Not sure about this

 

Before and after in the hallway - now it's done I'm not sure I like it! Well, I'm going to have to like it, I'm not doing it all again. The door on the left and the light surround are going to be burnt orange. Perhaps that will pick it up a bit. (The tassels are from my Ganesh-pol over the door, a woven tapestry-thing that has Ganesh on it, ensuring that only persons with good intentions enter over the threshold. Ganesh is the god of doorways, remover of obstacles and blesser of new initiatives.)

 

More gardening today. It's scary what a mess the garden can be in before I realise how messy it is. I went to Oderings annual plant-sale. It's become a little ritual, like going to the spring fairs. As usual the controversy over whether retail traders should be open over Easter has raised its weary head. The Christians say no, we should have some respect; the non-Christians say who are you to tell us to respect something we don't believe in. Gardening is my religion; I worship the Creatress every time I go out in my garden, so buying plants is part of that worship. The Easter weather has been gorgeous, warm and balmy and dry, unlike the poor persons in parts of the Northern Hemisphere who are having snow at Easter for the first time in living memory. No doubt our turn will come.

 

I seem to have acquired another cat. Only a part-time one, but little Puss-puss from over the road seems to spend more time over here lately. He went to sleep in the garden this afternoon while I gardened, and was fascinated with the watering. He seems to have hurt himself, and hisses when I put my hand on his back. Poor wee soul, hope he'll be alright.

Today in pictures

Today is a day off for me, so what did I do? I went and had coffee with my friend Maggie at the local cafe. Nice apple and raspberry tart and good talk.
  I continued on with my repainting the hallway, which I started yesterday, and the ceiling of the laundry, which the EQCers forgot. I've gotten tired of the eau-de-nil in the hall and am now painting it a sort of pinky orange, a shade called Romantic. (So of course, singing "Isn't it romantic..."). Lots of climbing up and down  the ladder, tiring really but fun to see the colour change. Will post before and afters after I've finished.
  

             Thomas had a ten-minute "psychocat" session, jumping around things and off things

 

Pretty David Austin rose "Crown Princess Margarethe"

 

 

Explosion of asters and dahlias - the bees love the asters

 

 

Emma bedded down on the drop-cloths in the hallway

 

 

Puss-puss came over for a visit and played with Thomas's favourite toy, a green duster

 

 

(Thomas was on the bed, sleeping off  his "psychocat" session).

The days are just packed!

 

 

 

 

Aliens

Here's a thought. (It's one of those wide awake at 4am thoughts, when one's mind just rambles around aimlessly).
   When you see depictions of aliens, how come they never have genitalia? Or breasts? This must signify that 1) they reproduce asexually (or have hidden genitalia) 2) they are not mammals (or have hidden breasts). They don't seem to be sexually dimorphic, but there are big ones and small ones. From this, some observers have drawn the conclusion that the big ones are male and the small ones female. But isn't this anthropocentric? Perhaps the big ones are female and the small ones male.

Second 4am thought. If you could go back in time and bring something back, wouldn't it be fun to kidnap a medieval peasant and bring him/her back and show him/her round your house? It's full of magical stuff - electricity for starters. It's an invisible energy source that is carried to the house in small wires. It's not hot, but can heat your home and cook your food. It can kill you, but mostly it's taken for granted. And microwaves - sheer sorcery. The food cooks but the cooker doesn't get hot?  That is truly a weirding way. And cars (a wagon without a horse). And phones (talking to people through a wire). To say nothing of smart phones and cell-phones (talking to people through the air). The peasant would probably have a breakdown just trying to take it all in.

So let's put these two thoughts together. Perhaps "aliens" are just humans from a far future time, come back to amuse themselves by mystifying us early-21st century peasants with their advanced technology and genderless sexuality?

Aaargh!

Plagued by annoying children in the Centre today. Mummy says 'Don't touch' so what happens? Darling kiddy touches as much as he/she can and drops stuff on the floor. Their high piping voices just make my teeth hurt. Whatever happened to quiet, good children? Went the way of corporal punishment I guess.

Una pittura bella

 

View across the Veneto plain from the Euganean Hills, Northern Italy. Oddly enough this looks very like the view of the Southern Alps from Banks Peninsula in Canterbury, NZ.

 

    Went to work today. Gorgeous autumn day, but I was at work so didn't see much of it. Life is pretty ho-hum just at the moment, no holidays planned so I'd better get working on it. Italy in September/October perhaps. October is a vile month in Christchurch, it's like a little winter, the weather seems to turn back on itself after giving us spring in September, so that might be a good time to go away. Back to Rome, then south to Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast and Paestum to see the Greek ruins there. Then perhaps into Umbria to Asissi. Perhaps I'll see the new pope. I can't decide yet whether he's a breath of fresh air or the stench of decay from the crypt of the Dark Ages. Any bets on how long he lasts? Or why he goes - assassination, poisoning or stress-induced heart attack?

    Yesterday I went to the library's book fair. Loads and loads of books, almost too many really. I bought about 10 fiction books and a biography of Clark Gable, about whom I know nothing at all, except for his classic Rhett Butler role. The fiction I bought is nothing remarkable, but I like to have some unread stuff around the house in case I can't get to the library, or my choices are bad. I've read several unremarkable books lately - it's so disappointing when you think a book will be really good but isn't.

  Easter coming up, always a nice holiday, so much more relaxed than Christmas. There's not the same driven, compulsive quality as at Christmas, I hope it stays this way. Apart from Easter eggs and massive chocolate consumption, Easter hasn't been as commercialised as Christmas. And I really don't mind massive chocolate consumption at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rope making with harakeke fibre

Had an interesting day today, making rope from harakeke (NZ flax, Phormium tenax). Here a group are extracting the fibre from the long harakeke blades to weave together into a rope that will moor a mokihi (boat) to be part of an exhibition in the new information centre at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.
    The theme of the exhibition is the use of plants in Canterbury, emphasising how much humans have relied on plants for survival. The harakeke was of prime importance to Maori, used for clothing, baskets, rope work, fish traps and nets, just about everything.
    The harakeke was cut at a pa harakeke, (a place set aside for harakeke cultivation) in a swamp reserve outside Christchurch. The pictures here are from another reserve, Travis Wetland. Christchurch has a great wealth of swampland, and was very rich in food and plant resources for Maori. Mokihi were the traditional shallow-bottomed boats used to travel from one part of the district to another, through the many interconnecting waterways.

  The long blades must be prepared by hand, cut through the outer layer of green tissue, and then stripped and scraped to reveal the long, durable fibres within. These are then plaited together to make a rope.

 

Traditionally, Maori used mussel shells for the scraping, but most of us used butter knives.

 

 

This is the fibre, which is then plaited together....

 

 

...to form a rope.

 

 

Other work for the production of the mokihi was also carried out. Here a ranger cuts raupo (bullrushes). Bundles of this are dried then lashed together on a frame of flax stalks.

 

 

The flowering stalks of harakeke from the previous season are stacked up awaiting storage. These will provide structure and buoyancy to the mokihi.

 

 

The best muka (fibre) is set aside to be used for kete (baskets).

 

So a very enjoyable, productive day in the early autumn sun. We'll go on to make the boat in the next months, and will hopefully float it across the lake with two willing volunteers later in the year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why am I still surfing the Net at 10.59pm?

Saw a funny cartoon recently. A little rabbit is surfing the net; he sees what the time is, says "It's so late! Why do I stay up and surf the Net instead of going to bed?" Next picture he's googling "Why do I stay up and surf the Net instead of going to bed?".
  I know why I do it. It's because if I go to bed and go to sleep the next thing I know it will be tomorrow morning and I'll have to get up early and go to work. It will be tomorrow eventually anyway, but if I stay up I can sort of see it coming, so it seems less traumatic somehow. God, that bloody alarm clock. No wonder we're all stressed. Is there anything worse than being woken artificially? We start the day with a jet of adrenalin and that can't be good, surely. I want a medical study carried out on how alarm clocks are dangerous to our health. How many lives are shortened because of that first thing in the morning fight-or-flight response?  It's groundhog day over and over again.
    "Put your tiny hand in mine....."
(or  "Half-past five, stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition...")

Today's pretty picture

 

Akaroa Harbour from Otepatotu

 

 

Wacky cake

Wanton burning of structures is usually called arson, but this becomes art because it's a "mental health project"? I don't understand the thinking behind this at all. Seems to me like someone trying to glorify something valuless by saying it has social value, thereby silencing all criticism by snatching the moral high ground. And burning rubbish on it. In fact, the more I think about this, the more it's doing my head in. I think I need to go and burn something now. To re-establish my mental health.

Chocolate wacky cake

Was faffing around on Pinterest the other day and came upon a recipe for "Wacky cake". (The link-maker doesnt' seem to be working - it's on a site called Sweet little bluebird, I'll try another time to get the link for you). Anyway, a little while ago a friend gave me a recipe for her wacky cake. Hers has butter; this one has cooking oil. As I didn't have butter, I tried the cooking oil variety and here it is. Sweet little bluebird also has recipes for a vanilla cake and a spice cake. I might try the vanilla one with lemon rind and make lemon cake.

Apparently, these cakes originated in the Depression (but were probably around well before that) as a solution to the problem of having no milk, butter or eggs. Basically, you mix up the dry ingredients, then make three hollows in the mix, and add vinegar, vanilla and vegetable oil, then add tepid water and mix together. You can do this right in the baking tin if you want. These cakes are also called Crazy cakes, Dump cakes or Depression cakes. I remember Mum telling me that you could use vinegar and bicarb of soda mixed together to substitute for egg, but I don't know what the proportions were. She also had a cake called "Yoofey cake" which you mixed up in the baking tin, but her cake had milk and eggs. I would guess it was a version of these crazy cakes, though, adapted for more prosperous times. Anyway, it makes a very nice cake, suitable to have with a cup of coffee for breakfast. (Yes, no healthy stuff like muesli in this household!)

Wacky cake

1 1/2 cup flour

3 Tbsp cocoa

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

 

1 tsp vinegar

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

5 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup tepid water

 

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl (or baking tin). Mix together.

 

Make three dents in the dry mix, one dent a bit deeper.

Put vanilla in one dent, vinegar in another and oil in the deeper one

Pour tepid water over all, and mix thoroughly.

 

Bake at 190C or 350F for 35-40 mins.

Ice when cool or sift powdered sugar over top.

 

 

http://www.sweetlittlebluebird.com/2013/03/tried-true-tuesday-crazy-cake-no-eggs.html

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Damn

Works are starting today on the rebuild of my street's wastewater system, which was damaged in the quakes. The big trucks are arriving right now, engines running, much banging of metal on metal, blokes shouting "Right!" in their ugly high-vis vests. This will go on everyday bar Sundays, 7.00am till 6.00pm, until sometime in May. The street will be closed to traffic during these hours, so if you want to get your car out, you have to do it before 7.00 in the morning. There may even be a pump working day and night. Oh, joy. Where can I find a nice, quiet padded cell?
   Earthquake: the disaster that keeps on taking.

A conversation

 

"Ew! Not this again! You've fed me this for the last.. I don't know how long. I want different food!

 

"But, sweetie, you can't have different food. You've got FLUTD, and the vet says this is the only food I can give you"

 

"Well, she doesn't have to eat it day after day after day. Come on, just a little red meat... or a bit of Emma's food. She always gets what she wants"

 

"But she doesn't suffer from your condition. And she has to have that squirty paste for her rhinotracheitis, remember."

 

"Yes, but she likes that. It's not fair!"

 

"NO! Go outside and play with Puss-puss"

 

"Allright, I'm going. But just to register my full disgust at the situation, be warned that tomorrow morning I will sick up bile onto the carpet, and leave a trail of vomit just where you step to get to the toilet, so that you can experience it first thing in the morning while you're still half-asleep. And I will create a particularly runny stool in the cat tray, and miss the edge into the bargain." 

 

"Thanks so much. FYI, the answer's still NO!

 

 

 

 

Aubergines and rudbeckia

 

Aubergines, rudbeckia 'Prairie fire' and 'Prairie sun' with one rogue arctotis. Painted this a few years back when I managed to actually get some fruit on my eggplants. They really need to be started in a greenhouse in our climate in Christchurch, otherwise the season isn't long enough for fruit. Same with sweetcorn, which I grow every year but always comes to nothing.  You'd think I would have learned by now, but perhaps it's easier and lazier to make the same mistakes over and over. (I think one of my old report cards said this "does not learn from her mistakes"). Silly besom.

Random pic post

The cottage at Okuti Valley Ecostay, Little River.

Ha ha!

Reading things today that made me laugh.

One was my fault: 'North Korea places South Island in crosshairs" said the headline. Or so I thought. Blimey, thought I, what have we done to offend them? Perhaps they're trying to engineer a border incident? Show them a map or send them a diplomatic mission, quickly. No, it's south island not South Island. Doh.
  And someone's typo had them selling a CD of Sting's "Fields of golf". I suppose he is getting older and more conservative now. Tantric golf? He can go all day.
  Misread titles are the reader's equivalent of misheard lyrics. It's why you always read shopfitter as shoplifter. My worst misread was 'You've got the clap' for a children's tape called 'You've got to clap".
   I suppose that's better than "You've got to crap."
 

Autumn melancholy

Slowly passing into autumn. A few trees "have started to turn" as my Mum used to say, and today was quite cool. I've started to think of casseroles and baths instead of salads and showers, and I have to get some nice woolies for the winter, thick, cuddly things that I can snuggle into on cold mornings.
The revamped garden has been got underway, with a good dig over, and additions of compost and fertiliser. I'll let it lie for a few days and start planting at the weekend.
  Went for a walk around the neighbourhood this evening. A bit sad, some of the houses have been demolished, including two lovely old brick villas that I used to admire, and many people are letting their gardens go. I suppose if the house is to be demolished there's little point in keeping the garden up. Plus the drought we've been having makes everything look very down-at-heel and past its best. Once again, one wonders if one is doing the right thing staying here; will this whole area become derelict and trashy, filled with crims and drug-addicts? I don't know. I could sell up and buy in a new subdivision but it's just not me. I couldn't stand waiting another twenty years to have trees that are taller than me, and some subdivisions don't allow tall trees anyway. Some subdivisions don't even allow you to wash your car on the driveway, or plant anything that's not on an approved list in the garden. No, not me at all.

New planting schemes

 

Decision made this week to revamp my front garden beds. The main one has become really dry and boring. I've poked bits and pieces into it over the last ten years, but the soil is really poor now and needs to be massively rejuvenated. The only things thriving are the grey-leaved drought-tolerant poor-soil things. The Stachys lanata is looking great but the rest are... well, you can see what they are.
So I bought some new plants today-

 

Carex comans for some bronze grassiness, yellow variegated foliage (Felicia amelloides, variegated sage, Phormium 'Cream delight'), Hebes pinguifolia and 'First light', and golden marjoram which really looks good in late spring. I want to interplant these with bronzy chrysanthemums, dahlias, rudbeckia and coreopsis for autumn and underplant with orange tulips and white jonquils for spring.

 

 

Here's a nice little species penstemon, Penstemon barbatus, who will join the crowd somewhere.

 

Problem is, I want to get started NOW, but it's 9.00 at night and nearly dark.  

 

Agastache aurantiaca 'Apricot Sprite'

Agastache aurantiaca 'Apricot Sprite', a photo by gnomicscience on Flickr.

I've fallen in love with this flower, we have one at the gardens, it's like a fine orange mist on a spreading bush. The plant has a nice minty smell, reminiscent of catnip but without the attraction to felines. I've tried my two on it and they just wrinkle their noses and look disgusted. There's a specialist nursery near here that may have a plant, or I might ask the gardener if I can have a root. Boy, does that sound rude.

Trajan's column

 

This is a photo of a photo that I took in Rome way back in 2002, on my first trip to Italy. I didn't have a digital camera then, so now I'm digitising my collection, which highly technical process involves photographing the photographs. The church on the left is one of two that overlook the column, right next door to each other. You wonder how either of them do any business - do they compete for parishoners, or do the faithful go to one each week turn and turn about? Or do the priests have nasty fights, facing each other off in the piazza outside?

 

 

And this is a wonderful Baroque church in Noto, Sicily. Noto was substantially destroyed in the 17th century by an earthquake, and rebuilt in the latest architectural fashion, High Baroque. Perhaps 300 years from now people will marvel at Christchurch architecture from the post-quake period?

 

 

Another Noto church, an innie instead of an outie. Baroque is probably my favourite architectural style; it's like Classical with borderline personality disorder!

 

No I haven't been and I'm not going.

We have the Ellerslie Flower Show on in the city at the moment. This is a big "gardening" show that gets oodles of hype and publicity, and you can tell by my sarcastic inverted commas that I don't like it. 
   It's based on the Chelsea Flower Show with show gardens put together for the occasion, and lots of vendors selling their wares. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker bought the show from Auckland, for a large sum of money, to bring in more tourist dollars to the local economy. Ellerslie is the name of a suburb in Auckland from where the show originated. There is no suburb called Ellerslie in Christchurch; we bought the name as part of the 'branding'. There used to be a pleasant little show called Gardenz here, run by a local family. That was well and truly blindsided by the bigger, mayorally-backed event.
   It's $40 to go in, which I think is an outrageous sum of money. You, the customer, are basically paying for the opportunity to be marketed to, like brand-name sports or product clothing. (You pay $30 dollars for a Coca-cola T-shirt, so that you can pay to advertise their product for them). People assume that because I'm a keen gardener I'll be off like a shot to the Flower Show. No. The show gardens this year seem low on plants, and long on things like cocktail bars, barbeques and plywood constructions. Boring. If I want to see these things, I'll go next door to Les Nouveaux Riches.
    For all the hype, Ellerslie is just a trade show. As a colleague said so aptly, "It's all so contrived". And getting further and further away from gardening and more into the realms of what could be called exterior decorating, with little evidence of style, taste or knowledge, the main aim being to flog goods and services.  I think we now need an off-Ellerslie or Ellerslie Fringe festival, preferably in early summer, when there's generally more in flower than in autumn and the plants are in better condition. A garden festival with plants, there's an idea.

Lewis's Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii)

Lewis's Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii), a photo by Laurel Fan on Flickr.

I've just planted a little tiny bush of this Philadelphus. It was sitting in a pot in the shade and losing its leaves, so I looked up the cultivation notes to find that it will happily tolerate full sun and dryish conditions. I always thought Philadelphus liked shade and moisture, so my preconceptions of its requirements were killing it. It's a lovely thing, smaller and more spreading that the more commonly available Philadephus something-or-otherii, but with the same wonderful orange-blossom scent. It comes from the dry inland plateau of the Northwest of the United States, and is the state flower of Idaho. Discovered by the explorer Merriwether Lewis on one of his expeditions, though no doubt the native Americans knew and loved it long before it was 'discovered' by Lewis and was chosen to bear his name.

Aristocrats

Watching this on youTube at the moment. Somehow I missed the TV series (1999) probably becaue it was on Sundays afternoons or Monday midnight. I am so enjoying it. I think the book is by Stella Tillyard, about the five grandaughters of Charles II. It's not the story that I find so interesting, it's the dresses! Mouthwatering silks and laces, charming hats, even the shoes are works of art.
  The things that we miss in these series (and what makes viewing them so pleasant) are the nasty realities of life. The poor wore drab clothes of homespun home-dyed brown and grey. People would smell. Few people bathed, there were no deodorants and the perfumes used to cover up the stink would have been fairly crude and obvious by our standards. The rivers and lakes around cities and towns were full of raw sewage and vermin, and even aristocrats fell victim to the many diseases that swept through the population at regular intervals, diseases and maladies that would nowadays be fixed by a course of antibiotics or a few days in hospital.  Gambling, domestic violence and alcoholism were popular ways of letting off steam in a straitjacketed society where you were expected to know your place and stay there.
  Little of this occurs to me when I'm watching a lovely woman in in a green watered-silk gown with a delightful straw hat perched on her carefully ringleted hair, choosing which Meissen dinner-set she will buy for her sister's wedding. Beauty is a drug, and one I am truly addicted to.

Missing persons

Went to see the movie 'Hitchcock' the other night with a friend. I enjoyed it (our other choice was Lincoln, which we were reliably informed was like watching paint dry). Helen Mirren is a charmingly acerbic Alma Revill, with Anthony Hopkins not quite convincing as Hitch, but he does try. I googled Psycho when I got home, as you do if you're a person with curiosity, as I hadn't seen the movie. I found that the Hitchcocks' had a daughter, one Patricia, who acted a small part in the movie and went on  to have a not unrespectable career herself in movie making. But she never appears in the movie at all; the impression you, the viewer, gets is that the Hitchcocks were childless.
     Patricia was no doubt excluded because she was felt to have no relevance to the story,
just as the movie 'Shine" left out the existence of David Helfgott's older brother, because they wanted to accentuate the conflict between David and his father (a fascinating book by one of David's sisters rubbished the whole movie as a libellous fiction). And just as the movie 'Amadeus' gets rid of Mozart's considerably gifted sisters and his close relationship with his family to concentrate on his conflicts with his father.
   I suppose film writers and directors would answer that they're not making a documentary, but just how far should they go in the interests of dramatic licence? Writing people out of existence seems a bit totalitarian. If history is mostly lies, then Hollywood is too.

Back to normal

 

Dahlia 'Chat noir'

I had to cut this dahlia back a bit, it grows quite leggy, but what luck - enough for a little vase. Love the colour, how can anyone not like dahlias? Sure, they can get earwiggy, but for shape and colour and ease of cultivation they take the prize. If you want people to ooh and aah at your front garden these are great. When I retire I'd like to grow dahlias on a small commercial basis.

 

So, back to normal, trailling clouds of glory from the great holiday. I've not got much ticked off my chores list, but hey, it is a holiday. I have tidied the front garden and reactivated the compost. The front garden is quite a job, mainly because I've let it go, and ryegrass from the lawn has invaded the front bed. This garden faces north-east, so for much of the year it's cold and unattractive to work in. The earth is very depleted as well, I really have to bite the bullet and try a more clearly stated theme out there, instead of it being the mish-mash of hastily poked-in bits and pieces it currently is. The only real characters are two President Roosevelt rhododendrons, a coral-coloured Azalea mollis and two giant bushes of Rosa 'Crepuscule' and 'Buff Beauty'. The underplanting is very bitsy; I've had various inspirations at different times that haven't been carried through. Any landscape gardener would despair.

 

The weather has changed to autumnal this last week. Last night was quite cool, and tonight it's quite cold, a southeast change came through this afternoon after a beautiful balmy morning. Not to worry, the wind has knocked down the last of the plums that were too high for me to pick, so I've cooked them up and now I'll away to eat them with the last of the homemade ice-cream. Cheers!

 



Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook

                                             View of Mt Cook from Lake Pukaki

 

Morning view of the Alps from Braemar

 

 

Went up to Mt Cook National Park for the day, and did a very hot walk across the moraine of the Mueller and Hooker glaciers to get closer to the mountain. The photos I took of Mt Cook were not so good, it was against the light, but this one came out OK. This is the lake at the end of the Mueller Glacier, with I think Mount Sefton up behind it. The moraine wall at right is from the Hooker Glacier; the Mueller cuts down through the end of it. The feeling is of being in a massive rock-quarry; it looks everlasting, but everything in the landscape is constantly moving and changing. If you like to see glaciated geomorphology, (and you'd be a dull person if you didn't, IMHO) this is the place to be.

 

 

Sunset lays the last light on Mt Cook

 

 

Ben Ohau Range, slow and clean sketch

 

 

Ben Ohau Range, quick and dirty sketch. These turned out much better than I thought, I've never really tried landscapes before, so I was quite chuffed.

 

 

And a funny Andy Warholesque tea towel that I bought at the Farm Barn at Fairlie.

 

That's all the holiday snaps. Tomorrow it's back to dreary everyday life.

Braemar Station, part 2

 

Braemar is a sheep station, so here is a supercilious Merino ram. Not a good photo, but how hard it is to photograph animals, even domestic-ish ones. Every time I tried to photograph them, they ran away or turned their bums to me. And such massive scrotums! (Scrotii?) One was tripping over his. The rams were like a pod of raddled old bachelors.

 

 

I was lucky enough to be there on a day the shearers were working. Back pain must be the number one occupational hazard these guys face...

 

or constipation? The shearers' dunny, secured with a prop of angle iron.

 

 

Wool bale label

 

 

Bewildered, newly-shorn sheep wondering what the hell just happened.

 

 

 

Late afternoon. Shearing over, the shearers' stands are empty, and the dusty boom-box is silent.

 

 

The covered yards

 

 

Old shed (another Graeme Sydney candidate)

 

 

Nice shot, if I do say so myself.

 

 

Sunset over the Ben Ohau Range

 

 

More pics tomorrow.