Lupine Madness

Went hiking in the hills of Fort Ord last week.  The countryside's green and mellow and tonight's rain will keep it that way for awhile!  I liked this view of oak branch shadows in the meadow.

Tossed this pic in...on the same file as the Ft Ord pix.  This is the Wallangarra train station on the New South Wales-Queensland border in Australia.  In the 19th century, each present day Australian state was a separate British colony.  And, in an example of bureaucracy at its finest, the colonies had different railroad gauges!  This meant that when traveling by train, you had to stop at each border and change to a different train that could run on that colony's gauge.  Wallangarra was one of those points so although the town is tiny, the train station is large.  After the colonies joined in the Australian federation in 1901, the train tracks were gradually standardized, though this took several decades. 

Lupine field in the Ft Ord hills.

Lupine closeup.  Gorgeous!

Here the lupines are mixing with buttercups.

Lupine empire!  Not bad for a dry year.  What does it look like after a wet winter?? 

Hokitika Gorge

Had no luck posting videos whilst on my trip, so am giving it a shot now that I'm home.  Hokitika Gorge was awesome.  The combination of turquoise, glacier fed water and lush rainforest was most unusual.

Highway 6

Never got to post pics from this part of my trip.  These shots were taken along highway 6 in New Zealand, along the west coast of the South Island.  NZ is a land of ferns.  They come in all sizes and shapes.

Here's a fine fern.

When traveling on the NZ byways, cattle delays are fairly common.  Here a cowboy is punchin' his dogies.  This is on a major highway, though one that is by no means traffic choked.  You also see sheep delays.

Islands poking out of the Tasman Sea.

Cool rocks at the Tasman.  You can see similar formations on the Sonoma coast north of San Francisco.

Took a walk through the rainforest a little way inland.  It's an empire of moss, ferns, and leaves.

There's a tree buried in here somewhere.  Nature's abstract art.

Roaring Billy Falls, tumbling into a turquoise river.

Tree ferns rule!

Hobbit hole?  The movie was filmed here, after all.  Saw it on the plane coming home.

Lizards at the Blue Pool.

Lake Hawea.  There are about half a dozen large lakes on the lee side of the South Island's coastal mountains.  They remind me of Lake Chelan, in central Washington, and Lake Okanagan, in southern British Columbia.  Climate is similar too...warm, dry summers, frosty winters, scanty rainfall.  I stayed in Wanaka, near here.  Wanaka gets only about 25 inches of rain a year while Milford Sound, on the coast about 50 miles to the west, over the mountains, is drenched with 264!

Sunshine Beach

These are mainly pics of my house at 26 Seaview Terrace, Sunshine Beach, Qld.  This was my second visit to this residence and it is COMFY!  Only trouble was the people at the rental office neglected to give me the remote control to that opened the garage door, so had to do it manually for a week.  Didn't find this out til I checked out.  But, 'twas still a week of luxury.  This is the main dining deck on the second level of the three level home, with the fine Ozzie barbie in the background.  I barbecued twice a day...for brekky and dinner.  It's pretty much required to gain respectablilty in Oz!  You just go to the Coles supermarket a mile away in Noosa Junction, stock up on chook, snags, and steaks, and enjoy.

The living room, with indoor dining table for use in the wet.  Love the aluminium poles on the staircase!

Lizards on the barbie.

This pic was in the same file, had to throw it in.  This is at Otago University in Dunedin, NZ...a sculpture over the science and math building, I reckon.

Feb/Mar is The Wet in Queensland, and it was indeed wet!  About ten inches of rain fell during my week at Seaview Terrace.  I still got out on the beach every day at some point.  This view is from the third (top) floor of the house...a good place to watch the storms come in from the Coral Sea.

Sunshine Beach.  It goes for miles and miles, down to Coolum Beach in the far distance.  My house was only about 500 metres from the northern end of the beach, and Noosa National Park.

Another view from the top deck of the house.

While the top deck is wide open with a fine view of the sea, the lower deck is in the jungle, complete with kookaburras and many other birds.  It's also the pool deck.  On a warm, rainy day...temps in the 70s...it was nice to set up a chaise next to the pool, under cover, and watch the rain from there.

Two Antipodean Cities

Traveling at the south end of the south island of New Zealand, I visited the two southernmost English speaking cities in the world!  This is Invercargill,  as far south of the equator as Astoria, Oregon is north.  Besides this area, the only continuously inhabited area farther south is the tip of the South American cone in Chile and Argentina.  Invercargill is an old agricultural city, not as tourist oriented as many NZ towns, with lots of architecture from the early 20th century.

A fine old building in Invercargill, nicely painted.

Dunedin, larger and northeast of Invercargill, is a college town. It has a little over 100,000 residents, not counting about 21,000 students at Otago University.  The collegians give the city a hip, lively air.  The rapid growth of the university in recent years has given Dunedin its second heyday, you might say.  The first was in the late 19th century when the Otago area had a gold rush, and wealth flowed into the city.  Here, a statue of Robert Burns graces the Octagon, the centre of the city.  St Paul's Cathedral is over Bobby's right shoulder, with the municipal chambers to his left.

The Bank of New Zealand building, dating from 1883 and currently being renovated within.

An art deco auto dealership.  The building is still used for that purpose.

Yessss, Queen Victoria still keeps a watchful eye over her domain.  When is teatime again??

The Dunedin railway station, a classic Edwardian structure dating from 1904.  Trains still operate here.

Detail of the mosaic floor in the lobby of the train station.  I love these old buildings that have their original use and/or proprietor cut in stone on their facades and floors!  Such a confident prediction of permanence.  You sure don't see that anymore, in an era where sports stadiums change names three times in a decade.

A stained glass window in the train station.  Epic! 

Love it!

On the Road in Otago

300 km of superb scenery today...about what you'd expect on the South Island!  This is Kawarau Gorge, east of Queenstown.

This pic is very tranquil, but it's in Queenstown, the busiest and most swish resort town on the entire south island.  It's on Lake Wakatipu and like Wanaka is in a stunning natural setting.  If you're a physically fit outdoor sport enthusiast, this is your place!  You can go mountaineering, kitesurfing, parasailing, hiking, rock climbing, or bungy jumping (it was invented here!) Mountain biking and whitewater rafting are also huge.  For the more sedate folks, there are dozens of wineries hereabouts. 

Ducks and gulls hangin' out on the beach at Queenstown.

Lake Wakatipu is long, deep, and absolutely spectacular.

A man and his sheep.  Only in New Zealand!  Last I heard, there were 50 million sheep here, and 4 1/4 million people.  There used to be 70 million sheep...they've been replaced by cows to some degree.

This is the view from my motel room in Te Anau.  This is a cool town, quieter than Queenstown, greener than Wanaka.  I stayed here three days and could have lingered for a month.

Hokitika

At times during the trip I had trouble posting pics to the blog, so will catch up now that I'm home.  I stayed two delightful days In Hokitika, on the west coast of the south island in New Zealand, in an area called, appropriately, Westland.  Hokitika is drenched by 114 inches of rain a year, but the weather was fairly good when I was there, and the scenery was stunning.  I stayed in a beach chalet in the back of this picture, with a Simmental cow enjoying dinner in the foreground.  On the other side of the cow pasture is the beach.

At the town beach, locals have gotten creative with the driftwood.  Blow up the pic and you can see more clearly.

Sign at a sidewalk cafe in Hokitika.

Just 30 km or so outside town is Hokitika Gorge.  Amazing!  The water gets its color from glacial melt in the nearby mountains.

The turquoise water, combined with lush rainforest, is a scene that you don't find very often.  Can you see this anywhere else in the world?  Maybe in southern Chile...I'm not sure.

A driftwood stump on the vast beach at Hokitika. 

Beach scene near sunset.

Rainforest Cascades

At the town of Urunga, between Coffs Harbour and Nambucca Heads, there is a fine boardwalk that traverses a lagoon and mangrove forests, arriving at the beach.  It's a pleasant morning stroll.

In Dorrigo National Park, there are two boardwalks that go through the rainforest canopy.  Here's the forest from above...

And from within.  An empire of green, bursting with life, especially birdsong.

Another pic of the rainforest from above.

With the copious rainfall so far this year, waterfalls in NSW are blasting.  Here's Crystal Shower Falls, on the Wonga Walk in Dorrigo NP.  You can walk behind the cascade, which is always cool and refreshing.  This waterfall is about 100 metres high.

Farther along the walk is Trestania Falls.

Here's a goanna, a metre and a half long counting the tail.  Isn't he a beauty!  This goanna is in the rainforest, but not in an isolated spot...he's right in front of my bungalow at the caravan park in Nambucca Heads.  Once I was staying at another caravan park a little north of here, eating chicken, and a goanna came up on my deck and started bludging.  Turned out he was a chicken skin conoisseur.

A family of Eastern Gray Kangaroos at the Little Bay picnic area, near Smoky Cape.  Overall, roos are common in Oz, but they're selective about where they hang out.  This spot is a favorite of Skippy and his mates...I can always find roos here.  But you can travel for many days and not see one if you don't happen to pass through one of their haunts.

Upper Ebor Falls, between Armidale and Urunga, 1300 metres above sea level.  I last passed through here in 2002, and the falls were running but fitful.  Not now!  They're roaring over a cliff of columnar basalt, laid down by volcanic eruptions 19 million years ago.

Lower Ebor Falls in the foreground with upper Ebor above.  Lower Ebor is 63 metres high, upper Ebor 27.  Both roaring today.

I hiked about 6 kilometres through the rainforest at Dorrigo NP today.  Midway through, it began...raining!  The moisture put a shine on the giant leaves.