Longing for the scent of rain on Great Barrier Island It's longest drought on record both for my blog-writing and for rain in Northland, Auckland and Great Barrier Island. The situation here is dire. Trees in the bush are actually dying and streams are drying up. The ground cover has faded from lush green to pale green to yellow to brown. Fire danger is extreme, especially when it’s windy. Unlike in Golden Bay, where in addition to a rainwater tank, we pumped luxuriantly from a stream and scheme water flowed from a tap, here it’s rainwater only for us and most others, for both house and garden, and those few with stream water access are also running out of water. Perhaps a handful have a bore, but even deep bores are going dry – a first here in local memory. Many people’s gardens have long since fried, as has most of the Community Gardens. The water tanker is constantly on the road, but it brings non-potable stream water. No, it hasn’t been a stress-free summer for land or people. It started with three weeks of cold gale winds, so strong I couldn’t walk straight or open the car door, and at holiday time people were kept off the beaches. Smoke and ash from the disastrous fires in Australia, that destroyed a fifth of the continent’s forest cover, blew over parts of New Zealand, darkening the skies, creating weirdly colourful sunrises and sunsets, making breathing hazardous and contaminating the water supply. Here are two scenes from Okiwi on the worst day on the Barrier, when the land and sky turned eerily red and people had to drive with lights on in mid-afternoon. And now, coronavirus, which arrived in Auckland yesterday via a passenger from Iran. The government is talking about isolating islands like Great Barrier to prevent the spread if we have a major outbreak, and people countrywide fear not only illness or even death but supply shortages for essentials like food, fuel and medicines. Some on the mainland are already panic buying. Auē! All in all, a lot for everyone to deal with. Even so, while all of this has been going on, I’ve been engaged in a wonderful array of projects, including planning for the beautiful, wise, knowledgeable and skilled Medical Herbalist Mary Allan’s second workshop here. It’s full at 20 participants, with a waiting list! The night before she’s giving a free talk on immunity in a flu epidemic. I’m also editing a book of the life stories of women who’ve lived on the Barrier all or most of their adult years, if not longer; planning and presenting Can’t Live Without Music on Sunday afternoons on Aotea FM (you can listen on livestream 3:40-6 pm – let me know your favourite music or send requests); and most notably, I've been working with my dear, precious, skilled, brilliant and giving friends Marsha and Carrie, to produce and distribute the third edition of the Wholefoods Handbook, while lovely Kelly at Unlimited Copies Golden Bay continues to support the vision with a low price and pack-and-post service, making it easy as pie to coordinate sales from here. Our intrepid neighbour We stopped in at the airport to talked to our lovely friend Eunate, who was working at the info centre. There we met Sandra, our former part-time neighbour when we were renting down the road. She and her partner have a holiday home next door to where we were. At that time she was the captain of a ship in the NZ Navy, and Cathy and Dennis Sage’s son had been on her ship! postA couple of years ago she stopped captaining to become the lead person in a study and report about New Zealand in 2040 – the coordination of all parts of the government to deal with all aspects of everything and all contingencies! There she was at the airport in jandals, and an old T-shirt and shorts, as if she’d just gotten up from some garden work, hair in a loose ponytail, chatting and smiling with us. She told us the 2040 project had just finished, and she’d get us a hard copy. Then she said, “When I get back I’ll take over as chief of staff.” “Chief of staff of what?” “Of the Navy.” It was so unexpected, and she knew it too! Lots of sparkles in our eyes and I laughed about it the rest of the day. Only in NZ, and so much for stereotypes! Her only trepidation about the new job is the commute through Auckland – an hour and a half each way. Her partner’s is two hours. She said the Navy’s biggest problem is its people! There are 2500 of them. I’m sure Sandra has what it takes to sort them all out. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse It hasn’t been the best year for post-swim extended stays at the beach, but we did get a few. We sometimes read books aloud to each other as we hang out enjoying the scene, or talk about a philosophical question. A friend loaned us this lovely book, a beautifully illustrated story of deep dialogue about friendship, kindness and self-love amongst an unlikely quartet. I copied out the essence of the questions they pondered together so Ro and I could share our thoughts on them, one by one, in our relaxing, no-distractions spot back by the dunes at Medlands. Here they are for you to consider. * What do you want to be when you grow up? * What do you think success is? * What’s your favourite saying? * What’s the biggest waste of time? * What are our greatest freedoms? * What’s the greatest kindness? * How can you be in the present? * What’s the bravest thing you could say? * When are you at your strongest? * What’s your reason to keep going? * What’s better than cake? * Nothing beats ____________. * When the dark clouds come …………. * What’s your best discovery? * What can we do when our hearts hurt? * What can we do when the big things feel out of control? The boy and his friends also shared some fresh and tasty ideas, including: everything happens on the inside, the notion that life should be perfect is an illusion, and the need for a school of unlearning. A Close Shave More than eight years after the debris flow / flood disaster in the Top of the South and Golden Bay, which propelled us to the Barrier, Film for Change have released a 20-minute film by Jacques Wisdorff and Stephanie Pages about the dangerous forestry practices that caused this terrible disaster, and others, and its impact on residents. About 15 people share their experiences and views, with a mix of emotions and facts. It was hard for us to watch, because it stirred up the old trauma, never too far beneath the surface. One traumatised person sums up the situation: “It’s incomprehensible that that can be considered appropriate land management or farming practice.” The filmmakers' goal is to raise awareness and influence decision makers to achieve greater safety. Though the film is mainly about the impacts around Marahau, Ro and I provided some information to the filmmakers. You can watch the trailer here: On Youtube: https://youtu.be/oPJ6XQsPrZU On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/filmforchange.fr/videos/453882388829734/ And the full film through this link: https://www.facebook.com/filmforchange.fr/posts/502189524038737 Stéphanie & Jacques wrote to us, "We hope that despite the time it took to make it happen, it will be helpful to the cause. Maybe it's good timing too in regard to the terrible bushfires in Australia, highlighting very real consequences of climate change, just as severe cyclones and floods can be. "If you think the cause is worth your support, feel free to share it!" Another cause, this one going well, sort of In December, Protect Aotea’s High Court appeal against the granting of consent by the Environmental Protection Agency to Coastal Resources Limited to dump 250,000 cubic metres of marine sludge off the coast of Great Barrier Island was successful - effectively squashing the decision of the EPA. But dredge-and-dump is ongoing because other consents to Ports of Auckland were non-notifiable. Protect Aotea’s current focus is to get a new legally binding policy in place with alternatives to dumping at sea. Kelly Klink of Protect Aotea says, “While we are relieved to have won the court case to prevent CRL’s appalling dumping of toxic waste sludge into our pristine marine environment, we are determined to ensure that new, environmentally sound policies are urgently put in place to ensure that less damaging alternatives to marine dumping are deployed.” Some examples are dewatering for proper disposal on land or mixing the dredged mud with sand and cement to make mudcrete. The most important cause of all! For me and Ro right now, our deepest wish, to fulfil everything we’ve believed in and longed for for decades, is for Bernie Sanders to be nominated by the Democratic party in the States and defeat Trump to become the next US president. There’s never been a candidate like Bernie, who spent his entire life fighting for the 90 percent. He’s building a grassroots movement of tens of millions to say NO to a country and a world ruled by a handful of those with billions, ill-gotten at the expense of most of the rest of us and the natural world. Bernie’s at the top of the polls now, but the media and other candidates and his own party are pounding him every way they can. In a happy future of Bernie as president, systemic change would transform the political and environmental climate, bringing in social, racial and economic justice at last, and with them, more peace and harmony. Look up Bernie, listen to what he has to say, and you’ll understand what I mean. He’s from Vermont, just across Lake Champlain from our old turangawaewae in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, just south of Montreal. He was mayor of Burlington when we lived up there, the most popular mayor in the States. In honour of Bernie I played the Vermont Waltz on my radio show. Big dune on Kaitoke Beach and views from the top Oceanview Road Kaitoke Beach to the right of the dune Palmers Beach to the far left Sights along the way Pitokuku and view from the top Claris, wetland and beyond. The orange arrow at the left points to Kaitoke Stream, where we’ve had most of our swims this summer (further upstream, where it’s nice and deep). The arrow in the middle shows the big dune, and the one on the right points to our shoebox on a sand dune. You can even see our water tank and bamboo fence. Kaikoura Island Our dear friends Sam and Eunate took the correspondence students from The Hub, where Sam teaches, on a camping weekend at Motu Kaikoura, a 564-hectare island just 80 m from the west coast of the Barrier that’s a protected sanctuary for native flora and fauna. Ruru (morepork or Tasmanian spotted owl, found throughout New Zealand and Tasmania) Sharks in Tryphena Harbour – threshers and hammerheads photographed from a drone.. A one- or two-day wonder, luckily! Bulk crops Darren (green shirt) grows beautiful potatoes, kumara and pumpkins above Palmers Beach to sell at markets and sometimes in weekly pop-up stalls. The Knewz on Aotea TV Toni and Tony (at left and right) reincarnated their weekly radio show into a fortnightly podcast to keep islanders up to date with events, local news and interviews. The first episode included a chat with Local Board chair, Izzy; a perspective on the island’s new “zero waste” system in Port Fitzroy, where non-resident boaties are leaving their rubbish for locals to deal with; what’s on on the island; and a visit with Artie of Wairahi, a longstanding boat-access-only community up north. Artie is the Aotea FM presenter who’s done the most shows. Two a week for over ten years, from way back in the early days when the station’s name was The Beach, adds up to well over 1000! It’s an absolutely brilliant show! We loved it since our first week here. You can livestream Cool Grooves and Hot Tracks on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30-6 pm at aoteafm.org Here's Artie in his motorcycle shed. Our annual basil tub gift from Gerald and Caity You probably recognise the hill behind it, and that’s Te Ahumata to the left of Pitokuku. You’ll know your way around when you get here! Ro put a recycling bin to good use Chickweed amongst the lettuce, under shade cloth in a grow bag. oblivious to the drought Zero-Waste All-Pure Herbal Shampoo 2 cups strong herbal tea, such as nettle, chamomile, rosemary, peppermint, sage, yarrow flowers or kumarahou leaves 1 natural handmade soap, grated 1/2 t pectin (optional) – I don't use it and it gels up just fine Make a strong tea and leave to steep overnight. Next day, bring to the boil, remove from heat and add grated soap. Stir until melted (and then add pectin). Pour into jar with lid. It will set. Keep in the fridge. Scoop out with your fingers or a spoon. This batch is made with rosemary. Towel maths 4 hand towels = 1 beach towel + 2 washcloths + 4 hand towels! How the trick is done: Take four unexpectedly oversize hand towels. Ask ex-professional seamstress Margaret to cut two in half to make four close-enough-to-expected-size hand towels, to sew the other two together to make an overlong beach towel and then cut off one end of that and cut it in half to make two square washcloths. Not only that, the hand towels were organic and on sale for $5.50 each! Non-traditional roles Chris, the husband of one of the doctors, makes banjos and looks after the kids, whom he takes around on an electric bike. We first met him at Kaitoke Beach on one of their days out, and another day we stopped him on the road to get the family photo. Gifts from Jordan Everything in the pan, except the tempeh, was a gift from our generous friend's garden. New Years Picnic Selling Lava Dreams and Other Amazing Stories for the author and our calendars. We didn’t quite have the new Wholefoods Handbook ready by then. It was only the second decent outdoor day in all those weeks of wind and cold, but we still needed sand in jars to hold it all down. A funny moment at the Picnic was when the tug-of-war rope broke while the two teams were pulling for all they were worth! Everyone went tumbling down, but no one was hurt and they called it a draw. Life on the Barrier Lucia paddleboarding at Medlands To close, a wee story One afternoon at swim time we found the car battery was flat (we’d left the radio on for 24 hours!). Ro got the car started but it only made it a few metres on the road. Thus started an adventure not only in hitching but in the kindness of islanders!! Two cars stopped instantly and the guys pushed the car back into our drive. Then we thought, Can’t miss our swim, let’s hitch to Kaitoke Stream. Driving the first car was someone we knew, who took us all the way, even though he was only going less than a quarter of the way. We found perfection in Kaitoke Stream!! Nice full tide, deep, clear, salty water, peaceful and heavenly. For the return, again the first car picked us up, people we hadn’t met before, and took us home, though they weren’t going quite that far! Ro charged the battery and all was well. But before that, we’d rung Nick, the mechanic, who said if the battery was buggered, he’d loan us one until a replacement arrived. No prob! After this experience, I thought, we have nothing to worry about! I felt extra intensely good about living here, couldn’t have felt better about it! :-) I think things have settled down here now and I’ll have more time to write. Also I have a big backlog of bits I’ve written about natural phenomena here and even about talks we went to over the past few years that would have made my posts too long. Hope to use some of them in the next few. I also hope that before long I can report on good, steadily accumulating, replenishing, revitalising, blissful, blessed RAIN!!
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Time of the Season on Great Barrier Island As the solstice and new year draw near, a wish for HAPPY HOLIDAYS to everyone and ALL THE BEST for 2020! Healing with Plant Medicine & Nature Mary Allan’s visit was the best, even beyond my expectations! It was a women’s utopian weekend with a lovely special atmosphere and good fun plus heaps of learning and interest for more ignited. After months of planning, the big day, and Mary, arrive. Mary’s Friday evening talk gets underway. Baking by Nessie! The 23 participants at the Saturday workshop were an incredible group of wāhine ātaahua, ten of whom are young and some with children, which pleased Mary a lot! She said fewer people attend her workshops in town and most of them are older. Some said this was the best attended workshop they’d known of on the island! Model for Holistic Health: The foundation the pyramid is awareness of heart energy and connection to the world, then the basics of health: real food, sleep, exercise, stress management spiritual health and social health. Above that, stimulate self healing through the healing power of nature, then support weakened body systems, and finally, symptom control. Sampling tinctures Some of the slides The second one means “the healing power of nature”, and the third is “treat the cause”, that is, the perceived cause (How did this come about?), though the idea is to treat both the roots and the branches. Everyone at the workshop was invited to a shared dinner at Vicky’s. Ten of us were around the table, ending with candlelight tea and more chatting. I dedicated Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” to Mary on my radio show the next day, because of the famous words "There is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in", from the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. Mary's translation was which tells us that through our illnesses, injuries and other woes we can gain insights that can be transformational. Many find their calling. Soon after Mary left, Lucia created a facebook page, Aotea Medicinal Herbs, for sharing information and inspiration. The cover photo plant is cleavers, the one we used at the start of the workshop to practice deep observation with all our senses. Then Lucia, Toni&Tony and I started up “Herb of the Week” on our radio shows! The group decided to get together monthly in the new year, with each person in turn researching a herb and sharing with the others. We may even start a medicinal herb section at the community gardens! Best of all, Mary will be back! She’ll do a second workshop in February and another one sometime after that. She reckons by them we’ll have enough grounding to carry on on our own. On top of that, Carrie in Golden Bay is looking into organising a similar weekend there, and Mary is keen! And all this because I needed to consult with a herbalist and found Mary in the journal of the Herb Federation of New Zealand. Meant to be! Mary’s photo of the island from her return flight to North Shore airport Our intrepid friend! After months of training and testing, lovely Eunate is one of three new island St John volunteer first responders, soon to achieve her New Zealand Certificate in Emergency Care. She participated for months in classes and study in first aid, mental health first aid, decision making, safety, law, ethics, communication and collaboration, and in training scenarios. Sandi, Sharlamon and Eunate administering CPR to the resuscitation manikin. It has pulses, it breathes and coughs and can even vomit. When Eunate is on call, two nights a week, her pager gets her out of bed, she dons the uniform (a step also intended to calm the nerves and refocus the mind), drives to the ambulance station and then drives the ambulance! She had her ambulance driving instruction and assessment one day a few months ago – all on one drive to different parts of the island! Eunate was on three callouts in her first two weeks, one lasting three hours in the wee hours of the morning. She’s sworn to complete confidentiality, so she can’t even tell her partner, Sam, which part of the island they went to or if she assisted medically. I asked him how she’s been when she gets home – shaken, satisfied or what. He has no idea – he’s asleep! I want to interview Eunate on my radio show, but she says she's too shy! Courageous enough to take people’s lives into her hands, but not to sit in a studio and talk about something she knows well and speaks of with great enthusiasm – a perfect example of public speaking being most people’s greatest fear! If not, I'll ask Sharlamon and I wonder what she’ll say! Eunate’s and the other volunteers' altruism and dedication are astounding! Local heroes! St John has been running workshops in CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and use of the AED (automated external defibrillator). They hope to train every possible islander. With funding from the local board, they’re installing AEDs throughout the island, in places where people gather and where they're easy to find, like outside the church at Medlands. The AED delivers a brief and powerful electric shock to the heart, helping it regain its natural rhythm. If someone comes to the aid of a heart attack victim within 3-5 minutes, use of an AED increases the chance of survival from less than 8 percent to 40 percent! Great Golden Barrier Bay I bet our Golden Bay friends will recognise the two people on the right and where they are! Yes, it’s Albie and Fill.. Without ever having met John and Peggy of Great Barrier Island, Albie and Fill invited them to dinner before they left the island in their electric vehicle! They met through a website for EV owners when John and Peggy were locating charging stations for a trip to the South Island. John took the photo to surprise us and then took this one at the Santa Parade market for Albie and Fill. And the rest Gerald’s banana saplings, some grown for sale at summer markets Kotare (kingfisher) on one of our boundary posts Lupins and heather in the reserve, truckbox sleepout-in-progress in the background Arcturus and other springtime flowers on the path to Kaitoke Beach Maori potatoes in the recycling bin Yams in a grow bag The “ant people” setting traps for Argentine ants Jordan’s roses took first prize for “best bloom" at the annual rose show. He called in on his way home and gave us one! Latest goodie box from Bev and Les – nothing like new potatoes! Bottling kombucha Santa Parade Kaitoke School took first prize Cool Santas Australian bushfires affect the sun over the Barrier
Hierarchy of perfection on Great Barrier Island Longest gap yet between posts! Four projects converged at once in the last two months. Sometimes I couldn’t remember them all, and when I sat down at the computer I had to run my mind through them and decide which one to work on. All good fun, and now they’re all winding down, if not fully unwound. Now I’ve begun editing a book of the life stories of 20 Barrier women, and a thesis from Japan may be around the corner. * Our fourth annual GBI calendar, that we give as gifts and sell at markets and Pigeon Post. * The "volcano book” and publicity * The visit of medical herbalist Mary Allan. * Wholefoods Handbook 2020 – this was a surprise, even to me! Carrie, Marsha and I made a sudden decision that now is the time for a new edition. In fact, the time was right! We discovered that 50 new whole foods have come ashore since the 2012 edition. Marsha and I got to work writing, and when we were ready, Carrie began reworking her magic on the design. It’s all explained in the letter, but Carrie's new cover is still in progress, so I don’t have the new photo or prices just yet. Mate Lucia grew up in Argentina, where mate is the national drink. Coffee doesn’t even come close. If anyone in New Zealand knows about mate, it’s Lucia. She drinks an entire flask of it every day! She brought it over one morning when she came to visit. It was my chance to verify our Wholefoods Handbook mate entry with someone who was raised on mate. It’s true! Children start early on weak, slightly sweetened mate, and it’s a rite of passage when you first make your own! We got it right! The container holding the mate leaves is actually a gourd, with leather around it, the straw is actually silver, and the bottom of it is the “sieve” we refer to. The mate leaves are in the jar in front of the bunny tails. You can keep adding boiled water to the leaves in the gourd to make more through the day. Lucia had hers mixed with tulsi. When people are together, everyone shares one gourd and straw! You have to do it that way, or you don’t have any! Aotea Te Kotahitanga A fledgling Kapa Haka group practised for months to prepare for their first public performance. Waiata (songs) – traditional and modern, hīmene (hymns), pātere (chants), poi and of course whakatangitangi (music), combined with warmth and high spirits from both the performers and the audience, made for an uplifting and fun evening. Swinging the double long poi is Margaret-Rose Ngawaka, whose life on a small island off the coast of the Barrier I wrote about last time. The tītī tōrea brought special memories to me and Ro. Way, way back, soon after we met in our early 20s, we discovered to our surprise that since adolescence we each had a strong attraction to New Zealand. At that time people bought things by mail order from catalogues! We had a wee catalogue for musical instruments from around the world and related cultural gear. We got a set of “Maori sticks” – tītī tōrea – that came with a 45 rpm record and an instruction sheet. You sit on the floor, knock the sticks on the ground and toss them back and forth to one another in certain patterns in time to the song. folksong.org.nz/epapa/ New Zealand’s almost irresistible appeal to us was nearly inexplicable, because in those pre-internet, pre-information explosion times, we didn’t have much to go by except what we’d learned in school! A book we got at the library around 1980 reinforced our longing to visit these faraway, sparsely populated islands. Back then they were further away and more sparsely populated! We were drawn to the idyllic sheep-dotted hillsides, sparkling braided rivers and alpine peaks, and even a volcano or two. NgAngA painted an archetypal South Island scene for us when we lived in Golden Bay. We called it “Aotearoa” – note the long white cloud. One photo in the book showed the most relaxed guy in the world leaning back into a hayrick, with the caption “New Zealanders take life with a smile”. We said, “We’re on our way!” Nine years later we explored here for seven months, and ten years after that we boarded a containership and shifted for good. Aotea Live tenth anniversary The annual Aotea FM fundraiser at the Tryphena Social Club brings out a treasure of local musical talent for three songs each! Phil Judd His daughter Hannah, beautiful vocals with guitar and pedal loop station Joe and Roger performed songs written by Roger 12-year-old Stevie Phil Santiago Barry performs professionally in Auckland. His singing is incredible! With his guitar accompanist he had everyone singing along with great feeling and fervour to the best cover of Brown Eyed Girl we ever heard! And more! The last group, Beatz Workin’, also celebrating ten years, stayed on long past the chairs had been moved aside for dancing and we were tucked up in bed! Woodstock feedback Lots of interest in that post, which also evoked music-related memories. Bill wrote that he provided his 5’7” Yamaha grand piano and tuned it for Sha-na-na back in the day. Thoughts of festivals brought forth some treasures from Purple, who’s been part of the organising and “performancing” crews at countless festivals around the country. Purple sent some video feedback he’s been experimenting with, which he set up as an installation for this year's Light Festival in Takaka. Video feedback is filming the screen the camera’s image is displayed on. He used an old digital video camera, plugged the output into a projector and then filmed the screen the projector was projecting onto. Other gear was a lava lamp, a candle, a pixelwhip, and an adapted light. “When you get it all working well,” he says, “it's fractal and the patterns and colours are very psychedelic “Hours of cheap entertainment for the whole family :-) Colourfully yours 🎶♒🔮☺🎸🎵” Fun with waterblasting More visual treats from Purple – here’s what can happen when creative people get to work waterblasting walkways and patios! The light bits have been blasted and the dark bits are where moss, mould and dirt still have a foothold. In between is a half-waterblasted grey, creating interesting shading effects, like you can draw with a pencil on paper. The waterblasting art is by Purple’s friend at her backpackers in Picton, the Jugglers Rest. She’s looking to sell and move to Takaka’s well-known creative environment. Maybe a new life for you? www.jugglersrest.com The world’s next epidemic – will it be averted? Our friend Russell has a place here. When he’s not spearfishing, kayaking or cycling the island end to end, he’s a doctor in South Auckland. He was my guest on Aotea FM one Sunday because he knows that we can’t live without music or without our own health and a healthy environment. Russell wanted to talk about two issues he’s passionate about: the vision for a smoke-free Great Barrier Island, and the next epidemic to hit the world, which is a 100-percent preventable one that everyone can easily help to avert. Can you guess what it is? Currently New Zealand is 85 percent smoke free, with a strategy in place to make that 95 percent: the best possible support for quitting, protecting children from exposure to tobacco marketing and reducing supply. One of the island nurses is the Barrier’s smoke-free coordinator, and the launch was last month, with a smoke-free specialist and an opportunity to try "vaping to quit” as a transition out of smoking, Vaping is in the news and controversial, but Russell is convinced that the advantages far outweigh the problems, which are caused not by basic vaping as it was intended, but by toxins and additives in the liquid. Here’s the shocker. The next epidemic to hit the world is … myopia, and that’s both meanings of short-sightedness. The cause is screens. Myopia in adults isn’t a problem, but if you develop it as a young child, it continues to worsen and leads to untreatable eye problems including the biggest of all – blindness.. The ultimate prevention is to go outside and play! Some countries are outlawing screens for young children and fining parents. In between talking we played Russell’s music picks – lesser-known pop and indie songs from different parts of the world, including New Zealand, and his favourite, Iceland, especially Sigur Rós. Small world Golden Bay friends will remember Jay Robinson, who was librarian in Takaka for a number of years. He shifted to North Island long before we did, and we lost touch with him. Readers of my blog may remember my Iowan friend Judy, who wrote a book I edited a few years ago. What a surprise to learn from Judy that she met Jay, whose tūrangawaewae is Iowa, we now know, because both he and Judy are Quakers, and they met at the Iowa Yearly Meeting! Trekkin’ on the Barrier with Lucia, Santi and Marina A month-long visit from Lucia’s partner Santi’s mum, Marina, was an opportunity for all of them to explore the island and get fit by training on increasingly more challenging walks to prepare to tackle the island’s highest peak, Hirakimata, 621 m. What an intrepid mother he has! It may have been too cold for swimming for Lucia and Santi, but Marina went with us a few times and stayed in longer than we did! Here’s a small sample of the beauty surrounding them near and far on their almost daily walks. Awana overlook The road to Whangapoua Beach, 11 km from Okiwi Passion Path to Whangapoua Beach View of Whangapoua from the Harataonga Track Bays near Port Fitzroy on the west side of the island Loop track to Kauri Falls Sunset from Orama Christian Community, Karaka Bay Te Ahumata Track View from Te Ahumata Track Finally, the day of the big challenge! It was a perfect day and they were ready! Distant view of the island’s central mountains The goal (not Lucia's photo) The walk begins at Windy Canyon Sights along the way Near the top Summiting! The panorama to the west Thank you for the airdrop, Lucia, and nice walking with you!
So yes, perfection. We often listen to fascinating talks at lunchtime. We call It lunch ‘n’ learn. We’ve heard about the electric universe, the holographic universe, the simulation theory, the afterlife and all sorts of other enriching and thought-provoking subjects. Recently it’s been talks by Aldous Huxley from the early 1960s. Little did I know that Brave New World is just the tip of the Huxley iceberg! The depth and breadth of his knowledge, understanding, insight and analysis about the human situation is immense and I find listening to his ideas literally exciting! One of numerous ideas in a talk on art was a "hierarchy in perfections” in scale, from a perfect small object or brief poem to a painting or play by Shakespeare that harmonises many aspects of experience. Sometimes I feel with great gratitude that our life on the Barrier is a hierarchy of perfection – a peaceful, beautiful environment, lovely people all around us and everything we need including good organic food, our sweet wee off-the-grid house, and of course, swimming and each other! May you find perfections in your lives as well. Winter retreat on Great Barrier Island Not much happening on the Barrier, and I like it that way! We live on the main road, but entire evenings go by, sunset to bedtime, and not one car comes past! Winter events were the usual poker and darts leagues, the Winter Wonderland Ball fundraiser for St Johns, and a learn-kapa-haka group, plus the Monday night movie, but none were our thing, so we mostly stayed home and pursued our own projects, very content with visits from friends, and of course, daily swims! “Three Days of Peace and Music” – Woodstock 50th on Aotea FM 15-17 August 1969. 400,000 people were there, and I was among them! It was one of the biggest rock festivals of all times and the way it all panned out, with harmony, good will, love and drugs, it became a symbol of the 60s. Ever since I started my radio show I knew that when August came around I’d be doing some all-Woodstock shows! What fun they were to plan and present! I was living near Boston. No internet or cell phones in those days. I can’t even remember how we found out about anything! But I do remember that we heard about the festival on the radio and saw notices in Rolling Stone, which had started a few years before in San Francisco. But mainly it was this eternal poster. “Three days of peace and music” sounded idyllic, but often, in this case to an extreme, the vision in one’s mind is quite different from the reality! White Lake is in the Catskill Mountains of southern New York State, actually 70 km from Woodstock. Tickets were $18USD in advance and intended to be $24 at the gate (for all three days!). 186,000 were sold and the organisers expected about 200,000 people – but in fact it was at least double that! The venue was decided late, the fences weren’t finished and people just walked in. After tens of thousands did, it was announced that it was a free festival, that the facilities weren’t going to cope with so many people, and everyone better look after one another or they would totally blow it. The traffic jams were legendary, with traffic at close to a standstill for hundreds of kilometres. Some performers driving to the festival had to be airlifted or they never would have made it! By the time I got there, like many others, we had to park in the next town several miles away and walk in. The scene walking in and at the music venue was mind-boggling. Several hundred thousand young people just letting loose, being into the magic of what was happening, tripping and otherwise getting high, getting into the music, into loving one another – and coping with rain, mud, not enough food, water, toilets or sleep! But these tangibles were secondary. The music and the experience were the focus, and the ideal of coming together in harmony – a moment we wanted to last forever. Because of the idealism, despite everything, it was a very peaceful festival featuring cooperation, generosity and good-natured young people. For a long time afterward, I had the old white cotton sunhat someone handed to me as I walked in. I was seven months pregnant, so Paul went to Woodstock too! In fact, two babies were born – one in a car caught in traffic and one in a hospital after an airlift. For two Sundays in August, Can’t Live Without Music was an all-too-quick chronological recap of the greatness of the music and the phenomenon of Woodstock. 32 groups performed hundreds of songs. Just after 5 pm Friday, Richie Havens opened the festival with a 10-song set – remember his “Freedom”, sung with full passion? Swami Satchidananda gave an invocation and the nearly round-the-clock line-up of music began. After the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe and the Fish, John Sebastian, Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many others, the festival started getting into the serious psychedelic and guitar rock groups – Santana, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Sly & the Family Stone, the Who, Joe Cocker, then – thunderstorm! And Ten Years After, The Band, Johnny Winter, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and a bit of Young), Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and more. It was 7:30 Monday morning. The next group was from an alternative universe. Sha Na Na was (and still is, kind of painfully) an American rock-and-roll doo-wop group who revived and parodied dance song hits from the 50s. They were totally incongruous, between Paul Butterfield and Jimi Hendrix, with their 50s haircuts, get-ups and (more or less) precision dance moves, considering where they were, the kind of music that had played before, and the time of day, and everyone who was left at the festival basically passed out. You really gotta find a video online! Sha Na Na – At the Hop The last performer was Jimi Hendrix. He played for over two hours, ending just after 11 on Monday. Perhaps you’ve seen him in the Woodstock film, soloing the Star Spangled Banner and segueing into Purple Haze. He played an encore, Hey Joe, of all things, and that ended Woodstock. At the time, Woodstock was the largest peaceful gathering in the history of the world. We were children of the peace movement; peace and love were our ideals. Imagine, the chief of police of a nearby town said, “Notwithstanding their personality (!), their dress and their ideas … they are the most courteous, considerate and well-behaved group of kids I have ever been in contact with in my 24 years of police work.” That was a group of nearly half a million kids! I was a bit Woodstock-crazy for those few weeks last month. Why was it so significant to me and hundreds of thousands of others? It wasn’t only the scale of it or the greatness of the bands, though the music of the time was a phenomenon as well – in my opinion, never seen since. But mainly I think it was the idealism that was realised there, if only for three days, symbolising the whole 60s dream of freedom, peace and cooperation. Nearly half a million young people in trying circumstances, truly maintained peace and love for three days, with virtually no security as we have now, shared food, shelter, drugs and cared for one another, as part of one big counterculture organism with a different vision for society. We succeeded at doing Woodstock, we felt strong, that our vision was in reach – as Joni Mitchell put it in her song Woodstock – “I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky and they were turning into butterflies”. Even Jimi Hendrix, with his Star-Spangled Banner – what the US could have been. But the world is what it is, and the forces are what they are, and Woodstock turned out to be the peak of a youth movement whose potential wasn’t fulfilled. It seemed like we were about to change the world, but it stopped right there, For those two Sunday afternoons, my body and mind were more or less in the Aotea FM studio, but my heart and soul were at Woodstock! That music is part of who I am. Livestream Can’t Live Without Music Sunday arvos 3:40-6 pm at aoteafm.org I hope you’ll be tuned in! Send a comment about who or what you’d like to hear and I'll be overjoyed to play it for you, even if you’re not listening! I love to get suggestions to keep the show fresh and unique! Spelling mistakes A ways back, a week or two before Matariki, this notice was posted on Barrier Chitchat. Have you ever heard of such a thing! How’d they every think that up? Regardless, I was ready to take on the challenge! I found the mistakes, sent in my video … and … I won! I was probably the only person who entered! I donated the $50 back to the marae, and a few months later connected with my T-shirt. By then it had multiplied to a hoodie and cap as well, but everything was too big so we gave them all away! We meet our 600th person Here’s lovely Charlotte, happily receiving her choccie bar in honour of her status as a multiple-of-100 person! We weren’t flying off anywhere, that’s for sure!, just picking up something that came over by plane, and we found someone new at the desk. (For those, like us, who like to keep track of these things it took 9 months to meet another 100 people. The most was a year and the least was 7 months.) Now we’re at 608. Only 192 more people to meet before we reach our goal of 800. Some say the population is 900 (given the disarray of last year’s census, we’ll never know!), so we’ll just keep on meeting! Bella the Barber was #597. We first met at Aotea FM, and before long she came round to give Ro a haircut. “Let's get the Aotea men looking sharp!” writes Bella on Barrier Chitchat. Barbering isn’t what it used to be! She offers Traditional Barber Cuts, and…. Buzz Cut with Cut Throat finish $20 Standard No. 2 back & sides scissors on top $25 Fancy Fades $30 Scissor Cut $25 Beard Trim $15 Kids $20 Designs $5 - $10 e.g. Lightning Bolts Cut Throat Shaves $20 Restyle $30 Beard trim and fade $50 Beard trim and standard cut $40 Braids $5 per braid Women's Short Hair Scissor Cuts $30 to $40 Hair Jewellery Extensions and Hair Wraps $20 - $40 depending on length of hair I’m keen for one of these closer to summer! Samples of Bella’s barbering Get ready to grab and go June 15th's magnitude 7 earthquake in the uninhabited Kermadec Islands, 800-1000 km northeast of New Zealand, triggered a warning that was soon cancelled, but islanders’ realisation of the potential for a wipe-out, usually suppressed, was brought back into our consciousness. Thank goodness over 80 percent of earthquakes and volcanoes occur on the sea floor. But though a shake may be far out at sea, if it’s violent enough, the gigantic waves caused by a sudden huge displacement of water can travel as fast as a jet and surge up to 16 km inland! We were always glad to know that Farewell Spit protects Golden Bay. But here on Oceanview Road, not so good! People need to be at least 33 m above sea level when a tsunami strikes, the higher the better. The incredible power and destructive potential of tsunamis is so far out of our experience that I think it’s hard for anyone to imagine. Tsunamis aren’t massive quantities of water travelling at great speed. The water is a medium for mega amounts of energy traveling through the entire depth of the ocean, sea floor to surface. A tsunami at sea is a slight swell, but its energy is moving up to 900 km per hour! Each cubic meter of seawater weighs just over a tonne and when the wall of water reaches shore.... The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed nearly a quarter of a million people in 14 countries had a force of about 200 million tonnes per kilometre on the coastline, though yachts anchored offshore experienced only a quick steep swell. I remember reading that people out in fishing boats had no idea anything was amiss until debris began floating toward them from shore. Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) is a worldwide tsunami monitoring system. Seafloor devices transmit earth movements and wave heights to surface buoys which send warnings via satellite to the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, where tsunamis are traced to their likely landfall. Boaties know that when they hear a warning they should leave the harbour immediately – though it may seem safer than the open ocean – lest they’re annihilated along with everything else on shore. New Zealand is at particular risk and Great Barrier Island even singled out! We’re in the Pacific Ring of Fire, exactly between two of the deepest and most earthquake-active trenches in all the oceans: the Tonga Trench and Kermadec Trench, both of which stretch from northern New Zealand to Tonga. Put it all together and you can understand why we don’t loan our car out overnight and why we put together our grab & go bags using these helpful reminderst. Twists and turns of fate I wrote last year that biodynamic grower Peter had blessed our land and garden with a biodynamic gift of love and well-being. Again this year he again “sprayed” (with bucket, paintbrush and flicks of the wrist) our land and garden with a dynamised preparation of plants, quartz and manure to bring holistic elemental energies to the soil and plants. “Dynamisation” means he stirred it rapidly for an hour, reversing directions each time a vortex formed. The vortex adds oxygen and energy to the water as it “links the solid and the subtle”. But he didn’t do an hour of stirring just for us! He’s the gardener at the community gardens, paid from the koha box – a great system that works well all around, and he made enough preparation to spray not only the community gardens but the gardens of some other friends as well. Kale, New Zealand spinach and broad beans at the community gardens Peter and his partner Helga have a vast and beautiful biodynamic property at the south end of the island. Originally from Switzerland, when they came to the Barrier 30 years ago they bought 620 hectares way up on Rosalie Bay Road, established an biodynamic organic farm and large macadamia orchard, landscaped it beautifully, and set aside large areas to protect flora and fauna. They may have protected them too well for their own good! Their orchard and their macadamia business were thriving until kaka arrived some years later and began knocking macadamia nuts off the trees. Like wood pigeons, they’re legally protected, even though their population is out of balance, and netting hundreds of trees isn’t feasible. To Peter and Helge’s life-changing disappointment, their macadamia dreams could not be sustained. Here a kaka is harmlessly enjoying kowhai flowers, as well it should, but on the Barrier and elsewhere kaka are notorious (i.e., loathed) for decimating fruit. They’re at it all hours, day and night, and stop at nothing, even lemons. Peter and Helge still sell small quantities of yummy macadamia nut energy bars on the island, and they carried on with their large garden and huge compost piles and created a market garden and a homestay. It’s a beautiful destination for anyone and particularly interesting for those wanting to learn about organic growing and Rudolf Steiner’s teachings on biodynamic agriculture. Perhaps you recall Peter from a second post last year! He was the first other human voice heard by the four guys who survived 119 days adrift after their trimaran capsized three days out from Picton, 30 years ago, a story told in John Glennie’s The Spirit of Rose-Noelle. Their upside-down craft crash-landed on a reef at the foot of a steep densely bush-clad slope, they knew not where. They thought they might be in South America! After a rough night in the bush, they climbed up the slope, found a road and a bach to break into. Next day they heard a phone ringing in another bach and broke in to use it. A neighbour happened to be on the party line, their first human contact. That was Peter. Only then did they learn they were on Great Barrier Island! Step by step, truckbox becomes sleepout Morgan and Dean build the “profile” Truckbox in place, Morgan takes in the view Morgan and Maddie make a temporary walkway and deck before leaving for two months Morgan’s father, Fraser. They’re cousins of Tessa in Golden Bay! Santi helps Ro paint the outside Step by step – as much as possible – we're turning a sow's ear into a useful silk purse! Look what washed up on Medlands beach It’s a snake (or serpent) eel, 2 metres long, which you can usually find at the bottom of the ocean up to 300 m deep! Whangapoua Beach, North Barrier, taken by Caity Kaitoke Beach from the north end Big waves at Kaitoke Blind Bay from Okupu Ridge Funky-edged kumara in the pan, grown by Darren at Palmer’s Beach Our tulsi plant from Caity (sacred basil) formed a wee tree Cherimoya of love 5G Space Appeal The GBI local board, communities anywhere, countries, or individuals for that matter (though we’re usually overlooked) may try to say NO! to 5G towers, but if it’s raining down on us from 12,000 satellites, our powerlessness is total. People could no longer even move to one of the few places on the planet still safe from electromagnetic radiation. For whatever good it may do, please read and sign! https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/sign-individual Meanwhile, on Earth as it’s meant to be, the Southern Hemisphere spring emerges bringing light, warmth, colour and renewal.
Living amongst angels on GBI A week ago Ro and I celebrated our 47th anniversary, and our beautiful adventure continues. It seems the sea is celebrating with us – it hasn’t been this big since February! As the tide goes out, oystercatchers enjoy the shrinking sea-pool . The waves are so powerful that even when the tide is going out they’re entering Kaitoke Stream and sending seawater inland. We’ve been swimming in the river on the afternoon outgoing tide and getting all the benefits of swimming in the sea – deep, clear, salty water, just a tad warmer. Instead of being pulled more or less gently downstream by the current, we’ve been pushed strongly upstream by the sea. It’s a bit disconcerting, though great fun! Noise One Sunday late afternoon, Elise Bishop of Claris was my guest on Can’t Live Without Music, talking about and sharing some unusual music. Those who know and play it don’t call it indie music or alternative music, which have commercial associations, but simply “noise”, which implies complete freedom from genre, politics or the economy. Kind of the music of anarchy in its best sense – that of governing ourselves. It’s played on the Barrier and in localities around New Zealand and the globe. It’s sound that raises the question, What is music, anyway? I’d read once that part of the greatness of science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin lay in her ability to crack open the shells we didn’t even realise had confined us. When I first listened to Elise’s music and read the paper she’d written on the type of music it was, I discovered I had a shell I didn’t realise had confined me. It was a shell encasing what I thought of as music. Thanks to Elise, my concept of what music is has expanded, possibly beyond bounds! On the show I asked Elise some questions with fascinating answers: What is music? What’s the difference between noise and commercial music? What’s the difference in the social context of each and the environments in which each occurs? How is noise empowering? She also described changes over the centuries in the connection between music and the economy and in the relationship between producer and listener. Of course we played some noise tracks, and I reckon you haven’t heard the likes of this sort of music before! * Auk Assembly – Air https://sbbtcl.bandcamp.com/track/air * Burning of claris – Cecilia Sudden https://ceciliasudden.bandcamp.com/track/the-burning-of-claris-pt-1-fire-down-the-road * What time is dawn? – Backsmith https://backsmith.bandcamp.com/track/what-time-is-dawn If all this sounds juicy and breakaway to you, you can find out more by reading two books by an influential writer about noise, Jacques Attali: Noise: The Political Economy of Music and A Brief History of the Future. I sent an Aotea FM T-shirt to my faithful listener Naomi, in Japan. Livestream Aotea FM at aoteafm.org. My show is Can’t Live Without Music, Sunday afternoons approx 3:40 til 6. Bringing more angels to GBI Kindness and generosity are a way of life on the island. I’m constantly moved by the love shown to me and Ro in all sorts of beautiful ways. I’ve been “paying it forward” by facilitating visits of health professionals whom islanders don’t have easy access to, starting with an acupuncturist and an osteopath in previous years. Most recently, drawing on years of experience in Golden Bay J I’ve been working on organising weekend events for each of two angels who’ve been helping me by skype and email, and who I wanted to introduce to others here so they could get help as well. Just like the old days, it was posters all over, handouts, facebook posts, phone interview on Aotea FM, an announcement for other presenters to read, notices in the Barrier Bulletin and word of mouth, plus sponsorship for flights from the Aotea Family Support Group. What was it all about? The poster tells all. After lunch at our place. The cupola is from awesome grower Darren, who sells his bulk crops at markets – potatoes, kumara and pumpkins. The second angel is Mary Allen of solsticeherbs.co.nz – healing in harmony with nature. We’re cooking up a weekend visit for her in spring, same format as for Sara – a workshop, hers on herbal medicine, plus time for appointments. Screenshot of Mary during one of our skype consults. Mary is one of the most qualified and experienced medical herbalists in New Zealand! I found her in Herbnews, the quarterly journal of the Herb Federation of New Zealand. She’s also a qualified yoga therapist and naturopath, she’s taught degree-level naturopathy students, she’s course coordinator for the Southern Institute of Medical Herbalism’s three-year diploma programme, she makes herbal artisan products for Thyme Heal www.thymeheal.co.nz and she’s as awesome a person as she is a professional! “The healing gifts from the Earth that can sustain, balance and nourish us come packaged by Nature as leaves, flowers, berries, roots and bark,” says Mary. “This is our medicine; this is the people’s medicine. “Herbal medicine has been used since the dawn of humankind. Three-quarters of the world’s population still rely on herbal medicines for primary health care. There‘s a wealth of reliable traditional knowledge relating to the use of plants to aid healing as well as a growing body of clinical and scientific evidence.” In her dispensary More on Mary’s visit after it happens! Waka Tapu While I was seeing Sara off at the airport, Ro went to a talk by Jacob Raumati de Beurs, the son of the Kaitoke School headmaster. Jacob (on the left) was one of 20 crew members on the two waka that sailed for four months from Auckland to Rapanui (Easter Island). About 3000 years ago, explorers, probably from Southeast Asia, moved eastwards across the Pacific. Many settled in what is now known as Polynesia. These now diverse societies form the Polynesian triangle – whose limits are Hawaii in the north, Rapanui (Easter Island) in the east and Aotearoa in the southwest. It is believed that waka left Rarotonga over 800 years ago in search of Aotearoa. Most Māori iwi trace their origin back to these waka. Until seven years ago, the only side of the triangle that hadn’t been sailed in modern times was between New Zealand and Rapa Nui. In August 2012, the two waka hourua – traditional double-hulled sailing canoes, built from kauri by master waka builder Hekenukumai Busby, sailed 10,000 nautical miles (18,500 km) to Rapa Nui and back to Doubtless Bay in Northland. They reached Rapa Nui in December 2012 and returned to New Zealand in May 2013. As the first to attempt the journey, the principal waka, Te Aurere, was consecrated or made ‘tapu’, and the project named Waka Tapu. The journey’s origin was in 1985, when Busby saw a Hawaiian voyaging waka sail into Waitangi Harbour. The visit inspired him to build Te Aurere. After sailing it to Rarotonga and Tahiti, he focused on reaching the final corner of the Polynesian triangle. His dream was retrace a historic voyage, reestablish ancient genealogical connections and bring geographically distant relations together to celebrate their shared heritage of language, art, culture and kai. Te Aurere and Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti Led by master navigator Jack Thatcher, the crew used only traditional celestial navigation and wayfinding techniques, to recreate the experience of the Maori ancestors who first travelled across the Pacific to New Zealand. The natural environment – sun, stars, moon, ocean swells and currents, birds and marine life – guided their way. Jacob explaining the star compass Jack Thatcher That’s the romanticised version of what happened, but the devil was in the detail! At times the journey was mainly about survival and cooperation for survival. Jacob explained all the obstacles on their way to ultimate success, beginning with a wicked storm on Day 1. He said the ancestors never left in August, and the timing meant more problems with storms and sea. In his words, everything went wrong! Some storms were fierce with extreme swells and freak waves that damaged the waka – the worst was a snapped mast – and broke equipment or washed it overboard. They lost their radio and with it all communication. They had no hardware for repairs, and only handmade string for lashing. When visibility was poor or nil during storms, they navigated blind using sounds, birds, the direction of swells and waves hitting the hull. At other times they had little or no wind to push them east, and they endured very cold days and nights. Thatcher was sick for 40 days, and because they didn’t know the cause, they had to throw overboard paua and mussels they’d preserved even though they didn’t have enough to eat. Despite the sense of accomplishment, having overcome all the hardships and achieved a navigational first, the crew found that most important part of the journey was reconnecting with the people of Polynesia along the way and in Rapa Nui. They spent hours sharing stories about common ancestors. One of the islands on their route hadn’t had any visitors in 35 years. They found that the various Polynesian cultures had a lot in common that went beyond similarities in language. Jack said the voyage was “a very right thing to do”. Arrival at Rapa Nui Though sceptics remain about ancient Polynesian navigation, the Waka Tapu journey confirmed that it is possible to travel great distances in any direction by canoe without navigational instruments. It’s agreed that Māori ancestors brought kūmara back from the Americas, but whether they navigated there and back intentionally is still debated. Befor the Waka Tapu voyage, most theorists believed the windward, eastern voyage towards the Americas was impossible. Jack Thatcher says the voyage helped change people’s minds. “We found a way, and this suggests that our ancestors knew this way also.” Biosecurity chooks Rainbow skinks are native to Australia, where they’re a harmonious, and beautiful, part of the ecosystem. But in New Zealand, they’re deservedly known as plague skinks and officially designated “Unwanted Organisms”. They’ve been wreaking havoc on native lizards since they arrived in Auckland in the 1960s and began to steadily expand their range. They haven’t yet made it to South Island, but they found their way to the Barrier in 2016. Plague skinks reproduce rapidly, more than five times faster than native lizards, and they mature in less than half the time. Each lays up to 24 eggs a year. They can reach high population densities, competing with native lizards and other native animals for food and habitat, and preying on native invertebrates. Though smaller than native skinks, they look nearly identical. The only easily seen difference is the shape of a scale in the middle of the head! The plague skink is the diagram on the right. For the past 18 months, a novel control method was trialled on a 3000 sq m colony in Tryphena. Three pens were fenced and cleared of native lizards, and then 200 chickens were brought in to eradicate the plague! Eighteen months later, plague skink numbers in all three pens had plunged. The trial was declared a success, but I wonder, how can the method can be used in the bush? The helpful and generous chooks also donated over 5000 dozen eggs to the Auckland City Mission. When the trial was over, they were homed across the island. Off the Grid with Pio This weekly show on Maori TV explores off-grid living. What better place than Great Barrier Island – or an island off the Barrier’s coast, another step up in remoteness! Host Pio spent a few days with Matt and Margaret-Rose Ngawaka, who’ve lived on Rangiāhua for 33 years. Pink = Rangiāhua Island Green = Port Fitzroy, their nearest sizeable wharf Red = Tryphena, the other sizeable wharf Yellow = us They’ve lived largely self-sufficiently all this time, as their seven children grew up and all but one left the island. A fascinating look into a very different way of life: https://www.maoritelevision.com/shows/grid-pio/S01E004/grid-episode-4 Chak-Rocks These symbolic mini-masterpieces are by Jeff, who lives on the Barrier part of the year. Find more of Jeff’s rocks and larger artwork, plus his writings, films, radio show archives and incredible music at https://dolphinmatrix.com/Jeff/ and thebrink-jeffphillips.blogspot.com Flying truck box on its way to becoming a sleepout Santiago and Lucia. Santi made the bench for an outdoor sink. Giant choko vine at the Community Gardens A community pantry and book exchange sprung up there as well. Kahu picnicking on the dunetop along Sandhills Road
Questing for the sun on GBI As the days grow shorter and colder, Ro and I here in our shoebox on a sandhill cherish every warmth-infusing ray of sun that lights and warms our living spaces and our hearts. May we all have lots of sunshine, literal and figurative, in our lives! The miracle of Lina! We had the most splendid, packed-full, joyous and precious three days with our beloved Lina. She stayed in the same cosy sleepout as Paul and Mary, at Christina and Johnny’s magnificent, even sacred, location at the south end of grand and glorious Kaitoke Beach. The moment she arrived we whisked her off for a swimming baptism in Kaitoke Stream. In the next two days she also swam at the Mermaid Pool near her sweet nest, and with us at Blind Bay and the south end of Medlands, and she enjoyed a blissful bush walk to the hot pools and a soak in one of the hidden private pools that only locals know about (“the hot pools alone had me pondering moving to the island,” she wrote). Between all that, we toured as far as Awana to the north, Okupu Wharf to the west (selfie site) and Pa Beach to the south – where she was impressed by the big selection of organic food at the Stonewall Store, and shared endless talking and laughing, and of course, eating! Lina’s a woman of many sparkling attributes and talents; among them she’s a chef, and she prepared beautiful meals with fresh produce from Okiwi Passion, the Community Gardens, generous friends and our garden. Lina LOVED our homemade kombucha (“absolutely sublime! must be world’s best, honestly – and I’ve tasted so many in different parts of the globe”). From someone who bottles it and sells it in shops, that was a compliment indeed! Necessity forced Ro’s first time off island since we moved here The Barrier Air 16-seater flies the 102 km to Auckland Airport at an average speed of 278 kph and a top altitude of 7000 ft. We flew past Waiheke Island on the descent, at about 2500 metres, so we had a bird’s eye view of what we’ve heard about its rampant development. Geography is everything in determining the fate of a region. If only the whole world were either mountainous or small distant islands! Our favourites of the trip: * Flying just above the ever-shifting bank of clouds and sometimes level with clouds sticking up from the main mass, so we saw them close up from the side. Awesome in the original sense of the word and very special. * Fascinating conversations with taxi drivers of different nationalities. * Seeing parts of the Barrier we always wondered about – the cliffs always tantalisingly around the corner beyond Medlands, and the island-stradding bush-covered hills between Charlie and Winnie’s farm and the Hauraki Gulf. * Our research into current trends! Waiting for our flight home, we took little observational polls of people walking past, using four or five samples of ten people for each: · footwear: more than 9 out of every 10 wears running shoes or sneakers. In Golden Bay crocs were standard, and we thought they’d be tops, but it seems they’ve peaked and declined – not one person wore crocs. Why people want to tie and untie shoelaces (only one pair was velcroed) when they can just slip in and out, I don’t understand. Second most popular was sandals, largely jandals. A few had leather shoes, just one pair of hiking boots, no one barefoot. · backpacks vs luggage: On average, only 3 out of 10 had packs, and 100% of the luggage was pull-along. Carry-in-your-own-hand suitcases don’t seem to exist anymore, and younger generations might wonder why I’d even mention them. · cell phones: about 3 out of 10 people walking past were using their phones. If we add those holding their phones, the number increased to about 7 out of 10. * Best of all, a liberating celebratory purifying sunset swim of joy when we got back. Banded rails In Golden Bay, we enjoyed the quails. Here it's rails. These roadrunner-like birds are beloved on the island, like free-ranging community pets. Gone from most of New Zealand since the 1970s because of extensive wetlands drainage and the introduction of ferrets, on GBI they’ve taken refuge (like the rest of us), where they’re thriving and happy. Though historically they’ve rarely been seen, mainly remaining under the cover of wetland vegetation, here they feel safe enough to wander freely in the open. This photo was taken on the island several years ago. Banded rails are strong though reluctant fliers. When they do fly, mainly at night, they can travel surprisingly far. Unlike most garden birds these days, most of which are introduced, rails are welcome in gardens, where not only do they leave plants undisturbed, they eat slugs and other unwelcome insects, and they’re very endearing to watch. GBI has the largest population of black petrels in NZ It was a successful breeding season for the island’s black petrels, or takoketai, with over 200 chicks fledging from burrows near the highest mountain, Hirakimata. Takoketai used to breed throughout the North Island and northwest Nelson. Now, as New Zealand’s most at-risk seabird from commercial fishing, they breed only on Great Barrier Island and Little Barrier Island. This photo was taken on Hirakimata. The 200 chicks have now left their burrows for the first time, to attempt their maiden flight out to sea. Once at sea, they head due east on an epic 13,000 km journey across the Pacific to the Pitcairn Islands, then north to the Galapagos Islands off the west coast of Ecuador. They’ll spend 3-5 years there before returning to Aotea to breed for the first time. Takoketai chicks occasionally crash land on lower parts of Aotea before making it out to sea. People on GBI who find one on the ground can carefully pick it up with towel or gloves (they can bite) and move it to a sheltered and safe location under dense vegetation. From there it can attempt another takeoff the next night. Aotea FM tenth anniversary It was also a great season for our fab community-initiated-and-run local radio station. The tenth anniversary bash outside at the Claris Club featured T-shirt sales, an exhibit of photos from the early days of the station and panel discussion among the founders, but really, it was all about a fundraising concert by Auckland-based Kiwi icon Sola Rosa. The event was “massive” to quote Kathy, our wonderfully competent and personable station coordinator, which is an accurate description of the celebration, which raised $5000! Presenters Linda and Lynda The panel of pioneers Sola Rosa The stage Local Board goes 100% solar A clean, green step forward for Claris! The council service centre, the library and the health centre got an all-in-one solar upgrade, including an electric vehicle charging point. Sorry to say, the buildings were previously run mainly on diesel. Now, like most of the rest of the island, they’ll be powered virtually 100 percent from the sun. Can’t get much more powerful than that life- and energy-giving star of ours. Local Board chair Izzy Fordham and school kids’ waiata at the opening celebration, and the EV charge point A dentist office was recently fitted out near the other facilities in Claris, and it’s using solar from the same system. Nancy of Flash Dental flies over from “New Zealand” every month for a few days, but during the rest of the month those who chomp down too hard on a guava seed or unpopped popcorn kernel still have to go “to town” for help. Pondering on the dunes Sea foam is a phenomenon we’ve seen all our lives, but one day after swimming as we sat on the dunes watching the “jump-ups” on the distant rocks, Joanna asked, “Water is colourless and transparent, but why does the foam on breaking waves appear white? Now we know! Sunlight is white – the sun emits visible light of all colours, which combine to give white light. Foam is made of bubbles, which are very thin liquid films with air inside. Compared with a water droplet of the same size, a bubble absorbs much less light than the droplet because it has so little matter, plus the air inside the bubble isnt a good absorber of light. So the light coming out from a bubble is brighter than that from water, which is just a large collection of water droplets, and appears white under the sun. It’s the same for the brighter foam on a carbonated drink – here, our ginger-lemon kombucha! Return of the Wholefoods Handbook Carrie is amazing. What talent, what generosity! I’ve been lucky to have the pleasure of working with her on all sorts of projects to which she brought her design and photography skills, enthusiasm, can-do attitude and kindness. When Ro and I left Golden Bay for the Barrier, where there’s no print shop, she took over distributing the Wholefoods Handbook, that little book I wrote in 2002 with the original local title Golden Bay Organics Wholefoods in a Nutshell. I thought other organic shops might want to stock it, and they certainly did – virtually all of them! 15,000 copies later, they’re still ordering. In 2012, thanks to Marsha’s help with writing, Tina’s with layout, and Sage’s with the cover, we published a much-expanded tenth anniversary edition, to include over 100 new products that had found their way to New Zealand. For all these 17 years, wonderful Kelly at Unlimited Copies has printed them at low cost in keeping with the kaupapa of the book: to introduce as many people as possible to whole foods they may be unfamiliar with or not know how to use – to boost individual health, organic shop sales and organics throughout New Zealand. Kelly further touched my heart when she came to the launch of the tenth anniversary edition! Under the umbrella of CEEDS trust, all proceeds from sales support initiatives for the greater good New Zealand-wide, especially environmental organisations and projects. When I handed the distribution over to Carrie, she waved her design wand over the cover and introductory pages for a makeover. This dear, talented woman is never at a loss for good ideas! Instead of driving to town to collect printed books from Kelly, bringing them home to pack as orders arrive and returning them to town to post, she recently asked Kelly to pack and post as well as print, which she’s gladly doing for a small fee. Carrie just emails the invoices to Kelly to print and enclose. Brilliant! Since access to a print shop is no longer needed, I’ve resumed coordinating the project from out at sea here on the Barrier! Nowhere can escape it Not long ago, a number of people here devoted an entire year of their lives to trying to prevent the aerial drop of brodifacoum poison on Rakitu Island just off the Barrier coast – everything from months of encampment on DoC’s lawn, to petitions, letters, public meetings and meetings with decision makers, legal advice, marches, information stalls, Aotea Poison Free signs and bumper stickers, online posts, letters in the Bulletin week after week, even a comic allegory play. After all of Ro and my lost causes in Golden Bay, we knew it was another futile effort and didn’t participate much. We gave a donation and signed the petition, I edited a flyer and we supported them with all our hearts! Now another environmental fiend has reared its ugly head. The inner harbour of Auckland’s Waitemata “needs” to be dredged – Ports of Auckland, cruise port extension, and America’s Cup village (to be inhabited for two weeks next March). The dredging will occur; the issue is where the toxic sludge will be dumped. Why not on land? No. Instead the so-called Environmental Protection Authority has approved dumping 250,000 cubic metres of dredge sludge 25 km off the east coast of the Barrier every year for the next 35 years. This is a 500 percent increase from the current consent. The protest is also heading for Auckland. This fiend too must opposed with time, effort, expert assistance and money https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/protect-aotea-great-barrier-island. Local and international stakeholders and influencers have been asked for support: local iwi and other residents, the wider Auckland community, media, politicians, marine experts, yachting communities, marine conservation organisations, high-profile celebrities, legal experts, America’s Cup syndicates, foundations, charitable trusts and individual philanthropists who care about preserving the oceans (how could anyone not care about it?), and many others. We're forced to spend our time pushing back – it could be precious time of joy, co-creating and delighting in a world of peace and plenty for all. At the same time, the legal battle has begun. Ngati Rehua Ngatiwai ki Aotea lodged an appeal based on what ought to be a fundamental given: safeguarding our environment by supporting the rights of our indigenous people to protect our land and oceans as mandated in the Treaty of Waitangi. The appeal was accepted by the High Court in Wellington and hearings are underway. The judicial review submitted by SPACE, the Society for the Protection of Aotea Community and Environment, will be heard simultaneously. The grounds for the appeal are obvious enough for schoolchildren to understand: * The sediment plume blocks the sun from reaching organisms at the bottom of the food chain on which the rest relies: phytoplankton à zooplankton àlittle fish à big fish à us. * The sediment is toxic – it’s dredged from ports where heavy metals accumulate from anti-foul paint on ship bottoms. It contains copper, zinc, lead and other heavy metals. Tension between the protection of our environment and current economic frameworks seems to be intensifying. Dumping tonnes of this sludge into the ocean is, in Elise’s words, “a wildly irresponsible, deeply shameful, ecologically and environmentally unconscionable, globally controversial, short-sighted and short-termist, irretrievably massive leap backwards” Listen to this beautiful Ancestors Chant produced in support of the campaign: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=645658319239360 Recipe of the Month I sent our daily smoothie recipe to my herbalist-by-skpye friend Mary Allen. What a surprise to find it arrive back to me in her newsletter! Lil Red Bill wrote that he’s "pleased to announce that The Little Red Van has found a new home. Erwin has once again breathed life back into her" and he’s "looking forward to seeing her happily skipping around Golden Bay once more." When we left, Lil red went to Malcolm, then Erwin, then Rose, then Bill, and now ??. Here she is in Northland soon after we found her when we arrived back in New Zealand in 1999, never to leave again, and in our garden home days in Pohara. Lucia was my guest on Can’t Live Without Music with an hour of her favourite Argentinian music. She really was a natural and she liked being on radio so much she’s going to start her own show! We brought our old transistor radio down to the beach to listen to Sam’s show the day his mother, visiting from Guernsey Island, played the accordion on air. :-) Kaitoke Beach beauty View from the main road above Kaitoke Beach – yeah, you can just stop on the road and take photos! If a car comes along, they just go around you, no prob. Nearly the same view taken by someone else, clearly on another day! Morning fog from our back deck If that's our view to the south, and this is our view to the north … … then what on Earth is this?*** *** It’s the reflection of our view to the north through the back door onto the hills to the south.
Livin' and Lovin': Four years on GBI In mid-March 2015 we pulled out our Golden Bay roots, 16 years in the growing, and journeyed north to the unknown of a bush-clad, beach-fringed, off-grid island we knew only from Dennis’s sketchy descriptions and his assurance we’d like it. We came on faith, without seeking information online, or even a map. We needed to make a move and we made it! How right Dennis turned out to be! The Visit lives on in photos and memories Thursday evenings were extra special during Paul and Mary’s summer visit, when I hosted them my weekly radio show. Paul was my guest for an hour on three evenings and Mary on the fourth. He called his track lists Origins and told the stories of the songs as they came into his life to stay. Paul brought his well-honed database skills to bear in the sequencing of the tracks Mary played an hour of medicine melodies, which have long been used around the world to support healing, beginning with the first natural healers. We were all thrilled when Naomi, my thesis-writing friend and faithful livestream listener in Japan, emailed that the songs helped soothe an acute health issue that had been giving her great discomfort. Mary led yoga-based classes on Women’s Pelvic Health on three Saturday mornings. At the Claris CBD Mary’s book and Judy’s book on the shelf at Pigeon Post Sam interviewed Mary about Haiti and the Teyuna people of Colombia. Sam’s partner Eunate is on the right. We bought sweet corn from Annette at her wonderful garden. Every day, Annette works in her garden and restocks her stall from daybreak to late morning, and then reads an entire book! We had a great time at the annual summer barbie for Aotea FM presenters (25-30 in all!) and met some we didn’t know before. We spent heaps of time cooking and eating! Paul’s Happy Birthday adzuki bean brownie cake. Well, his birthday is in September, but he was here so we celebrated it! It was delicious! Garden of Grace We all visited Winnie’s sister Grace in her garden of delight at Medlands. She’s another member of this wonderfully long-lived family, also past 80, and still teaching nursing at Auckland University of Technology. She’s quite the creative one as well! She used to host children’s book days, with adults reading aloud to children at different nooks in the garden. To set the scene for the readings, over the years she made sculptures in a variety of materials depicting characters from classic children’s literature. Some of them are now in her little museum, along with artifacts from earlier days on the island. A fourth-generation Medlands, her and Winnie’s ancestors were among the earliest Pākehā settlers here. Everywhere you glance, or investigate, in her garden, you’ll find something that brings a smile. At the end of the rose walk is a statue of Grace’s inspiration, Florence Nightingale. She intends to write a book about her influence on nursing in New Zealand, and if she does, I’ll be her editor! Refreshments in the gazebo – we enjoyed the cucumber water so much, we made it for the rest of the summer! Annual summer events, fading fast and soon to be gearing up for next year New Years Picnic The band Some traditions stay around a long time! While I edited Naomi’s thesis, Ro went with Russell and Caroline to the Mussel Fest at Port Fitzroy. Sandcastle Comp at Medlands Beach A good idea, in theory Oruawharo Pond Like Kaitoke Stream between Kaitoke Beach and Palmers, Oruawharo Creek at the south end of Medlands is sometimes blocked at its mouth, creating for a while a deep and tranquil place to swim when the sea’s too rough. Did you know it was a Kiwi who’s been plunging parts of the globe abruptly into darkness year after year? 125 years ago the amateur Wellington entomologist George Hudson wanted more time for insect collecting after his day job and took his request to those who decide these things for the rest of us. Like it or not, we’re still dutifully turning our clocks back and ahead, though vast regions of the world know better and let dusk and dawn look after themselves. I’d be hugely grateful if everyone would tell me musos and music you’d love to hear, (even if you don’t listen via livestream at aoteafm.org) to help keep my show diverse and fresh. Asking people their favourite music is great fun, and I’ve been thrilled by the awesome suggestions I’d never have thought of. I’ve also played music by Golden Bay musicians – Purple, Levity, Sika, Francis, Lethea, the marimba band, and more to come, and some musician friends from the States, as well as music by friends and rellies of my friends and rellies! Lava Dreams and Other Amazing Stories I’m editing a fascinating book of stories from the risk-taking life of islander and retired professional photographer John Kjargaard. Taking pictures may not sound risky, but it is when you’re filming active volcanoes up close. Other stories are about pre-photography adventures in the national parks of Hawaii, including rock climbing escapades, as well as clairvoyance and healing. John’s photos were in National Geographic and other publications, and he produced a doco about Kīlauea, the active volcano on the island of Hawai’i, as well as docos about two famous healers. An excerpt from John's first trip out onto Kīlauea’s active lava flows, in 1970. …. Soon we were crossing flows only hours old and I could fully appreciate why I had been instructed to wear long-sleeved clothing and the toughest boots I had. The ground was so hot that whenever we stopped, even for a few seconds, everyone jumped onto their pieces of driftwood. Nothing could have prepared me for what I found myself in the midst of. Everything, in all directions, was rough, black and smoking hot. The rising heat was intense, almost overwhelming, and everything appeared to move in mirage-like waves. Even the molten river between us and our destination wavered and undulated, reminding me of a Chinese dragon in a New Year’s parade. Don, our leader, had chosen this inland route hoping that the lava channel would have tubed over by the time we reached it. Unfortunately it hadn’t, leaving us with no choice but to jump over it. It was about a yard wide and I thought it would be pretty easy, until Don explained that the channel margins were very thin and could break under our weight. This meant we had to start our jumps a foot or two from the edge and land about the same distance from the other edge, making it nearly a two-yard running jump. "The lava is 1200°C, so if you fall in you will burst into flames, not just your clothes, but you, your body. If you only stick a foot in you'll be so painfully burned that you'll wish you’d died instead." Don went first and stood ready on the other side to grab anyone needing help. By then I was so hyped up on adrenaline I didn't even think about what I was about to do until two visiting geologists said they weren't going to chance it. Then it was my turn. One of the guys showed me how to hold my driftwood. "Keep it up under your chin," he said. "It will block the radiant heat and you can keep your eyes open. Otherwise you'll sear your eyeballs." As I jumped I was surprised to see my clothing flash over as all the fine fuzz on the fabric instantly singed. I could also feel the heat burning my right wrist, which was exposed as I held up the driftwood.... Light a Candle for Peace, Love and Remembrance As New Zealanders and even those in other parts of the world are aware, the Christchurch mosque shootings opened hearts to strong emotions of shock, love, compassion and support, and opened discussion about hate and extremism and how they might be healed. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was strong, compassionate and unifying. I found her words were something to grasp onto in those early gut-wrenching days. Just two excerpts from much that could be quoted: “He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety. And that is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless. And to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.” “… the responsibility we too must show as a nation, to confront racism, violence and extremism. I don’t have all of the answers now, but we must collectively find them. And we must act. I have said many times, we are a nation of 200 ethnicities, 160 languages. We open our doors to others and say welcome. And the only thing that must change after the events of Friday, is that this same door must close on all of those who espouse hate and fear. We wish for every member of our communities to also feel safe. Safety means being free from the fear of violence. But it also means being free from the fear of those sentiments of racism and hate, that create a place where violence can flourish. And every single one of us has the power to change that.” Immediately following this first act of terror in this country, the government banned sales of military style semi-automatic and assault rifles and other semi-automatic weapons and accessories. A complete ban came into effect when the new laws were in place in a few weeks. The government is buying back these weapons from current owners. It’s long past time to not only ban them from the military as well, but to ban the military altogether. Sorrow, concern and longing for a world where atrocities don’t happen are still reverberating in New Zealand. Among many such gatherings in recent weeks throughout New Zealand, St John’s Church in Medlands invited the community to an hour of learning, reflection and discussion. Rev Douglas Pratt, a scholar of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, Islamophobia, religious extremism and interreligious dialogue, gave a talk on Islamophobia – what it is and what we can do to overcome it, including changing the conditions that lead to alienation and fear of differences and make certain people susceptible to messages of hatred and violence against others. The thoughtful group had an opportunity to express what was in their minds and hearts and acknowledge the loss of 50 human beings. St John’s Community Church is the only church on the island. It was brought here by barge from the mainland when Dennis was still living here, and he helped place it on site and paint it. A few days after the murders, my friend Lethea sent our mutual friend Julia the song “No Hate, No violence – Not in Our Town”, a true-story song by US singer/songwriter Fred Small, about a 1993 incident in a town in Montana. Members of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan were targeting the few Jewish families in the town. The townspeople’s strategy for supporting the Jewish families succeeded in stopping the violence. Julia sent the song to me, which I listened to weeping, and I played it on my show. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wL19BFP30iv2wDNNaaAOe9kN2Dq6DquP/view Lethea was not only moved to share the Fred Small song but to create and distribute signs inspired by it. Most of the businesses in Takaka and Collingwood are displaying them, and individuals are posting them in their cars or at home. Please print and share if you would like to. The tragedy was also the focus of heart sharing at last month’s ElderRing.These gatherings are not meant for conversation but for sharing what’s in our hearts about the community and our aspirations for it and ourselves within it. It was started not only to fill a need many people share but with the expectation that the deeper feelings and intentions shared will spread to the wider community and we may see an uplifting shift in consciousness. Listening to everyone’s wisdom a few weeks ago I entered a deep heart/mind space that stayed with me a long time. It was the first one Ro went to and he loved it too. Impressions Perhaps you remember Bev and Les Blackwell, whose hidden gardens we toured two summers ago. Their son Ken is a serious amateur photographer who’s doesn’t shy away from using transformative special effects, especially one called Impressions. They certainly make an impression. View from Ken’s parents’ flower garden. Our house is just down the road – the partly hidden one on the left on the little rise. The program loves to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, giving everything an enchanted look. Here the background is brought very far forward – we’re not nestled that close in the foothills of Hirakimata! Sense Poetry Ro had a hour’s tutorial with short-term poet in residence Airini Beautrais. He was keen to explore possibilities for writing poetry enhanced by sensory stimuli from within the poem or the surrounding environment. An excerpt: My senses draw from within As free rain falls we begin My nostrils tickled by pure Pollen’s pistils – ahhh, freshness My ears pricked to the Dancing flow – mmmm, soundness My eyes kissed by the Beauty blessed – oooo, picturesque The garden Chives, two kinds of sacred basil, and basil (bottom to top) Lemon balm, nettles, mint Potatoes Tomatoes and cukes protected from the wind Passionfruit Dahlias Dear Jordan brought another cornucopia from the garden on the land where he lives at Blind Bay. Nicest guy you'll ever know! And more from dear Bev and Les New wee deck on the south side of the house, built by our friend and sometimes neighbour, David. Curtains for the kitchen cabinets, made by Marion from lavalavas we got in Samoa thirty years ago. Cayenne peppers – when they're dry we'll grind them into powder. At Kaitoke Beach Meanwhile, 9000 km to the north, lovely Naomi gets her diploma Rainbow over Whangaparapara Harbour, sent by Glenda, who often stays there with her husband on their boat. Crescent moon over Pitokuku
Savouring natural gifts with special guests on GBI It’s more than two months since my last post – the longest gap since we moved here nearly four years ago! I knew there’d be no writing when my dear son and daughter-in-law were here, and it seems that after a month of great visiting, I needed a month to catch up! After experiencing the peace, beauty and grandeur of the island in two other summers for only two or three weeks, they decided to immerse themselves in island life and stay for a whole month in January and February! A full-on, happy month is was! One of many lovely outcomes was even more photos than in previous years to absorb myself in and choose the very best! Here are more than 50! *** THE GUESTS *** They slept at Sugarloaf, the beachside home of Johnny and Christina and some of their whanau, at the south end of Kaitoke Beach. Johnny, who’s the son of our dear friends Winnie and Charlie, built the sleepout for their daughter, Eloise, the acclaimed Black Fern rugby player, when she’s home for visits. Christina and Johnny Good thing the sleepout is unfinished – lots of shelf space! Breakfast (part 1) – the honey is from our hives in Golden Bay! Views from the picnic table At low tide an isthmus connects to the small islands High tide, low tide and rough seas change the scene around the Mermaid Pool. Paul's in the background. The commute Paul and Mary loved their 40-minute walk back and forth from Sugarloaf along Kaitoke Beach in late morning and at the end of the day, with its never-ending changes in weather, sea and sky. Heading out Kids at the point First they crossed the stream, home of an oystercatcher couple It had become deep enough to float. Onto the big beach Protecting their ears on a windy day Sometimes they passed surfers Sometimes oystercatchers On commute The dragon marked the turnoff through the dunes to Oceanview Road. After huge seas and high tides, the beach was a lake They loved to walk back by the full moon light. Mountain biking Paul rode the Te Ahumata track a few times. Views from the top A day at Harataonga Paul and our friend (and Paul and Mary's new friend) Sam biked the picturesque Harataonga Track that follows the coast through regenerating bush from Okiwi to the Harataoga campground. Mary drove up with them and the two bikes in Sam’s car. She left them at the turnoff to Harataonga and drove down to spend a meditative afternoon amongst the pohutukawa trees and at the beach. On the way to the north end of the track, they rode up to the other Sam’s house at Windy Canyon and photographed the view. Start of the track – Whangapoua Estuary South end of Whangapoua Beach The track Back at the campground And then they all went for a relaxing swim. Until – yikes! – sharks! This is the beach where the film Cast Away with Tom Hanks was filmed. When the sea was rough, we headed for our sparkling swim spot at Kaitoke Creek. On a greyish day, we’re on the way to the “green place”, our daily destination – an opening in the brown reeds where the grass is green. About two kilometres downstream from the bridge, Kaitoke Stream enters the sea, dividing Kaitoke Beach from Palmers Beach. When Paul and Mary were here the stream was deep at any tide, because a big sandbar had blocked it at its mouth. One day they set out to the north end of Kaitoke Beach to check out the sandbar – another 40-minute walk each way. The big dune you can see from our house The sandbar, and Palmer’s beach beyond As far as the stream goes now. It’s happened before, and big swells have always unblocked it eventually. Te Ahumata in the background. Looking back to Kaitoke from Palmers Wild sea During Paul and Mary’s last week here, the sea was as big as we’ve ever seen it. What a treat to sit at Sugarloaf and exclaim over every mega wave and splash-up! Some days it was risky for them to start their walk along the rocky areas of Sugarloaf, and once on the beach they had to walk right up by the dunes. They took more photos of this big sea than of anything else! Here’s a small sample. No isthmus today! On two incredible mornings the sea was at its peak of wildness To conclude the photo fest – the only one of the four of us! We bought hangi dinners for the marae fundraiser and enjoyed a picnic on the dunes. We did lots of other closer-to-home stuff, including radio shows, Mary’s Pelvic Health Yoga classes, proposals in support of the Teyuna people of Colombia, sessions for strength, alignment and movement, looking at hundreds of photos from their last two years and ours from decades ago, playing Rummicub, and cooking and eating! More next time.
Bright red pohutukawa, hot black sand on GBI Half and Half That’s my new radio show on Aotea FM, the Barrier’s community radio station. It’s “the only solar powered radio station in the world – that we know of”, but what really powers it is the volunteer presenters, who fill the weekly schedule. To get ready for my first big day on air, I had a training session with Kathy, the station coordinator. Then that lovely sweetheart Sam G invited me to bring some music as a guest on his world music show, El Quinto Pino. Kathy stayed around for the first half hour of my first show. From the next show onward, I was on my own. My original idea was “Evenings of Beauty”, two hours of classical music. But the training was on a weekday morning, when people here expect something other than classical! So I prepared an hour of songs with special meaning to me, and after I’d done it, I thought, this is great fun! So I decided on half and half – the first hour a mix of all sorts that I love, with some by friends – including Purple, Francis and Lethea from Golden Bay, and Denya and Roy from the States, and plenty of generous helpings of Van Morrison. The second hour is my favourite classical pieces, though I won’t get very far with classical in one hour a week! It’s a buzz to plan the show and share my favourite music with whoever’s listening. A real perk is listening on the good quality headphones in the studio! You can livestream Half and Half on Thursday evenings, 7-9 pm, at https://www.aoteafm.org Let me know your favourite song and I’ll play it for you sometime! Sign language input in second language learning What’s that got to do with Great Barrier Island? It’s the very interesting subject of the most recent thesis I’ve been editing by a Japanese master’s degree student under the supervision of my friend Reiko, whose dissertation I edited in Tuscon many years ago. This is Naomi in Reiko's office with some of her chapters. Happily, editing often becomes friendship (some of the thesis writers visited us in Golden Bay!), and my correspondence with Naomi has been among the warmest and most rewarding. I even played her favourite song on my radio show, and she took a video of her thanking me and posted it on the Aotea FM facebook page, where it got over 100 views. I sent a photo of a pohutukawa, the New Zealand Christmas tree, and she sent one of cherry trees that she took last spring. She told me about the beautiful yakusugi tree (Japanese cedar), that can live for a millennium (or even two!) and “see the whole change of the world”. They live only above 500 metres on the island of Yakushima in southernmost Japan. Naomi also wrote about a year-end party she helped organise for multicultural people in her hometown of Kasai. Kasai’s population is 47,000, including 1,000 foreign workers and their families. She said Japan is always short of young blue-collar workers and hires ever more foreigners, but they’re not given enough education and support. She wrote, “To live in a great harmony, we often have parties and culture exchange events. I think they are well involved in our society. We meet, eat, talk, joke, and sometimes travel. But the most necessary thing is language” and the government doesn’t offer enough classes. “Indonesians live near my house and they call me mom and I call them sons. It’s a sweet relation between two different nations. They still have sort of sweet humanity that many people are forgetting. I learn a lot from them. “I’ve been working for this since 2007. This is part of my life.” Along with all this happy correspondence, we also managed to get some work done! Naomi’s research found that accompanying speech with sign language is indeed effective in the retention of new words in a second language. Dennis! Out of the blue once again, up to our deck walked our Golden Bay friend Dennis, the one we always heap thanks upon for encouraging us to check out Great Barrier Island when we were planning to leave the Bay. After a few days on the island seeing old friends, including a visit and a lunch with us, Dennis was on his way again. Tablemats! Years ago in a “chance” phone conversation, someone in Golden Bay, a guy by the name of Joshua Tree, who I don’t think I ever even met, gave me a bit of useful information that he has no idea I’ve put to use many times: It’s easy to make photo collages using PowerPoint. Here are the four tablemats I made, with photos from the zillions we’ve taken on the Barrier, that Kelly at Unlimited Copies laminated, just like in the old days, and posted to us for holiday gifts and sales at the Santa Parade and New Years Picnic. Coop lunch Members of the North Barrier Coop got together for a holiday lunch and catch-up at the clifftop home of Sam R. This is the view from her deck – you can actually see the curvature of the Earth! That’s our couscous salad in the silver bowl near the bottom, and see that blue corduroy skirt Eve's wearing? She bought it from our stall at last year’s New Year’s Picnic! I wore skirts like that when I was a teacher in northern New York State, so that skirt is at least 25 years old. She said she loves the two big pockets. I told her that’s where I kept my chalk — in pre-whiteboard blackboard days. Sam R has the most difficult coop job of all – looking after the spreadsheet. She’s the only one of us with the skills to do it. I place the monthly order with Ceres Organics, Caity and Gerald bring the pallets from the wharf at Port Fitzroy to their huge shed at Okiwi Passion, and three or four different members a month meet there to split and pack the food, and deliver it to the rest of the members on their way home. Yum! We couldn’t resist the scrumptious fruitcake recipe in Organic NZ, though we used tart cherry juice instead of brandy. Carrying on our holiday tradition from Golden Bay (where we paid HANDS for expert bakers like Barbara Spooner to make our holiday cakes) we’re inviting people for a cuppa and a piece of out-of-this-world fruitcake. I mean, it is seriously delicious! One of our guests was Izzy, chair of the Local Board, whom Ro meets for a cuppa at My Fat Puku***, the cafē in Claris, every now and then. She’s been on the board for 14 years, and she’d love to retire instead of standing in next year’s local body elections, but she knows how important it is to protect the Barrier, and that pro-development people on the board can begin to change its unique character. A few determined people can do a lot of heartbreaking long-term damage. (***Maori for stomach) Not many people know as much as Izzy about the Barrier, the context in which its fragility hangs in the balance, and the forces that will determine its destiny. We all shared our appreciation of the island and our deep feelings of protectiveness for it. With great relief we heard that DOC’s irrational application to designate the Aotea Track as one of New Zealand’s Great Walks was declined. The summit of the Barrier’s highest peak, Hirakimata, at 621 metres, is the “high point” of the 2-3 day walk, a circuit that follows and crosses streams, wetlands and native bush, including surviving kauri, rimu and kahikatea. Lucky trampers may spot rare wildlife: chevron skink, banded rail, black petrel. It’s a nice little track but not expansive enough to withstand hordes of Great-Walk-bagging trampers. When I first heard of the application, I practically had nightmares imagining the tiny, fragile hot springs overrun and despoiled, not to mention the increased risk of spreading kauri dieback. Izzy also reassured us that the Dark Sky Sanctuary designation hasn’t noticeably increased visitor numbers, but will only serve to keep the Barrier safer from “development”, and told us about progress on one of our suggestions – community bores for north, central and south. The Elephant Gallery We brought a set of tablemats to Marion’s gallery in Schooner Bay, where we found that she’s made beautiful use of macrocarpa blown down in the big storm of 2014. In the centre of the table are takeaway cups made by local potter Sarah Harrison as part of the effort to reduce waste on the Island. Marion also makes these wonderful BeeGlad nifty reusable food wraps made of fabric, beeswax and jojoba oil. I buy the big sheets as gifts and for ourselves, to cut into five smaller pieces to fit different sizes of bowls, and I supply a diagram with the ones I give as gifts! Wellbeing Wanders Among her many other contributions to the individual and greater good, our friend Vicky is a Nature and Forest Therapy Guide offering Wellbeing Wanders on the Barrier. The walks are based on Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practise of Forest Bathing. She says, “The work we do is so important for the planet!” Her website tells more: https://www.naturebathing.nz Vicky took this beautiful photo of sunrise at the south end of Medlands Beach. Charlie’s 83rd birthday song ♪♪♪ Ch-ch-ch Charlie, beautiful Charlie You’re the only g-g-g-guy that we adore When you dr-drive by on your tr-tractor We’ll be waving from our k-k-k-kitchen door! ♪♪♪ Demo Derby Great Barrier Wheels had some rental cars past their best-by dates. Why not have a bit of fun before Rob, the vehicle mover, trucked them off the island? Some say it was the family fun event of the year! You can watch a two-minute video of the silliness at https://www.facebook.com/groups/682942015150399/permalink/1807252916052631/ The Barrier Chitchat facebook page has some stories to tell.... Problem solved! “Will someone please come and deal to this massive pig who is marauding around Medlands and destroying vege gardens and spreading rubbish everywhere – our community here is getting really sick of this. It would make some large family a really tasty Xmas dinner!!!” Suggestions were put forward about how to deal with it, including animal control, biosecurity, council and … direct action. Many, many comments later, this came through: “The boys brought home the bacon last night. I hope it was the culprit.” ... and from the person who first posted: “Thanks – so great to hear that – it should be really tasty with all our veges in his puku!!! Enjoy!” Some days later…. And The GBI Skyscraper Sunflower Grow Off Twelve days later, someone posted this “Jack and the sunflower” photo to show how well hers was growing. Either the seeds are truly magical or she's telling a good fish story! “Off the grid Great Barrier Island leading the way on climate change” A two-minute video from NewsHub: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/10/off-the-grid-great-barrier-island-leading-the-way-on-climate-change.html?fbclid=IwAR3UIXF4-lvM-vXLuYCX2c2ASMXJGVgT9dnqBf19Pee_CjlViDIHQ__NJ90 A public electric vehicle charging station will soon be ready for use at the council service centre. Council is transitioning its vehicles to electric, and so are some islanders. The 2018 Santa Parade Okiwi Passion in spring Caity describes the scene: "Our gorgeous Bohemian sugarsnap peas enjoying the November rains and sunshine. Tomatoes powering away. Tenderstems broccoli in the background." Part of their stall at the Saturday market in Tryphena Young plants from Gerald and Caity – sacred basil and summer savoury, plus chives and one of Caity's beautiful basil tubs When I asked Caity the price of the basil tub, she replied, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” XOXOXO I’m ready to make pesto … but no organic garlic! The basil’s waiting patiently in the freezer. Cardoon flower close-up Barrier swim hole in the 1970s – can you guess what it is? A water tank! This sunset almost looks like the Aurora Australis! And to top it all off, 66 mm of bee-autiful rain fell overnight on Christmas Eve, a blessed gift to everyone, their tanks and gardens, and to trees, plants and all living things.
Rowing our boat gently on Great Barrier Island You wouldn’t think that on days of extreme wind, the beach is the best place to be. But so it’s been! When the westerlies howl and just about push you along the path to Medlands beach, once you’re at the foot of the dunes, all is warm, calm and heavenly, and the gently lapping sea beckons, while some days on the Gulf side the water’s so rough the ferry’s been cancelled! Our oystercatcher avatars, Rigg and Maggie, also enjoy the serenity of their beachfront home. One day before leaving for the placid beach, we watched a plane try to land in the wicked wind, its wings tilting 45°. The pilot reconsidered just before touching down, flew up, circled around and tried again. Second try, even worse – the plane was rocking front to back! I felt almost as scared as the passengers no doubt were – not long ago I was in one of those tiny planes in dodgy conditions. They made it on the third try. Sentences can be fun One day we were singing “Ro, Ro, Ro your boat” and all of a sudden it hit me! It had taken a lifetime to realise that hidden within this children’s ditty is a deep philosophy of living as well as the spiritual or quantum physics view that life is an illusion or perhaps a hologram. Maybe my changed circumstances brought the realisation. Folks, I’ve been largely homebound for over two months, though thankfully, I’m still swimming, dealing with the reason I went to Auckland. I’ll just say this to my women friends: To avoid my fate, please do your pelvic floor exercises, tell all your female friends and family members to do them, and tell them to tell theirs. I wish someone had told me! Leave a comment if you need instructions. To cheer ourselves up, we found we can’t resist laughing uncontrollably at dangling modifiers and such, even when they reverberate in our minds long after reading them. It all started with a sentence in a book I was editing. The author had never heard of dangling participles. I sent him some funny examples and we had a grand time sharing new ones back and forth! If you’re like us and can’t get enough, an endless supply can be found online. Here are the best from my collection. * Oozing slowly across the floor, Marvin watched the salad dressing. * I smelled the oysters coming down the stairs for dinner. * With his tail held high, my father led his prize poodle around the arena. * Emitting thick black smoke from the midsection, I realized something was wrong. * I saw an accident walking down the street. * Drinking beer at a bar, the car would not start. * Although exhausted and weary, the coach kept yelling, “Another lap!” * Freshly painted, Jim left the room to dry. * He wore a straw hat on his head, which was obviously too small. * After drinking too much, the toilet kept moving. * Flying south for the winter, I saw a huge flock of swallows. * Speeding through the tunnel, the station came into view. * Covered in mustard and relish, I enjoyed the hot dog. * Mrs. Shirley Baxter, who went deer hunting with her husband, is very proud that she was able to shoot a fine buck as well as her husband. * The dog was hungry and made the mistake of nipping a 2-year-old that was trying to force feed it in his ear. * We spent most of our time sitting on the back porch watching the cows playing Scrabble and reading. * Hunting can also be dangerous, as in the case of pygmies hunting elephants armed only with spears. * After eating all their food, we put the dogs outside. * I found a huge boulder taking a walk in the woods. * We saw cotton growing from our car window. * Dipped in chocolate, my kids love pretzels. * Tired of cleaning yourself? Let Merry Maids do it. * The mayor discussed the high cost of living with several women. * Kids Make Nutritious Snacks * Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Ax * Local High School Dropouts Cut In Half * Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant * We saw dinosaurs on a field trip to the natural history museum. * Having gathered dust in the storage room for years, I finally got to use my croquet set. * Dressed in a diaper and drooling, Grandpa read a book to his granddaughter. * Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. I’d love to enjoy knowing that these unintended images bring uncontrollable laughter to you as well. Aotea Great Barrier: Land and People So Ro went on his own to the Claris Club as a roving photographer for my update and blog. The event was the launch of this sumptuous new book. In honour of a dear friend in Golden Bay, I didn’t want both Ro and me to miss the launch. I thought she might be acknowledged along with the author and photographer, but no one seemed aware that without her, there would have been NO BOOK! Can you guess?! She’s been a book designer for years at Potton and Burton (formerly Craig Potton Publishing) and my collaborator on the H.A.N.D.S. newsletter, Get a HANDle on H.A.N.D.S. and other projects, who did the layout of every square centimetre of this most beautiful of books. As the title indicates, the book weaves the land and people of the island. Each of its landscapes – sea, beach, land, bush and mountains – is explored not only through spectacular photographs but through the eyes of 12 different locals, who each describe a favourite part of the island and its meaning for them. The launch was elegant, said Ro, and further deepened our conviction that we live in the best place in New Zealand and probably the world! Not only is it peaceful and beautiful, but those who live here have chosen it because they know it’s special and want to be here, loving it! Like the book, the launch captured the essence of our unique community. Ro returned home quite moved, as people reportedly are while reading the book. After music and karakia by tāngata whenua, Leonie Howie spoke. She’s the long-term island nurse who not too long ago launched the book Island Nurses with co-nurse/co-author Adele Robertson. Leave it to the amazing Leonie to be the organiser of the whole project, and the one to suggest 12 perfect people of different ethnicity, background and location to represent the island’s community. The photographer, Chris Morton, had a great range of images of the island. He realised that the photos combined with text about locals’ relationship to the land could result in a worthwhile book. True! He and his chosen author, Peter Malcouronne, are award winners in their fields (and my friend’s at the top of her field too!). Each presented a copy to six of the twelve people, or surrogates for those who couldn't attend, such as Eloise Blackwell, Winnie and Charlie’s Black Ferns rugby star granddaughter, who was on her way to games in Chicago (she scored two tries!) and France. (Forget the planet, sport must go on!) Ro found everyone’s words heartfelt and in keeping with the spirit of the book and its beautiful production. A hongi instead of a handshake or hug – the author and Leone’s husband, Ivan Howie. Ivan retired several years ago after doctoring here for decades. Another recipient expresses her delight! Note the dartboard, pool table where the Community Board chair has her stuff, and Sports Club notices on the blackboard! I love the informality! A copy had been offered to the first person to identify a photo from the book of a lesser-known spot on the island, that had been published in the Barrier Bulletin. This choice prize was won by “our” dear Winnie (in glasses, with her sister Catherine), the only one to get it right! Her book is open to a photo of her granddaughter Eloise at the Mermaid Pool. The event was catered by Taste Aotea, the cooking, catering and treats-for-sale brainchild of our friend Jeanne and her whānau, as organic as possible, with some ingredients from their home garden and Okiwi Passion. We meet our 500th person! The excitement always mounts as we near our next hundredth person! The closer we get the more we know we can do it! The time it takes has varied from seven months to a year. Just a few more hundreds to go. How long for the next 100? The 500th was Jake, hitching home from a day’s work as an apprentice chippy in Medlands. We didn’t have our choccy heart prize in the car, so we gave it to the lucky 501st, Flint, the son of Jess, the coop member who dropped off our order. Who will be next? What is Time? Continuing with the third speaker from this year’s “Small Island, Big Ideas”…. Sleep, light and biological time Professor Philippa Gander is director of the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University. Her interest in all aspects of sleep and its effects on wellbeing and safety have led to work with pilot fatigue, road crash risk, sleep rhythms in space, effects of shift work, sleep deprivation among physicians in training and more. Philippa’s talk opened our eyes to sleep! You wake up from a good night’s sleep as an updated version of yourself. Your brain’s had the night off from its usual duties to carry out essential maintenance on the rest of your body. It’s gone through cycles of dreaming and non-dreaming sleep and had a chance to regroup, store the day’s memories and integrate its panoply of emotions. So far, so good, but sorry to say I didn’t realise that the rest of Philippa’s talk was bad news, or at least a cautionary tale, until I started writing about it! We all know how lousy we feel when we don’t get the sleep we need, but maybe you’re too sleepy to notice you’re also not as aware of what’s going on, you’re thinking and reacting more slowly, and you’re clumsier and less creative. Not to cause you to lose sleep, but in fact recovery of full waking function after a bad night takes at least two full nights of blissful sleep. Even worse, studies show that getting less than seven hours of sleep long-term has dire health consequences – most prominently premature death. Prior to that you may be dealing with diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and obesity. It’s true – a decrease in sleep time = more fat = one cause of the obesity epidemic. Even a week or two of restricted sleep won’t do wonders for your health. Most of us believe that the more hours straight through the better, but pre-industrial revolution, people slept from sun to sun in a three-part cycle: first (dead) sleep, then “watch” – a few hours of quiet time awake, and finally morning sleep. Not only is it perfectly natural to be awake in the middle of the night, but Philippa advised us that it’s a good time to catch up on chores around the house! This is the ideal: The situation of teens nowadays is unhealthy indeed. Sleep is essential for them, but later bedtimes and “social jet lag”, with too little sleep on school nights and too much on weekends, causes a raft of problems including bad grades, depression, substance abuse, overweight and fatigue-related crashes. Chronobiology explains the brain’s circadian body clock, a master pacemaker that drives circadian rhythms, your daily cycles of hormones, heart rate, disgestion, brain function, fatigue, mood and all the rest. The graph shows the ideal times for natural sleep in tune with nature’s intended rhythm and the planet’s geophysical cycles. The retina is directly connected to the circadian clock, even through closed eyes. It can’t adapt to sleep/wake patterns outside of these natural rhythms, and big problems arise. Jet lag and social jet lag are disruptive and unhealthy, but shift work is worst of all, even three nights a month. Because the circadian clock is driven not only by light, but also by food, shift work with its bizarre mealtimes is so harmful it’s actually classified as a carcinogen! We also have clocks in our organs, glands, tissues and cells. The body clock is a wholistic coordinated system that humans have done a brilliant job of disrupting with artificial light (especially blue light and in particular the omnipresent handheld blue light screens) and 24/7 living. You can imagine the havoc wreaked on the long-suffering body clocks of people traveling to Mars. Philippa advocates a wide, informed debate about the costs of 24/7 living. It comes down to this: we need unrestricted sleep at night to get the most out of life. Dolphins, though, as we increasingly suspect, are more intelligent (and even wise) than humans. They sleep with one eye open and remain constantly vigilant for days by resting half their brain while the other half remains conscious. “What is Time” to be concluded next “time”. Back to waking life…. Kauri dieback Several tracks have been closed in the central mountains of the island in the effort to slow the spread of kauri dieback disease, the cureless infection threatening the upper North Island's treasured forest giants with extinction. The microscopic pathogen can be spread by just a pinhead of soil and you can’t tell by looking if a tree is infected. Some say kauri dieback is spread more by wild pigs than by humans, and pigs pay no attention to track closures or boot-cleaning stations. Kauri have been regenerating all over Great Barrier Island after the ravages of logging and gum digging ended 100 years ago, but now their survival is under serious threat. Kauri on Blind Bay Road - - - - - - - - - Ro and Sam continue to extend the bamboo windbreak – one more section to go. Ro enjoys my most recent edited book, the story of the interesting and purposeful life of our long-time Iowan friend Judy Plank, who for decades has been a committed activist and all-around hard worker in support of social justice, political sanity and peace on Earth. Judy is donating all profits from the sale of Paradise Still Has Snakes to organisations she’s been active in: American Friends (Quaker) Service Committee, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Alternatives to Violence Project, New Roads Reentry Team (assists people as they come out of prison to help them transform their lives so they stay out), and the Frontera de Christo, Douglas, Arizona (for the Agua Prieta Migrant Center, Sonora, Mexico). Need something edited – book, brochure, blog, any words at all? Please leave a comment! Nettles, chives and lemon balm on the deck Morning rainbow over Pitokuku At the end of the Puriri Bay Road in Tryphena is this small sheltered “miracle" beach that’s swimmable in most winds and tides.
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August 2021
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