Two photo challenges this week have prompted me to think of one family’s Christmas effort. The WP challenge was ‘Grand’, and Ailsa’s challenge was ‘Symbol’, in honour of Nelson Mandela. Well, last night, here in Canberra, I found a ‘Grand Symbol’!
Lights are a symbol of hope, always appropriate at Christmas. And when someone wins the Guinness World Record for the year for the most Christmas lights decorating a property, it’s because they’ve made a grand effort.
Last night we drove to the winning house and I took some photos. My camera’s not great for night photography and my skills are barely even those of an amateur, but you’ll get an idea of what it must be like to live in the same street with such a winner. All the surrounding houses were remarkable for their darkness; perhaps they feel a pointlessness in competing. This grand display might even be a bit hard to endure night after night through the Christmas period: there are traffic controls at that end of the street, cars parked up and down all the nearby streets, and of course the multicoloured glow for several hours.
We walked through the garden of lights, entering on the left side of the front yard and exiting at the right. Strings of LEDs, many of them white, some of them red, blue and green, flashed on and off, not rapidly, but at regular intervals changing the show. For me, the glaring white was not pleasant and kept me from lingering long amid the display. It had the effect of mid-summer sunlight on white concrete. In the past, coloured lightbulbs were warmer and, indeed, more colourful. But I know, I know, they’re not ‘green’.
Tall pine tree trunk covered in Christmas lightsChristmas lights decorating pine tree and hedge
However, I appreciate the effort these people have put into their decorations, and it’s important to know that, as each visitor enters, they are asked to donate to the Sids and Kids charity.
Wall of Christmas lightsThe real and the unreal: Moon shining down on a Christmas star
Our last stop was at a small bay north of the capital, Wellington. To say it was windy would be an understatement. It blew cold constant gusts that drew my hair up and out and often over my face at the moment I wanted to click a photo. Many of my shots were taken blind, like a lucky dip photographer. Take a look at these trees on the beach; there’s no way they can grow vertically!
Windblown trees, Titahi Bay, NZ
But before we got to this little place, Titahi Bay, we drove through an interesting town established by Scandinavian immigrants in the 19th century: Norsewood.
BURGUNDY
In Norsewood, we went through this little museum which must have had the same architect as the Literary Institute in Gundaroo, NSW! The museum is painted a rich burgundy red, a contrast to the snow-white houses we saw everywhere in New Zealand. By the verandah grows a great bunch of deep pink Watsonias, another flower that appeared in all sorts of gardens in NZ, even neglected ones.
Museum, Norsewood, NZ
IRIDESCENT BLUE-GREEN
While the iconic blue-green-purple Pāua shells are found on most beaches and are available in all the souvenir shops, I found something else, less common but equally iridescent and resembling the Pāua shells in their colours – this turn-of-the-century wedding dress on display in Norsewood museum. Clearly, the Scandinavian migrants had to improvise and make do in this strange new land; both the bodice and skirt are decorated with beetle casings:
Beetle casings adorning a wedding dress, Norsewood museum, NZ
MULTICOLOUR
At each end of the curving beach of Titahi Bay, there are colourful boat sheds sitting on one of the flattest pieces of ground in this region: the beach. See the hill behind them? In this area near Wellington every house is built on a hill, all with someone else looking down on them (except those at the very top!).
Boat sheds, Titahi Bay, NZ
And that’s it for our colourful New Zealand holiday. There were many other places we visited along the way, but I’ve enjoyed leaving some hints of this country’s beauty here on this blog. You have to go there! And I have to go back!
After spending time in Auckland, New Zealand, and driving through the volcanic plateau, we moved on for a great week in Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of the North Island. Again, as last week, I found broad strokes of individual colours wherever we went. There was plenty of:
BLUE
A matching blue bay and sky: the view from our accommodation. Most days.
View from Bluff Hill, Napier, NZ
YELLOW
As in Auckland, there are lots of white houses in Hawke’s Bay, especially the older wooden houses, the type that survive earthquakes. But there are plenty of creative individuals living here, like the neighbours who built a house with a cylinder attached and painted it with a yellow that says ‘look at me!’.
Houses old and new, Napier, NZ
PINK
Red Valerian is a beautiful flower that’s not red but rather a couple of shades of pink, and springs up in any crack where a seed has fallen. In New Zealand I saw it growing in most gardens, jutting out of retaining walls, through rockfall-catching wire on cliff faces, and on the seashore. Some call it a weed, some call it a colourful filler. No doubt it needs to be controlled. I took this photo in drizzle under a grey sky. The blue days had passed…
Red Valerian on beachfront, and kite surfer in the rain, Hawke’s Bay, NZ
ORANGE
There are also flowers around Hawke’s Bay which there should be more of, like Bird of Paradise with its orange crests.
Bird of Paradise near the Aquarium, Napier, NZ
PURPLE
When we climbed the moist leaf-littered paths that wound uphill through Tiffen Park, we saw masses of blue and purple flowers growing wild. I don’t know what they’re called but I hope they’re not invaders. Here we were about a third of the way up the hill. When you go to New Zealand, you go up a lot of steps, steep streets and driveways, hills and cliffs. But going down feels really good!
Tiffen Park, Napier, NZ
COLOURLESS
On the walls and in parks in Napier, there are quotations written or sculpted which offer promise and hope. They are signs that this town has not only revived after a horrendous earthquake back in 1931 but is thriving partly because of it. The town was rebuilt in Art Deco, the style of the time, and today it is unique as an example of this architecture constructed in the two-year period 1931/32. The quotation below which I saw painted in an otherwise interest-free alley is a reminder that good things can come from bad. If you can read backwards, that is.
Thoreau quotation, alley wall, Napier, NZ
CREAM
And here’s an example of one of the buildings constructed in the Art Deco style after the earthquake and recently refurbished, attracting masses of tourists each week. It’s open to the public and just as handsome inside.
Art Deco architecture, Napier NZ
BLACK
We went on a two-hour trip with a Maori elder, Robert McDonald, up to a peak, Te Mata, where he recounted the history of Maori in New Zealand. In the photo below he stands next to his tribe’s pou whenua, or land post. Its face is carved like that of Robert’s ancestor, one of the Waimārama chiefs who signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1841 with the European settlers. At the bottom of the second photo below, (actually the Waimārama Maori Tours information card), is his mark made on the Treaty and the words he spoke, ‘te tohu o te tangata’ which mean ‘the mark of the man’. His facial tattoo indicates his status as an important chief of his tribal group. The portrait was painted by Gottfried Lindauer, an Austrian artist who painted many Maori portraits in the late nineteenth century, some of which I saw in the Auckland Art Gallery and more of which you can see here. They’re stunning!
Robert MacDonald, Maori elder, with his tribe’s pou, Hastings, NZ.Harawira Mahikai Te Tatere, Waimārama chief, NZ, by Gottfried Lindauer (photo courtesy Waimārama Maori tours postcard)
A couple of days ago I posted about single colours I came across in Auckland, New Zealand, on this, my first trip there. After leaving Auckland, my husband and I made our way down through the middle of the North Island, stopping for morning tea where the roses on tables were twice the size of those in my Australian garden. The land on either side of the road was green green green. And bumpy: the hills rising from the surface are steep and lush and crowded together.
GREEN
Green: the colour of the fertile volcanic hills, North Island, NZ
Around lunch time we stopped at Rotorua for a few hours, known by some as Sulphur City. That was a different experience. The pools we saw were in a large park where each one was fenced off. A few odd small eruptions had appeared and were not yet fenced, so we could reach down and feel the water. It was HOT.
BROWN
Brown: the colour of boiling sulphur-smelling mud, Rotorua.
GREY
Grey: the colour of vegetation surrounding boiling mud pools, Rotorua NZ
New Zealand is a country just three hours’ flight from my home, yet I had never been there till last week. It’s a gap in my travelling experience I was ashamed of when meeting New Zealanders in Europe! Well, now I can say I know something about NZ, and I can agree with all those who have told me it’s beautiful. I enjoyed finding particular scenes where one colour was dominant, and happily snapped a multitude of photos.
I went with my husband, who’s been to NZ a few times before. Without me. Auckland was our first port of call, where I was struck by an inviting turquoise sea, streets lined with white houses, and a knockout red wrought iron fence.
RED
Red street lamps, Port of Auckland, NZ
WHITE
White weatherboard houses with white fences under white clouds
The Drover’s Wife, a short story by Henry Lawson published in 1896, has a plot that unfolds over an afternoon and a night, marked by time phrases like “It is near sunset” and “It must be near one or two o’clock”. The story is an excellent example of Australian realism, well-told with dry, short sentences, few adjectives or adverbs but plenty of active verbs, all of this good for keeping the tension on, as you’ll see in this mid-point paragraph.
A bit of background: A drover has been gone from home for six months. His wife and children are alone in their bush hut. A snake has slid under the floor boards and a thunderstorm brews. The dog, Alligator, is wildly interested in the snake.
Near midnight. The children are all asleep and she sits there still, sewing and reading by turns. From time to time she glances round the floor and wall-plate, and whenever she hears a noise she reaches for the stick. The thunderstorm comes on, and the wind, rushing through the cracks in the slab wall, threatens to blow out her candle. She places it on a sheltered part of the dresser and fixes up a newspaper to protect it. At every flash of lightning the cracks between the slabs gleam like polished silver. The thunder rolls, and the rain comes down in torrents.
Alligator lies at full length on the floor, with his eyes turned towards the partition. She knows by this that the snake is there.
The Sleeper Awakes. It’s 1890s England when an insomniac falls into a sleep-like trance and awakes 203 years later to find he is the Master of the World. But while he had been sleeping, the masses had been oppressed, and they now find he has awoken and hope he will rescue them. One hundred and ten pages into this 220-page H.G. Wells novel, the sleeper, Graham, decides to reveal himself to the multitudes of people waiting:
“Will you let them see you, Sire? said Ostrog. “They are very anxious to see you.”
Graham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken verge of wall dropped sheer. He stood looking down, a lonely, tall, black figure against the sky.
Very slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. And as they did so little bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting through the crowds towards the Council House. He saw little black heads become pink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweep across the space.
Yesterday I was teaching migrant English using an abridged version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Speckled Band. I enjoyed it so much, I sought out the original unabridged version and found some lines in the middle of the story that reveal Conan Doyle’s sharp wit and great sense of rhythm. It’s also clear at this point that Sherlock Holmes has the suspect worked out and now simply has to nail him. Here, Holmes’s associate, Dr Watson, records an exchange between Holmes and the suspect, who is screaming at him furiously:
“I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler.”
My friend smiled.
“Holmes, the busybody!”
His smile broadened.
“Holmes, the Scotland-yard Jack-in-office!”
Holmes chuckled heartily. “Your conversation is most entertaining,” said he. “When you go out, close the door, for there is a decided draught.”
Sidney Paget, 1892, illustration from The Speckled Band, courtesy Victorian Web.org
Ailsa from wheresmybackback challenges us to find photos of things evoking the colour brown. Check out her photos of bog brown water and a ginger brown castle.
Here in Canberra there’s a large written sculpture on a hill in the new Arboretum, a special place planted with masses of trees to replace all those that burnt in destructive fires ten years ago. The words ‘wide brown land’ come from a poem by Dorothea Mackellar published in 1908: Core of my heart.
Sculpture, Arboretum, Canberra
Unfortunately, while the Arboretum is a promise that this land and its people can recover from fire, the threat is always with us. There are massive fires burning right now, closer to the coast. And the burnt trees, the pall of smoke, the tumbled bricks of houses – 192 homes destroyed so far – evoke the colour brown, once the fires are under control. The photo below is from the Daily Telegraph web site:
Firefighters keep watch at Buena Vista Rd, Winmalee, in the Blue Mountains. Source: News Limited
At the centre of Great Expectations is a paragraph about Pip’s love for Estella, about his great expectations to win her heart. Though I’ve read this novel several times, I’d never thought of Dickens as romantic until today when I read this paragraph separately from the rest of the story:
Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, ‘Love her, love her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love her, I love her!’ hundreds of times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for me, once the blacksmith’s boy. Then, I thought if she were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me? When should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and sleeping now?
