The old railroad town of Ohakune sits among rolling green farmland in the centre of the North Island. Today it is better known as a ski town for the Turoa Ski Area, or as the carrot-growing capital of New Zealand. Now a link to the past, the Old Coach Road, is creating a new fun [...]
To be honest I really hadn’t given a lot of thought to Eltham, apart from stopping there to pick up cheese from the Eltham Cheese Shop, until at a photographers Christmas dinner some years ago when Mark Bellringer and his partner Barbara Valintine started talking excitedly about buying the Bank of New Zealand building in [...]
When I was a kid the Catlins always sounded an interesting place to visit – there was a slightly mysterious ring about the name. Our family had many camping holidays in remote areas around New Zealand, but for some reason my father wasn’t drawn to the Catlins, which is great because now I had the [...]
The cone-shaped Mt Taranaki sits in semicircle of land that radiates from the summit down to the ocean. The scoria near the summit rolls down into forest that follows the circular shape of the mountain forming the border of Egmont National Park. At the edge of the forest, rolling green fields flow down 18 kilometres [...]
As we drive down the Ngauranga Gorge into Wellington I offer sage advice to the driver: “Watch your speed, see that camera up there.” An encounter, a few years back, with a white NZ Transport Agency envelope containing an instant fine, brought my attention to the 80-kilometre speed sign. At the bottom of the hill, [...]
I walk carefully along the swing bridges from tree to tree, high up in the redwood forest among the birds. It is another world up here. My vision of coming back as a bird in my next life has taken wings. It is all here before me in this forest setting. I could be a [...]
The foothills of Mt Taranaki are formed by the Pouakai and Kaitake ranges, remnants of a large volcano. They lie to the north of the symmetrically shaped volcano that is Mt Taranaki. Both ranges were the source of kai (food) for local Māori a factor reflected in their names. Pouakai means the pillar or source [...]
Friends of mine have a classic Kiwi fibrolite bach from the fifties overlooking the Awakino River mouth. This bach is a suntrap and the perfect spot to stay while I’m on a shooting recce of the Three Sisters, Mokau and Awakino. When I say shooting I do mean with a camera as opposed to a [...]
I have been visiting Simpson’s Beach at Wharekaho since I was a kid. In the sixties, windy gravel roads and clouds of dust were synonymous with a trip to Whitianga. We pulled up at Simpson’s Beach with our blue Holden station wagon overloaded with camping/fishing gear and set up camp in the paddock at the [...]
The ground was dark as I stumbled down towards the gravel shore to photograph the Cape Palliser lighthouse silhouetted against the striped morning sky. I was only half awake, still entombed in the warm feeling from my sleeping bag. Suddenly the ground started to rumble in front of me. I caught a waft of stale [...]