Category: Blog

I was at my sister’s house this evening and she was fretting that my nephew, who is away for a few days camping with friends at Tawharanui, hadn’t texted her all day – even though the arrangement was he wouldn’t text everyday ! This got us talking about how mobile phones had changed the expectation of parents on the volume of communication required by their children. I commented on how we used to bugger off for the entire day when we were young and no one worried at all, well maybe they did and we just didn’t know it ! I must ask my mother.

As I started writing this post I was reminded of that conversation and how when I was in my early teens we used to spend a few days up at Mangawhai each summer and my friends and I would go spearfishing in the estuary. We would be gone for hours with snorkelling gear and spear guns and come home late in the day with the occasional fish for dinner. No one ever came to look for us, even when a large school of sharks swam up the estuary and the beaches were all closed… We spent many happy summers snorkelling at many beaches around Auckland and further afield.

When I left school many years ago, through a lack of any direction, I followed my dad and did an aircraft engineering apprenticeship with Air New Zealand. I stuck out the five years of the apprenticeship, but left soon after as engineering really was not my thing. Soon after I started the apprenticeship I realised what I really wanted to be was a marine biologist, but I never did anything about it at the time, or ever since and have only done one dive in the last twenty years.

Hmm, rather long pre-amble, sorry ! back to reality !

An acquaintance of mine, Alex (I am sure he will appear later in this blog as I am staying with him in Kuching), told me about the awesome diving to be had all over SE Asia so I decided it was time to live that thirty year old dream and do a dive course before I left. I signed up for a four day course with the local PADI shop, Dive HQ in New Lynn and completed the course last week.

The first two days were spent watching videos and answering questions in the mornings with the afternoons spent practising the skills in the pool in the afternoon.  It was certainly interesting and at times challenging, learning to do some of the skills around things that can go wrong takes a certain amount of trust that you are not going to suck in mouthfuls of water with each long breath. The last two days were open water dives and sadly we were not graced with good weather!

Wednesday we went to Jones Bay on the Tawharanui Peninsular, ideally we would have dived at the Goat Island marine reserve, but the wind and swell direction put paid to that. Jones bay was still rough, but once under the surface the visibility improved slightly and the swell dropped.  We completed two dives and demonstrated a number of skills to the instructor.

Jones Bay

Gearing up

There was no improvement in the wind on Thursday and the showers were far more frequent so a decision was made for us to dive in Lake Pupuke on the north shore. This was greeted with some nervousness as someone drowned there earlier in the year on a dive course, though not with out school. I was glad we did it, I can say I have dived there and will never need to repeat ! it was an interesting dive, though with a lot of surface chop the water was quite murky.  We did two short dives and demonstrated the remaining skills and then got out fairly quickly !

Lake Pupuke

Ready to go, warmer in the wetsuit, yay for summer 🙂

I enjoyed the course, glad I did it in NZ before I left, diving in cold, murky and choppy waters means I will be completely relaxed in clear, warm and still waters in SE Asia – just make sure there are no sharks !

After a reasonable bike ride on Friday and a good four hours of walking on Saturday I was not fully committed to a warm run in the Waitakeres on Sunday morning ! But this was one of my last chances to run around the cascades section of the park and I was very keen to go there as the trails were new to me.

Vicki and I met for a pre-run coffee  at Arataki (parking in the new “long term Hilary Trail” car parks !) and then headed off in the car to the Cascades trails.

The tracks start on a nice graded metal trail with a number of steps, clearly designed for tourists to see this beautiful section of bush. Sadly not far in to the bush we came across a massive (and ancient) Kauri lying dead next to the track 😦

I have seen a lot of signs regarding Kauri Dieback disease and the shoe cleaning sprays and notices are all over the ranges, however this was the first time I had really seen the impact of this fungus on a mature tree. It is utterly tragic !  There were a number of dead and dying Kauri all thorough this section of park, though fortunately there was plenty of sign of young growth as well. I just hope they do not get infected as well.

My daughter has borrowed my little camera so I didn’t haven’t on the trip and completely forgot to use the Galaxy phone to take a picture when we passed the dead kauri. However I did remember it later when we passed the new growth. Very disappointed in the resolution though I may need to play with the settings a bit.

Over almost three hours of running and walking the hills we were back at the car. I was utterly knackered after the 3 days of activity. Great trails, great views and a good fun run, especially running down Pukematekao !

We ran  Lower Kauri, Long road, Fence Line, Anderson (Up, up and more up !), Scenic Drive, Pukematekao Rd and Track.

Almost caught up with the blogs, dive school to go !

A few years ago a day off work for a day trip to ride the mountain bike trails in Rotorua was a fairly regular occurrence. Since I have been running more and riding less, trips to Rotorua have become very rare indeed.

Now that most of the pre-trip tasks have been completed and I have a bit more time I managed to convince my long term riding buddy, Miles, to take last Friday off work to go riding.

I stayed the night at his place and we were up early, got the single speeds loaded on the car and were on the road before 8.00 AM. We took a petrol and coffee stop at the BP service centre just past Papakura and my damn car failed to start, shit balls ! A $195 membership renewal later and the AA turned up and confirmed the issue was  the starter motor. The AA guy gave it a good smack with a hammer and we were off, under the advisement that the starter had 2 or 3 more smacks in it before it died. With that in mind we decided to continue on the way to Rotovegas and take the risk, the weather was awesome and it would be my last chance to ride there for a while so what the heck.

The rest of the drive down was uneventful and we were only half an hour later than expected to the trails. As neither of us had ridden there for a while we decided to stick to a route that was loosely familiar to me and, as we were on single speeds and I was not feeling on top of my fitness, we stuck to the middle and inner trails.

We rode the road up to Hill Rd with the aim of starting with the Rollercoaster track, but the trail head had been forested and was too hard to find so we shot (I walked) up the road a bit further and started the ride on Chestnut Link.

After not riding for a while I was extremely cautious on the trails. Riding way too slowly while sussing out my balance my front wheel hit a root and I did a slow rotate over the handlebars and on to my face on the ground, awesome, 50 metres into a ride and I am down. ! Fortunately the only thing hurt was my pride, though I never really recovered my confidence and did not rail the trails as fast as I have in the past.

The morning was quite warm and humid with a bit of pollen in the air, unusually I struggled with breath on a couple of occasions and had to have a mid trail rest on the Chop Suey track.  We rode the ‘Chinese menu” trails then down the awesome Dragons Tail track, followed by some forestry  road up to Challenge Track.

 (mmmm, should have sucked in that gut a wee bit harder)

Every time I ride the Rotorua trails and get to the Dipper track I have a debate in my head as to whether this is the best bike park trail in the forest, or maybe the country. For a reasonably flat trail it is just so much fun, beautiful fast track with some awesome high-speed, bermed corners and a couple of small humps to get a bit of air off.

It is always a great ride at Rotorua !

The best news was the car started first time to get us home, and then again the next morning when i drove it to the auction house for sale, i think it knew it was its last journey.

PS –  the car sold yesterday for a shit load less than I would have liked, but I was warned it would and at least it is sold.

Kohi Beach

Wow, it is finally done !  My house has been pretty much cleared of all its stuff.  Just waiting for the guy who is going to pick up the TV and then the last of the furniture is gone. All that is left are a few personal belongings that I will take with me when I go dossing for the next 3 weeks, a couple of boxes to go into storage after breakfast tomorrow and Cheeky the cat. If hasn’t done a runner today – he was here this morning for breakie but I haven’t seen him since. I was hoping to take him to his new home today but  it will have to wait until tomorrow morning now.

Most of my furniture has been taken by my youngest son, Aiden, he will use some and store some at his flat. I am not really interested in having any of it back again.

The only piece of furniture I am keeping is a beautiful coffee table Domenic (my oldest son) made me for a Christmas present 3 years ago.  I am renting a 1 * 2 metre storage unit which i have crammed full of books, clothes and other bits and pieces over the past week. The coffee table and final box load will go in tomorrow morning.

So, tonight is my last night in the house and I am camping in my own bedroom ! Tomorrow I clean and pack my gear and shut the doors for the last time.

House –  I have some good memories but I never did like you !

Summer was a gift to my oldest son, Domenic, a few years ago. Unfortunately Dom is now living in Queensland now and cannot look after his cat.

I have tried to re-home him myself, but that has proven unsuccessful, so this morning I took him to the SPCA for re-homing. I am sure they will have no issues finding him a home as he is a very affectionate cat. Though he has taken cat laziness to a whole new level!

With strands of white fur stuck to most of my clothes I will be taking him where ever I go.

My daughter Meliesha has been living in Europe, mainly in the UK,  for over two years now and has come home for Christmas and a bit of summer sun.

Sadly, I move out of the house in three days and will be dossing at friends myself so she cannot stay with me more than a couple of nights, the house is looking fairly sparse as well. She also had to spend this morning sorting through her old possessions to work out what needs to be stored or thrown away, so not the best welcome home in the world.

It is awesome to have her home and great to see she is well and still smiley and still loses everything in five minutes and is exactly the same as when she left, except she has a funny English accent and says “quid” and “sofa” and “sweets”.

This banner was hung on the fence up my drive way when we arrived from the airport. Mel has the bestest friends and brothers.

On Friday night Fetus Productions and The Features performed at the Kings Arms as part of the Flying Nun 30th Anniversary series. Both bands featured Jed Town. The last time I saw Fetus Productions was at the Windsor Castle in 1985 and they were possibly the loudest band I have seen, I must look for any photos from that gig (edit – I found 1 only, below)

They were OK, Features were better on the night and they played City Scenes which was cool, they didn’t play it at the AK79 Reunion shows a couple of years back.

Jed Town –  Fetus Productions at the Windsor Castle, 1985