Kiwi On The Loose

Six60 - Don’t Forget Your Roots [Official Video]
I love this video, it so captures what it means to me to be a kiwi, a New Zealander. We are unique and long may we stay that way, with all the colour that has made us us. Tangata Whenua, Pacifika, Asian, Chinese……….its all good

100% Pure NZ Full………..This reminds me, and not that I have even forgotten, why I love my country, and why to me she is the soil I was birthed in and continue to grow in. There is nothing like ‘Home’.

Pig Hunting is a pastime and hobby of many Kiwis.
Hokianga is in Northland, Te Tai Tokerau the land of some of the author of this blogs ancestors, who participated in this sport.

Pig Hunting NZ 100% Grunt Hokianga Hog hunters

Tarawera River Mouth : Bay of Plenty : New Zealand

On the day in late October 2011 that I took this photo, it was whitebait season, ( info on NZ whitebaiting here) and there was a rain storm coming in.

I was heading home north after time with my family and as usual, it’s a slow process because there is so much beauty to capture.

The Tarawera River meets the sea on the skyline and here fisherman gather for normal fishing and in the season, white baiting.
The low light of this image makes it nearly monochrome. I like that, the moodiness of it all.

Out of interest here is a video of whitebaiting at the cut ( Tarawera River Mouth) in the 1950’s (no sound)

Whitebaiting on the West Coast of NZ

Waikare Inlet : Bay of Islands New Zealand

I have many weekends told myself that I will just get in the car and drive and go somewhere new, up some side road I have always passed by going from  A - B. Often it never happens for one very compelling reason after another. The picture above was one time that it did. And it was an awesome trip, with my camera, myself and the mighty Toyota Corolla. I will go back there for sure, as I did not get to the end of the road.The above image is cool because to my mind it captures  some of the iconic and essential elements of life in New Zealand. We have the sea element that surrounds us and from which we gather food (kai moana), represented here by the mangrove trees, the dinghies and the estuary. We have the stockyards which speak of farming and breaking in the land for agricultural use by the settlers and their descendants. And we have the flax bushes which represent the heritage and presence of the tangata whenua ( the people of the land ) who settled this land before the Europeans colonised it. And that is a whole other story.

Other images of my home land can be seen here

I wrote this the week Rena ran aground but had some problems uploading to the blog. Having sorted that hopefully, I decided to upload it anyway. Words take something out of me, they cost usually in their birth, they come from a deep space, and they mean something to me when born. Some words I can easily toss away because maybe they didn’t come from that essential soul space that expresses something central to who who you are and your life at that moment in space and time. They are not like a birth process.

That being said,  here it is…………written several weeks ago.

It would be very easy to let the dark and dim aspects of life, the sheer complexity of being alive and the live ( as in real time) events we all participate in as spectators or players, knock the veritable stuffing out of us. And let’s face it, it really does don’t it.
Today the sun is shinning oblivious to the sadness that exists all over the earth among nations, disasters, and peoples, micro and macro existences, among families and communities, and the agony of the earth as it lives with us. Above the clouds the sun is always shinning. Perhaps this could remind us that life is a constant, that life really is out of our hands. That life is actually something larger than us all. And yet I acknowledge that even with this days sunny global view of life and existence above the clouds, much of life can be experienced under the clouds. And God made this earth with clouds for a reason. Clouds shade and water the earth, and maybe tho we prefer sun always, they are necessary for us to, maybe too much sunshine isn’t always good for you.