Sweet summertime on Great Barrier Island mm The long-awaited warmth of summertime is always sweet, but on GBI this year there was bittersweet as well. The drought dragged on, with last year’s rainfall only about 45 percent of the historical average and not enough in January to make much difference. It’s been heartbreaking to watch the land brown off and trees succumb, and to hear of dried-up mountain streams and struggling freshwater ecosystems. People’s water tanks ran dry, and though you can get water delivered it’s from a stream and not intended for drinking. Nowadays it seems it takes cyclones to get decent rain, which can sometimes be much too much of a good thing. The 60 mm the island was blessed with one day in mid-February was brought by ex-tropical cyclone Lucas, which caused flooding and damage in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. The other sour note this summer on the Barrier was the unprecedented inundation, not of water, but of travel-starved New Zealanders longing for a holiday somewhere, anywhere, overseas. The packed-out island couldn’t cope. Restaurants and cafes had to close and wait for the next barge when they ran out of food. Some couldn’t open at all for lack of sufficient staff. Flights were increased markedly and new routes were added, car parks were chocka and more rental cars were on the roads. Some holiday homes packed in visitors beyond reasonable limits for septic systems and neighbours, and empty sections owned by off-islanders became tent cities. Those not involved in tourism haven’t been very happy, and I don’t think anyone wants to see the very basic island infrastructure upgraded to meet demand. That will be the beginning of the end, as it has been for special places around the world. Every place was special once and not many still retain their original beauty. Wishes for You for 2021 Be all that, and the world, as it may, these universal wishes came our way in the holiday-time mail! Make yourself a set and have a play and a ponder. Leave them out on your table and watch your visitors, irresistibly drawn, begin to arrange them in the way that makes the most sense to them. Guaranteed to bring forth philosophical conversations on what life’s all about and insights into one another’s hearts and minds. Joy Happiness Love Ease Goodness Friendship Connection Laughter Yumminess Peace Light Well-Being Health Giggles Beauty Fun Surprises We send to you all these wishes and many more just like them! The right person for the job Do you own two pairs of shoes? Can you replace worn clothes? Do you sleep in a good bed? Have you eaten meat or fish twice in the last week? When was your last one-week holiday? Could you pay an unexpected $500 expense within a month without borrowing? These are a few of the questions you’d be asked if Ken Blackwell or another of the 170 Stats NZ interviewers around the country knocks on your door. In this survey he’s seeking information about how households are faring economically, their living standards and child poverty. Does the income of this household meet its members’ needs? If it does, can they in fact access their basic needs? Ken is the son of our dear friends, Bev and Les, who live just down the road. Theirs is the fantabulous garden I wrote about in my June 2018 post. After Ken records the responses on a laptop, he sends them to subject matter experts, who analyse them and prepare reports so that, as he puts it, “Jacinda knows what’s happening around the place”. Ken also conducts the “general social survey”, with questions about residents’ feeling of safety in their neighbourhood, their nearest shops, health care and other basic services, as well as their income and expenditures. Households to be interviewed are selected by location only. They’re sent a letter advising that an interviewer will soon contact them to arrange a visit. Though some people don’t want to participate, the fact is that it’s just about compulsory. It takes finely honed communication skills to succeed at this job, starting right there, with the art of gentle persuasion to bring around reluctant interviewees. Ken also finds himself in the role of counsellor when people pour out to a sympathetic listener their distress and anxiety about the difficulties they face. He sometimes refers people to other government services and helplines. When the pandemic kept everyone at home, Ken carried on working. He was on the COVID helpline answering questions like “My cows need hay – what can I do?” and “Am I an essential worker?” Ken started his job with Stats NZ after 40 years + 1 week at NZ Post. But during all that time he still managed to travel around the world and visit 31 American states. He was in Time Square on New Year’s Eve in 1999, one of three million people bringing in the new millennium! Ken's on the left, in the All Blacks cap. He saved this postcard as a souvenir. Recently Ken (right) was selected as one of seven Stats NZ staff around the country to trial an electric vehicle for a year! Ken and his three siblings grew up on the island in the 1950s and 60s, when there was only one school on the island, down in Mulberry Grove. This is the school a bit later, mid-1980s, with the schoolmaster’s house over the road. The house was brought over from the mainland by barge. The school is much the same today, but the surroundings are more filled in! No island roads were paved, and Winnie, who’s one of Ken’s aunts, was the school bus driver. Ken’s mum, Bev, thinks this tiny low-tech, actually no-tech, country school did a brilliant job of preparing their children for life. And so it is! James has a Ph.D. in applied linguistics and teaches at Asia Pacific University in Japan. Ken is as personable a person as you’ll find anywhere, and his low-key, relaxed, unassuming, kindly and fully attentive manner has perhaps unexpectedly brought him to leadership roles in every organisation he’s been part of. Of course having the loveliest parents in the world helps a lot too! Many lifetimes in one body I’ve been editing the life story of someone best known as one of New Zealand’s fabled artisan master cheesemakers – Gabrielle Kervella. The other is her husband, Alan Cockman! Though Gabrielle and I were friends in Golden Bay, I had only wee inklings of her incredible life! Now I know that If anything could have happened to someone, it happened to Gabrielle! As I say to Ro as I edit her story, “Expect the unexpected with Gabrielle!” This intrepid and high-spirited woman has lived in or visited every continent except Antarctica and speaks four languages. From an early age she acquired the broadest skillset I’ve ever heard of, from violinist to nursing, ranch hand, animal husbandry, hunting, gardening, biodynamic farming, horse riding, breeding and training horses, running children’s summer camps, skiing, yoga, self-reliance and home maintenance, cordon bleu cooking, driving in extreme conditions, human relations and communication with people of all walks of life all over the world, writing most engagingly, and of course the world’s finest cheesemaking. My list is far from complete! If you love adventure and joie de vivre, you will want to read Gabrielle's book! For now, for a great read about the cheese-y side of Gabrielle and Alan’s life – their journey to become one of only three accredited raw cheese producers in New Zealand, check out Nina Hindmarsh’s wonderful article at https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-to-love/123738976/golden-bays-artisan-master-cheesemakers-keep-the-dying-art-alive Popples from the past For six years we’ve driven past four trees on our way to and from swims at Kaitoke Stream that we didn’t realise we knew very well. Only 11 of the 260 native tree species in New Zealand are deciduous broadleaf trees that shed their leaves in autumn. We had noted that these trees were deciduous, but only recently did we open our eyes wide and take notice that they’re actually quaking aspen! It was a wondrous revelation. We loved these unique trees in our 20 years in the North Country in the Adirondack Mountains up near the Canadian border. Their flexible flat-stemmed leaf stalks catch the wind, causing the lightweight, shiny, pale green leaves to tremble even in the gentlest breeze, bringing a gentle rustling sound and movement to the quiet landscape. There’s another reason quaking aspens are special to us. Unlike conifers, all broadleaf trees shed their leaves in autumn, so throughout the long, cold, snowy winters there wasn’t a broad, flat leaf in sight in all nine million acres of the Adirondack Park. The leaves of the quaking aspen are the first to emerge when the long-awaited warmth of spring is finally imminent, so we were always anticipating the special day that brought the welcome sight of the quaking aspens’ pale green swath beginning to spread far and wide over the countryside. Populus tremuloides is known by many other names, including trembling aspen, golden aspen, white poplar and popple. Wait, there’s more! Aspens are genetically identical clones! New trees sprout from shoots and suckers along its long lateral roots. “Pando” (Latin for I spread), “the trembling giant”, is a 43-hectare clonal colony of one quaking aspen in south-central Utah. It’s been determined to be a single living organism with one massive underground root system. Pando is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kg and its root system is estimated to be several thousand years old, making it the heaviest known organism and one of the oldest known living organisms. Pando in autumn Bonus! Did you know that though kowhai trees shed their leaves, they’re not actually deciduous? They’re brevisemideciduous! As Kiwis will have observed, they lose their leaves not in autumn but in spring when they flower. All the leaves fall off and are quickly replaced. Archaeological finds and history of Aotea: Part 2 of 2 The vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean was explored and settled by sailing large double-hulled canoes from island to island. The ancestors of Māori are likely to have sailed their waka to Aotearoa about 600 to 800 years ago, from East Polynesia, perhaps South Tahiti, the Cook Islands or even Australia. Replica of a voyaging canoe Why did they leave their homelands for a perilous journey that could take as long as a month? Their reasons may have been population pressure, intermittent warfare, lack of resources, and the Little Ice Age brought on by the eruption of a huge volcano in the Pacific in 1257, causing cold summers to the Northern Hemisphere as well. In Aotearoa they found more abundant protein resources than those on Pacific Islands – salt- and freshwater life, sheltered waterways, intertidal mudflats and more. Aotearoa – braided river east of the Southern Alps – painting by NgAng! When Māori founding waka arrived in the Hauraki Gulf, three of them landed first on Aotea – Great Barrier Island! Aotea became important in Māori history because all waka traveling north and south passed close by, so different people were meeting, fighting and sometimes displacing or absorbing one another here. To protect themselves in times of danger, those living here built pa as refuges on most of the headlands and a few summits. Rock-faced terraces, gardens, storage pits and artifacts such as paddles have been found around the main island and on the smaller islands by Port Fitzroy in the north. Early Māori lived mainly on the west coast, the Gulf side, where there was fresh water, easy access to marine resources and deep sheltered valleys. Last year we attended a talk about the prehistory of Oruawharo Bay (Medlands Beach) by archaeologist Don Prince, who assisted with Auckland Council’s Aotea Great Barrier Island Historic Heritage Survey, published last year. He contributed to the database of pā sites and settlements by locating and describing them and speaking with tāngata whenua and others with knowledge of the island’s prehistory. All of his work on the island was done by visual inspection. We learned that Sugarloaf between Medlands and Kaitoke was a fortified pa site, with ditches, palisades and fighting platforms, as well as a marae. Pa sites around the island’s coast were also used as lookouts for approaching waka. People lived by freshwater waterways for the coastal resources of birds, fish and eels. Goat Hill at the south end of Medlands Beach above Oruawharo Stream was a pa and village site known as Whangaiti. Steps were cut for the climb up to the site. Usually storage pits for crops are in the earth, but here Don found storage pits cut into the rock. He found evidence of moa as well. Early stone tools were rough, but over time they became more refined. Don said that people are still finding stone tools throughout Aotea, but unfortunately rough tools are discarded and not valued! He told of a Maori ancestor who was ambushed and killed by another iwi on Rakitu Island (Arid Island) in the 1600s. His death was avenged by his sons at Whangaiti. Don discovered nearby a major urupā with 22 burials and another with 17 burials behind the dunes a bit further north. He investigated them with permission from the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. People enjoy Medlands and other beaches oblivious to these wāhi tapu that need protection as heritage sites. He found a large midden near what’s now the walkway to Memory Rock. Don recommends Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris, for the best summary of Great Barrier Island’s prehistory. He says updating Aotea’s database of prehistoric sites is a lifetime of work! How high is your cloud? Watching clouds forever changing has always been a favourite. Now I know a bit more of the science behind these perpetual shapeshifters. Their lives begin when humid air rises to higher altitudes, where temperature and air pressure are lower. There the water vapour condenses into either water droplets or ice crystals, and voila!, a cloud. A cloud’s height depends on the temperature and pressure of the air, and how much water it contains. The International Cloud Atlas classifies clouds into 10 “genera” according to their altitude and appearance. The Atlas goes further! It subdivides the genera into “species” by shape and structure, and “varieties” by transparency and arrangement. The 10 genera are classed into three categories of altitude, with a lot of overlap since clouds can be very tall, very tall indeed! Low-level clouds have bases at altitudes below 2 km, so they’re mostly liquid water droplets. These are pretty, puffy white cumulus, rain-bearing cumulonimbus and nimbostratus, and featureless, sheet-like stratus. Mid-level clouds, whose water can be liquid or ice, begin at 2 km to 7 km. These are blankets of altostratus or clumpy altocumulus. High-level clouds, with bases above 5 km, are made of ice crystals. They’re thin, translucent clouds like wispy cirrus. (Commercial airplanes fly at even higher altitudes, usually around 11 km.) Like putting a name to a face, it’s satisfying to be able to put a name to a cloud! - - - - - - - - - - Heron at Kaitoke Stream Harataonga The Barrier from a boat in a rough Gulf (posted on Barrier Chitchat). I’m feeling seasick just looking at it! Funny waves at Kaitoke Beach (photo by Ken) Eunate watching dolphins at Puriri Bay
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