At the Bar and Baa

Arrive at your Auckland Airport (early flight next day) accomodation by late bus and you have few expectations of food outlets in small shopping strips nearby. Then, surprise surprise, you find a hidden gem. The Bar and Baa near Mangere serves the most delicious Greek Fish, has friendly hosts and an A rating.

While I savoured my Greek Fish dish I drew the customers at a nearby table.

Ninety Years Old

The guests thought ninety was a grand age to be; the birthday girl decided 60 was better and turned the 9 upside down.

Data

My extended warrenty (three years) had only 2 weeks to run so I finally took my laptop to the computer doctor to get the faulty sound repaired. It arrived back yesterday after almost four weeks: new hard drive, new mother board, data gone to data heaven.

Beatles

Insomnia ... surfing the web ... finding a bit of nostalgia... great song though... and great haircuts.

Opera Bar

Under the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House, overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is the Opera Bar, a bar where Sydney's bright young things meet on Friday nights. Passing tourists join them to sit at high bar stools in the balmy evening air. As the numbers grow the noise crescendos. Everyone shouts to make themselves heard and passers by on the upper forecourt lean against the railings above to watch the animated frenzy.

Cockatoo Island Images

The cavernous buildings, the old machinery, the dwarfed students and the light that has a cathedral feel.

Cockatoo Island Drawing Week

Cockatoo Island is a small island in Sydney Harbour, once covered in red gums and frequented by sulphur crested cockatoos. A prison was built there early on, then it was converted to a shipyard then it spent some time in abandonment. Nowadays the public can visit and the National Art School sends all its second and third year students there for a drawing week at the start of the school year.
The old shipyard buildings are enormous ... ... and mainly bare though some of the original equipment remains.
During 'drawing week' there are students everywhere, sitting in corners and along walls, dwarfed by the size of the buildings.

Eyeing the future

School starts on Monday, National Art School in Sydney. New school, new life, same eyes.

Houses needing rowboats

There are a row of houses in Patonga whose only access is by boat. If you want this view...
you have to be prepared to ladle water out of your dingy and row across the inlet.

Climate change

I am back from the Land of the Long White Cloud to the Land of Humid Februaries. My route was circuitous, Dunedin to Sydney via Brisbane as there are currently no direct flights. It is only three hours flying time between Dunedin and Sydney but it feels like 1000km closer to the equator.

Mirror mirror on the wall

This mirror was in the wonderful 'whiskey' building in Oamaru that went into receivership the week after my visit.

Please and thank you

In Dunedin everyone thanks the bus drivers. The elderly, children in school uniforms, adolescents. Sometimes the bus driver thanks the passengers as well.

Modaks in Dunedin

Modaks has the world's best coffee: you get a good cup regardless of which staff member is making it. That is pretty special and the result of the owner's former job teaching coffee-making at the Polytech.
Modaks is also very supportive of local artists and features a revolving exhibition of local work on it walls.

Modaks Cafe is for sale in case you are interested. If it is sold, I am hoping the new owners are just as committed to good coffee (and art).

Dunedin sketches

Cats, Cafes and Landscapes. This sketch of the hills in NE Valley and other new drawings made around Dunedin are online at www.artsmitten.com

On Brighton Beach

Brighton Beach is just south of Dunedin. A southern Dunedin suburb. YouTube tells me this video is blocked from viewers in Germany because the music on the video is copyrighted there. Sorry!

Nature takes over

The honeysuckle is taking over the house next door. It looks as if someone walked out one day and never returned. Honeysuckle tendrils reach forward and are slowly consuming the house and car. The flowers are so sweet smelling though that you forget the dereliction of the house.

Oamaru

Oamaru has a population of 20,700 and buildings to rival Berlin. Locally quarried limestone Oamaru Stone is known around New Zealand as a beautiful building material, especially where ornate moulding is required. It was used here in Oamaru in the 1880s when Oamaru had a reputation for the best built and most mortgaged town in New Zealand.

The bigger building with Bank of New South Wales carved into the top now houses the Forrester Gallery, one of many galleries and craft establishments that make the town worth a lengthy visit. The smaller building is a coffee shop, one that made me miss the coffee at Modaks in Dunedin.

Dunedin Shop Window

The endless summer comes to an end. Yesterday felt like 28C. Today they forecast 17C but the thermometer said 12C.

Frankie and Tasman

This is Frankie. She lives in Melbourne. Purrs as she jumps uninvited onto your lap. Was rescued from the pet pound and has become her owner's joy.
Tasman lives in Dunedin on the other side of the Tasman Sea. She too is her owner's joy, but nips at strangers if they irritate her. Here she is eying up a nip-candidate.

Student city

Dunedin is a university town and many houses in the northern end of town are student accommodation. The new year is about to start and students are moving in ... pushing furniture along the streets on shopping trolleys.