Lake Manapouri

October 12, 2014 in Landscape

Water levels were high at Lake Manapouri, the final stop on our winter roadtrip. Good news for power prices I assume, as the lake is connected to Manapouri Hydroelectric Power Station, the largest hydro station in NZ at 800MW capacity. When the power station was built there was a plan to raise lake levels by 30m, but the decade-long 'Save Manapouri' campaign prevented this and now the lake levels are tightly controlled near to their natural height. The Save Manapouri Campaign is considered one of the milestones in environmental protection in New Zealand. Of course at times of high rainfall and low consumption it gets pretty high, and this was nearly as high as it gets. I haven't been there before to see the normal level, but the semi-submerged picnic tables on the beach were a good clue.

We drove around the outside of the lake through the township and parked by the boat owned by Meridian Energy, which goes out to the power station. It was a pretty quiet day down by the lake, but patches of sun were coming out and it was quite pleasant to walk around and take some photos of the boat and the mist rising from the water. We ambled around for perhaps an hour before starting our journey back to Invercargill early enough so as not to be driving home through a snowstorm again in the dark!

Te Anau mountain range - might be Jackson Peaks?

Lake Te Anau and Mountains

October 08, 2014 in Landscape

The next part of our winter road trip through the snow got us to Te Anau, the main (only?) town on Lake Te Anau, one of the great lakes in Fiordland. The snow had barely reached ground level there, but there was a lot of low cloud and fog around, making quite a nice scene on the lack and in the mountains over the water. Took me a while to find the right topo map, but I think I was mostly looking at Jackson Peaks and Mt. Luxmore over the nearest park of the lake.

We walked around the near shore of the lake for some time, ducking into the visitors centre as a rain shower passed, and back outside into some small snow flurries. Being a weekday there wasn't much activity in this tourist town - although i expect it's more of a summer destination than a winter one. I ended up taking a lot of different photos of essentially the same scene of the clouds in the hilltops, but also tried to shoot a little fantail that was buzzing around us looking for food. After a hot lunch at the nearest pub restaurant we got back into the car to check out Lake Manapouri early enough so we wouldn't be driving home at night in the heavy snow.

Winter roadtrip through Mossburn

October 03, 2014 in Landscape, Travel

At the start of winter I had a work trip to Invercargil in the deep south, and took two days off for a road trip with my good friend Blaine who lives there. We were hoping to get to St. Bathan's in Central Otago over night, but there was a patch of bad weather (even worse than usual Southland weather!) and many of the roads looked like closing. Instead we had a warm night inside with some DVDs and a shorter trip the next day to Te Anau and Lake Manapouri on safer roads. Even then, it was a bit dicey for parts of the way, especially on one of the more scenic routes we took going through the small town of Mossburn.

I've split my one day road trip into three whole blog posts, as the images from each leg are quite different, and I think (?) interesting enough to warrant three posts! We didn't see much of Mossburn other than the general store, rugby field and playground across the road - but I'm not sure there is really much more there anyway! But it was a lot of fun to walk around exploring and photographing in the snow, as it has been a long time since I was in heavy snow. Of course like a northerner I wasn't correctly attired for the weather, and had to tread carefully to prevent my shoes soaking through.

Mossburn was a good resting point after hard driving on the snowy roads, and I can even recommend the general store as having surprisingly good coffee! Maybe not Ponsonby Road standards, but definitely not terrible, and very welcome after walking around in the cold.

Pretty quiet on the beach at Weymouth in November

Weymouth - Summer resort in Winter

September 22, 2014 in Travel

Weymouth is a popular seaside resort on the Dorset coast - in Summer. In Winter it's pretty quiet and empty! Still, I was passing through and visiting my dad rather than coming to sit on the beach, so I found plenty of interesting things to look at and photograph. I've been there once more since, in Summer, and saw a totally different place and will have some quite different photographs to show once I eventually catch up on my backlog!

Lone walker on the beach, Jurassic cliffs in the background.

Weymouth has a nice long beach in a sheltered bay. Not much for surfing, but popular for english tourists to spend the day relaxing, playing games, watching punch & judy shows... none of which happen in November of course. The permanent population is a little over 50,000, but I'm sure this about triples in summer. The entire long esplanade along the beach is crowded with hotels and guest houses, and there are many many pubs and restaurants all over town.

Weymouth is actually one of the first modern tourist destinations, after King George's brother built a grand residence there, and then the King visited himself over summer fourteen times. His personal wooden bathing box has been preserved and on display on the esplanade.

One thing I just learnt by researching my facts was that the port of Melcombe Regis (half of the area which later turned into Weymouth) was one of the first ports of entry of the Black Death into England in 1348. They didn't mention that at any of the tourist things I saw! It came possibly on a ship carrying spices, or by soldiers returning from the 100 years war.

Weymouth was the embarkation points for over 500,000 Allied soldiers leaving for D-Day landings at Normandy, and there are some good photos of lines and lines of soldiers marching down the esplanade towards the harbour. So there might not have been much exciting going on in Weymouth in the middle of winter, but it's quite an interesting place with lots of history.

Durdle Door and the Jurassic Coast

September 15, 2014 in Landscape, Travel

'Durdle Door' is a hilarious sounding feature of the 'Jurassic Coast' - which a stretch of the southern cost of England on the English Channel, in Dorset. The Jurassic coast is a World Heritage site, consisting of limestone cliffs and natural features spanning 180 million years from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The coast also includes Lulworth Cove (which I'm yet to visit) and the Isle of Portland, which is near Weymouth, where my parents are currently working. At the end of this trip to Germany, I visited my Dad on the way home as he had just landed in Weymouth, and we checked out some of the local scenery.

Durdle Door was really interesting to visit - I'd heard the funny sounding name before but didn't really know what it was - but it's a big limestone archway poking out into a bay, accessed down a moderately steep track on private (opened to public) farmland. I got a little too brave with the (tiny) waves coming into the bay trying to get the right low-angle shot and got nice cold, wet feet which amused my Dad. English seaside in November isn't that warm! According to wikipedia, Durdle is from Old English 'thirl' meaning bore or drill. So that's a handy fact for today's photo set.

Man O' War Cove and St. Oswald's Bay, Dorset

Portland is another a reasonably big island connected to the mainland by a long causeway, and the harbour was used to shelter ships of the Royal Navy for over 500 years, and a major embarkation point for the Allies on D-Day. The Navy base shut up shop after the cold war, and it seems the last thing of interest to happen there was hosting the sailing events of the 2012 Olympic Games.

The southernmost tip of the island is called the 'Portland Bill', and hosts a reasonably well known lighthouse, built in 1906, striped red and white and often photographed. I was there just around sunset, and there were several 'real' photographers already there setting up tripods. But I was just touristing rather than seriously photographing so didn't hang around that long. Plus it was cold.

There are a couple of other lighthouses further up the hill, both built in 1716, and now repurposed as a bird watching station and holiday cottages. Also somebody built a big white Obelisk on the edge of the cliff in 1844 to warn away ships, but I'm not sure why, with 2 lighthouses already there. I don't imagine a big stone being that much more effective! Overall, this part of the coast was quite interesting - not much going on in town, but definitely some nice old things to walk around and explore and photograph.

Berlin History and Art

August 26, 2014 in City, Museum, Travel

Another day of history, memorials, museums and architecture, and my last set of photos from Berlin last year. These are things I like to explore and photograph in any city, and Berlin has probably the best collection anywhere I've been so far. History in particular, as the key events are quite recent compared to more ancient cities, and the effects are still visible in spots all around the city, down to bullet holes in walls. Any corner you walk around could reveal another memorial or plaque and memories of an impressive/terrifying history.

Berliner Dom and the Pope's Last Revenge

I started the day with an early morning trip via the Brandenburger Tor to the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten. Early enough that the people dressed in historical uniforms or cartoon characters hadn't even shown up yet to start scamming tourists. The Soviet Memorial is particularly interesting/crazy once you see the photo at the bottom of this post - the Soviets had captured German soldiers start building it in the ruins of the city pretty much as soon as the war ended, before any sort of reconstruction, almost a penal exercise. The old rumour (supposedly disproven) was that it was built from stone from the destroyed Reich Chancellery. They even built it right in the middle of the street which was to be the 'Avenue of Splendours' in Albert Speer's grand plan for 'World Capital Germania'.

Early morning at the Brandenburger Tor without crowds and tourist traps

Tools, coins and occasional flowers on the Soviet Memorial

The memorial is still in use and regularly visited by Russians, who appear to leave spanners, hammers and coins behind in addition to the usual flowers. After visiting the memorial I made my way back to the Musuem Island to tick the Bode Museum and Altes Nationalgalerie off my list and finish the Island. The Bode musuem is another one focussed on both old and ancient sculptures - still not my favourite, but interesting enough and free to view since I cunningly bought the weekly pass! The building itself was fantastic though, very grand foyers and a dome at the far end. And I even found the sculptures more interesting than I expected and spent quite a while there.

After the Bode it was time for a quick Bratwurst mit Brötchen (sausage inna bun) behind the Berliner Dom, dodge the pigeons flying around, and off to the Altes Nationalgalerie to finish my seventh and final Museuminsel museum. Apart from a couple impressive sculptures in the foyer it is mostly a painting collection, and much more enjoyable than I expected since it was hardly mentioned in my tourist guide. Some really nice historical paintings from the German Imperial era... supposedly from the 'neoclassical' and 'romantic' movements, although I'm just an amateur art appreciator and haven't figured those terms out very well yet. Either way, I really enjoyed it, one of my favourites on the island.

Princess Luisa and Frederike of Prussia at the Alte Nationalgalerie

With half an hour to closing time, there was time enough to quickly sneak back into the Pergamon Museum, which I saw on my previous trip but not this time. Might as well, with nothing else planned, and quickly look at the massive and impressive altar, and try get a better picture of the famous Ishtar Gate of Babylon. I took plenty of photos to try and stitch together, but I'm still struggling with the software! Stitching hasn't really been my thing so far, but maybe I'll figure it out one day. But that's it for my second trip to Berlin. Really love this city, and I would come back anytime - although I've persuaded myself that next trip I will check out Munich for the first time instead! Hope they still have Currywurst there :)

Lake Manapouri

Lake Te Anau and Mountains

Winter roadtrip through Mossburn

Weymouth - Summer resort in Winter

Durdle Door and the Jurassic Coast

Berlin History and Art

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