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 [...]
Foolhardy preparations for a journey ranked by police to be among New Zealand’s top-ten most perilous, The Forgotten World Highway redeems itself by also being one of the most spectacular and scenic road trips anywhere in the world. Linking Taumarunui and Stratford and officially designated State Highway 43, the Forgotten World Highway is New Zealand’s [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]