac and that is where I have been
today. In the transfused files I mean.
 
There are some photos in there that I cannot just put in the rubbish tin,
the Geiger counter is clicking. I have something to learn from them.
 
Tonight I was going back over Invercargill files, two years ago.
It was one of the richest times of my life.
 
This cat was in the street window of a store. It is of course, fake.
 
 

Nikau

 
I have just visited a subtropical garden in Kerikeri, in the far north
of New Zealand. I saw a lot of interesting plants but was
particularly struck by these berries on a Nikau palm.
What made it particularly appealing was that, because 0f a balcony that I was standing on they were almost at eye level.

The Hokianga


 
 
A couple of days ago I was visiting the Far North. At one stage
driven from Kerikeri, past Waimate North, through Okaihau where I once taught, with low flat brown Lake Omapere on the left and down a long, winding and largely unsealed road to Horeke, right to the banks of the Hokianga. Horeke was a sizable part of my childhood because my parents had the hotel at Takeke, about 30 minutes inland from there.

Clapham’s Clock Museum.

 
If visiting Whangarei at any time do call into this museum which is down
at The Basin, where there are boats and places to eat and also a giant sundial which told
me with great accuracy that the time was 3.25 pm.
There are hundreds of clocks on exhibit and the collection
is growing further as more clocks are donated. There are now
about 1000 clocks above the examples that the original Clapham
collection contained. Unfortunately there is now not enough room
for them all to be displayed so they have to be rotated.
My overall impression of the collection is that there is a high
degree of comicality about many of these clocks and I consequently
spent much of my time chuckling to myself.

The eyes on the Monkey clock kept moving from left to right
or perhaps it was the other way around. Remember that clicking on
these images will bring them up in a larger dimension. Not another dimension
alas, just a larger one.
 

Devonport, Auckland

 
I visited a garden in Devonport and I was struck by this flower.
I lived on the Devonport peninsula for something like 11 years, however I moved to Ponsonby in 1987. It was the year of an economic crash, I remember that.
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