The Long Way Home

Hawkins hill isn't far from downtown Wellington, especially with 27 gears. From here a rough path descends gradually then sharply into red rocks. The rain has settled in before I pounded the coastal road to Kilbirnie and home.

Smoking Kills

Just came accross this great documentary from Dunedin Documentary maker Nick Holmes. Smoking kills....turtles. A turtle found with 1000 cigarette butts inside it was killed by... nicotine poisoning, and so the film says 1 cigarette butt pollutes 40 litres of water...

On similar tracks...I attended a Forest and Bird meeting in Wellington the other night where a speaker related that during a recent beach clean-up of the groomed beach at Oriental Bay a feature of the rubbush collected was 2000 cigarette butts....

Otari Fungi

Urban Fringe

I have been contemplating becoming an artist of the urban fringe, studying the edges of our society and examining the flows of energy through our environment. My basic misunderstanding of physics, chemistry, ecology and photography may make this a challenge...so don't worry I won't give up my day job.

A couple of great web resources I have found recently are the National Radios archive of the "Our Changing World" series and the New Zealand Wildlife Management Forum.

I sat down this morning and listened to a few interviews with some great New Zealand scientists - Matt McGlone on climate change and conservation - Graeme Elliot and Kath Walker on Wandering Albatross...while on the other site I found out about the reintroduction to Great Britain of the Bumblebee!!...

After being last seen in the south of England in 1998, and declared extinct in 2000, the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) is going to be reintroduced, from stocks reimported from New Zealand. The project hopes to see the first bees released into the wild in 2010 or 2011, conservation group Natural England says:

The short-haired bumblebee was originally exported to New Zealand in the late 1800s to pollinate red clover (also imported), which was used as cattle feed. Now the plan is to recreate enough wildflower habitat to support the bees in their native land—England has seen a loss of 98% of its wildflower meadows in the past 70 years.

Initially about 100 bees will be collected in New Zealand and then flown back in cool boxes. A captive breeding program will be developed to support the population before reintroduction.

I found that loss of wildflower habitat staggering, 98%. Hopefully when the day comes that they want mustelids returned we may have managed to wipe them out.

Redundancy

Well I haven't been made redundant, I'm probably more classified as "long term unemployed" or maybe I don't even count in the market economy. But I still can't get a job and I still occasionally feel pretty redundant. There is not much good either in knowing that you are one of many, because it really makes you despair at how our society can possibly repair itself, that is in the New Zealand context, let alone in the globalised world.

You read in the news some people claiming we don't value our young, some we don't value our old, but the reality is that we don't value our people and their need to fit into some sort of community. There are way too many losers in our society and plenty of them have lots of money and stuff.

I am one of many looking for a job. PFO (please go away) letters are full of the stats...150 people applied for this job all the applicants were of a very high standard...each one of those probably spent 2 hours tailoring their application...300 hours....nearly 8 working weeks, cut down to 4 or 5 interviewees in an hour or so of an HR persons time. I volunteer for a few different organisations at the moment...what we could do with someone working fulltime for 8 working weeks! Argh.

You are left with the choice of endlessly pursuing opportunities that may or may not be there or trying to create something. Last time I was in this position I tried to create an events business, but the only way to make that pay is by providing pleasant weekends out for the wealthy. My passion lies with connecting people to the environment and helping them learn their humanity through suffering and achievement not with providing nice days out for the already successful.

So now I am trying to plot something else. I am researching the concept of "social business", see the new blog, trying to understand how socially driven businesses may be successful in cases of current market failure. I am volunteering for several organisations, most importantly "Leave No Trace" an international outdoor ethics centre setting up in New Zealand..see www.lnt.org ...and trying to stay positive. Every now and then I run out of energy, but Penny and nature generally save me from getting too down about it. The photos spread through this post are from a recent flight from Rotorua down to Christchurch where I am now for my Mums 50th and little brothers 21st. If there is little else of use us redundants can do in society we can do our absolute best to protect and support this amazing place, which often society doesn't even notice. The land, as a whole system is as outside and remote from societys concerns as we are...

Somewhere in that last left hand photo is home...tucked beneath the big pine with a pohutukawa out front...

Aotea

I was lucky last weekend to be able to travel to the South Waikato. The primary purpose was a weekend of orienteering (check out the video in the next post for some footage of this) but equally important was the catching up with. We booked a bach out in wop wops of Aotea Harbour, where none of us had ever been, and used the mornings and evenings to get to know a special little part of New Zealand.

It was late Saturday night by the time we got there, though Rach and Rhys had the fire cranking, Sunday morning I was up early getting some photos around the village with the tide close to low.

The bach looked over the harbour channel towards the North Head of the harbour which is a giant looming sandhill. It reminded me of the Swedish town of Kiruna with its giant pile of tailings, exccept this is 100% natural, indeed declared a scientific reserve for its archaelogical and ecological values. Behind the sand dunes in the far distance is the volcanic cone of Karioi which towers over the famous surfing beach of Raglan.

I wondered about the village appreciating the amazing light and the timelessness of the place. There is change though. On the ridge overlooking the old bach settlement modern houses are springing up in a new subdivision. They loom over the township like alien spacecraft waiting to suck the souls out of the little children that go exploring to far away from town.

Later in the morning Rachel, Rhys, Oscar and I went walking around the headland towards Kawhia. The tide was still low enough for the pram to find hard sand. It was great to feel the sun again after an eternity of terrible weather. Ancient pohutukawas nestled in hollows at the tops of the eroded clay cliffs. And recently one had fallen. Though pohutukawas are amazingly tough colonisers able to re-root where there branches touch the ground I think this one was doomed. Its death and its neighbours life were displayed in symmetry by the horizon of the cliff top.

Rachel, Rhys and I share many values about ecology and it was nice to wonder along discussing some of them. How the patterns in nature repeated in changed scales. You can see a landscape in the erosion of the beachs...or equally in the dissolution of the rock

When you try to comprehend nature as a system, with an ecological view, be it as limited as ours (which was also a topic for discussion), you see cycles, and flow and inter-relationships and you try to percieve of the human impositions on that and the effect they have. I found this abandoned gas canister as a useful metaphor in my thinking...

Its a beuatiful walk with springs welling on the beach (rumours of hot springs further around), and weathered rocks. Further around as we left the shelter of the harbour hills the rugged south head of Kawhia harbour came into view, stretching down to worn stacks on its seaward side. In these rugged oceans the NZ Maui's dolphin struggle for existence, possibly the rarest dolhpin in the world mow that the Chinese river dolphin, the Baiji is extinct.

Oh yeah and driving out of Aotea I saw a bittern...how cool is that! In its alarmed pose on the side of the road, beak thrusted directly up revealing its striped belly used for camoflague in the reeds. Whenever I think of Bitterns I always think of the classic New Zealand childrens book "Bidibidi". Bitterns, sheep, dogs, barb wire, ghosts and a man with a rainbow coat...but anyway...

Hey there girlfriend (wife)

I logged into Facebook, intending to steal some photos of Pennys Mukamuka Munter/Mt Matthews mission which she did with a group of friends while I was enduring the Safari, but decided this photo was more amusing...thanks Cathy.