A wedding

My good friend and fellow landscape photographer Roger married Kara yesterday here in Wanaka. As groomsman part of my task was to make sure his camera and tripod ended up in the right places, such as the final staged photo shoot up on Mt Roy [via heli] in the evening, but I had enough free time to follow the event and the official photographer with my own camera.

We went to the standard wedding photo locations first, and I must say they do provide memorable settings...


Roger's mum, a very special person to me, came out from the UK . It was lovely to see her again, and she was one of the first in the church - a very top day for her especially...


Plans of a musical nature are hatched pre ceremony...


Anna the official photographer readies Roger's nephew Chris [US], for a photo...


As nearly all parties in the ceremony are professionals in the medical world, an ambulance was used at one stage to ferry us to the photo shoot locations. Roger's sense of humour is obviously alive and well...


Roger and Kara's dog Mylie was a bit of star, but all became serendipitous when another wedding arrived at one of the locations, and then a family out walking arrived, and all had the same breed...


I wish them well in their commitment of love...


Thanks Roger and Kara, and families, for a most memorable and fun day

PS See Roger's landscape photography work here

PS 2 Mon. 19th Apr: it seems this blog is now being used by family in the UK etc. so here are a whole bunch of extra photos:

A celebration of our wild New Zealand landscape and National Parks - and a "heads up"

Quentin Smith of Wanaka has recently formed a FaceBook group: Hands off Mt Aspiring NP and a few days ago membership stood at 5000, and it's now well over 6000!

... which relates to the noises our new, seemingly unenlightened and uninspired, New Zealand Government are making to initiate mining investigations in our National Parks. Not only my local Mt Aspiring National Park I might add!

While they say it's only a stock-take even that is a transgression and impossible to do without major disturbances and destruction of our heritage put aside for all coming generations.

Having got this off my chest [link below] I'm here sharing some of my favourite landscape photos I've made of our wild New Zealand landscape.

This is Mt Brewster - somewhat in the middle of the area of Mt Aspiring National Park our National Government has it's beady eyes on [and in bed with which multi national corporation that historically is always in the background taking profits when it comes to mining resources in any country?]...


Marks Flat under Mt Hooker - a huge tract of land designated at Conservation Estate in South Westland. Should it be part of the World Heritage Site in this area [Te Wahipounamu - South West New Zealand]?


You can "mine" great powder on the slopes of Mt Cook in Mount Cook National Park...


Alma hut in Westland National Park, with Franz Josef neve behind...


Mt Aspiring from Cascade Saddle


Lake Hankinson in Fiordland National Park [not far from the Milford Track]...


Looking down one of the significant glaciers in Westland National Park


There is a FaceBook generated link here, to view, or I suggest join the group: Hands off Mt Aspiring NP.

Or failing above then click on Groups in your FaceBook account and type in "Hands off Mt Aspiring NP"

And on a related matter this week I found out that New Zealand has 56,000 Kms of public roads that are not public, and our current New Zealand Government, and the preceding one it seems, have apparently been doing their best to sweep these "paper roads" under the carpet by use of cunning legal moves to give the land to those [many of whom have already fenced them off], in exchange for easements. The former offer us, the recreational users and owners unfettered access, the latter, easements, do absolutely nothing for us - only for self serving interests of those who've squatted on our rights.

The theme of past follies continues

For my last two posts I've visited the past - first a family internment and then about the local celebration of the first ascent of Mt Aspiring last weekend. Well the trend continues: this week gone by I attended our annual Wanaka Search and Rescue helicopter training. While it's tempted me to write about adventures around helicopters and rescues that went well or not-so-well, a friend has recently lent me his new colour slide scanner so I've gone intensely for scanning hundreds of my landscape photography collection which goes back 40 years or more. It can do about 40 an hour, which is a lot better than my one at 8/hr. So dear readers, I've been so delighted with the results I've decided to share some of my favourite images from what seems like a past life:

Bluffs and rainbow on Mt Hooker taken from Marks Flat in South Westland. In fact I spent a week looking at this hillside while living under a nice rock riding out a nor wester once. Rocks are very peaceful things to live under as soon as I get over thinking about earthquakes, but none-the-less it was really nice to see this little reminder of sunshine...


Market gardens in North Otago...


Mt Hooker - waterfall...


Bush with light-shafts in seaward Kaikouras...


Sunset on an Otago beach...


And to finish on something not 30 years old, the new Squirrel coming in carefully for our recent Search and Rescue practice...


Not a good situation in which to contemplate walking uphill away from the helicopter!

Nostalgia is not what is used to be!

As I get older it seems everything becomes more dynamic almost daily. But when we live in this paradise called New Zealand, and Wanaka the growing town I live in, I lament some things that pass under the guise of progress. Our new govt. seems bent on turning back the clock too as they seemingly contemplate undoing good work on legislation such as the Resource Management Act, and there are mutterings about our privacy and rights being compromised, and exploration mining in National Parks, and did I mention the insidious way an Aust. Company is starting to promote more dams on the Clutha River.

Why too does John Key remind me of Tony Blair associated with "over the top" regulation and eroded privacy! We need to learn from history!

Life here was once more fun, but if I get "down' about this I remind myself to look up at the mountains - they endure and are a constant, along with the westerly sighing and sometimes roaring as I write.

It was only 16 years ago I was part of a horse trekking company right here in town, but for many reasons, not the least being traffic and urban sprawl taking over grazing, we shut it down several years ago.

We used to mainly take clients up Mt Iron...


I forget the names of these neddies but one might be Monty. I'll never forget Barney though: he'd play fetch with a tennis ball, use his teeth to untie the hitching ropes on other horses, go under electric fences and stick his head in the kitchen window to see what was happening, and he was a big horse too.

One night he escaped from his solo occupation of a paddock near Mt Iron, and he galloped past our house to be with his mates grazing down by lake. We heard the thunder of hooves and simply exclaimed, "that'll be Barney - we better go and let him in the paddock". Imagine if that happened today - what a fuss there'd be! And there was another time when about twelve of them got out at 8 am one Sat. and galloped towards town. We headed them off on the out-skirts, but oh what fun and how magnificent a sight. But if that happened today it'd be chaos of one sort or another and I doubt anyone would be amused - probably more scared and we'd probably make national TV news!

Feeding out post snow storms was always pretty, but it was wise to put out many small piles of hay so the horses would not all fight over one. They get quite hungry in these conditions...


A few valleys were easier to access back then too...


We used to do the odd trip overland to the lake outlet - the start of the Clutha River in fact, and the Asians used to love the colour of the grass...


Bye for now - got to fly - work time!

Bits and pieces: Clutha River, crosses, Cardrona, and the horror of removing your own leg to live

I've blogged a few times on the recent revival of plans to dam the Clutha River, and it's nice to see I'm not alone:

The new Clutha River Forum, sent a press release to the media on Friday 16th October. They have considered Contact Energy’s four dam options, and unanimously support "Option five – no more dams" ...more>>


My son and friends like to do what kids like to do, and have done for generations: float down the Clutha...


On my last post on the Clutha a couple of weeks ago I posted photos of an unusual cliff Dougal and I came across. According to my good friend Ian who used to work as a scientist on the mountain building processes in New Zealand, this is layer after layer of glacial silt, much of it deposited by wind, then modified by the ebb and flow of the glacier's terminal and lateral moraines, and weathering, but as it's densely packed it's resisted this quite well - the scolloped areas indicating less dense packing...


During the week I had cause to make some photos of a local Wanaka church to illustrate the invitations to a friend's wedding next year. Although they cannot all be seen here I was intrigued by the number of crosses [4 at least] adorning the structure's roof and how light and shadow add some more...


This weekend has not been blest with good weather, but sniffing a clearance at noon today Dougal and I headed to the top of the Crown Range road to go exploring to the east.

Dougal looks down the Cardrona Valley...


A substantial ancient landslip [dead center of photo]...


With amazing speed a snow storm came in...


...and then it cleared again for the rest of our descent down an easy road...


And lastly dear readers if you're feeling hard done-by with life and maybe things like the recent increases to our NZ ACC fees, or whatever, we can get some perspective [thanks to Bob McKerrow's blog] on life by reading how Ramlan had to saw his own leg off ...more>>