Posts by sandra
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Another favourite place to walk is Te Puna Quarry Park, about 15 minutes north of Tauranga – here’s a shot from the top terrace (the gardens are pretty cool too).
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Driving down country two or three times a year one of my favourite places between Tauranga and my childhood home is the Desert Rd. Seeing the mountains is a bonus, but the it’s just as good without. Have just got back from Japan where our scheduled ‘viewing’ of Fuji-san was a washout, completely invisible thanks to low cloud. Two weeks later I was travelling between Hiroshima and Tokyo by train and happened to pause in my reading and look out the window. Wham! The window was full of Fuji. Magic.
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Walking the base track on Mauao (the local name for the Mt Maunganui landform) is one of my favourite things to do. Stopped to chat to a friend one day and what should come round the corner, but ...
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Looking across Tauranga Harbour towards the Kaimai Range (with Coromandel away to the right) from Fergusson Park, Tauranga. Always a nice place to be.
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Hard News: Stories: Home, in reply to JacksonP,
I guess what I was saying, Jackson, is that privately owned land or homes don't stay with one family or even one clan. The land I am attached to will leave my family soon and then I will have to ask permission to stand there, it won't be 'my place' any longer (and I certainly couldn't sleep in my parents' upstairs bedroom any longer). I think Maori have a great advantage with always having a 'home' on one or several marae.
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This idea of 'Home' gives me pause now and again, especially since my mother's death last year. The sudden loss of one's last parent tends to do that.
What we Pakeha New Zealanders don't have is a turangawaewae - the property my grandparents bought in 1956 is still in our family's hands but my brother is unmarried and has no children, my sister has no children and my 2 children are unlikely to want to 'become' farmers ... so one day, sooner rather later, my home will be sold and pass out of the family. When that happens I will lose "my place" in the world, the place I have called home since the time I could say the word.
My great-great grandfather's homestead is down the road a bit; my great-grandfather's homestead, a bit further down the road, is long gone but the place his youngest daughter built on the site is still there and although now out of the family is bounded by a farm still in my extended family.
My grandfather started his married life on a farm across the river and ended his life while on the property I still call 'home', even though I haven't lived there since 1975! My grandfather purchased it from a Mr Weir who had purchased it from the original owner who (stay with me here) was the brother of the man who owned the farm directly across the road (and which their father had developed). The same family still lives across the road, although there too, there is a lack of a next generation wanting to farm.
This property on a windy plane is my turangawaewae and I have lain in its summer grasses often enough to know what it feels, sounds and smells like. With luck I won't have to see it sold as I'm the oldest (keep good health though!). If I do see that day come I know I will weep for all those who have gone before, for the land itself and for the end of memory ... for the loss of the place where I stand tall.
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to simon g,
Yeah, nah, joking. I'm quite content with the flag we have, although see good points in some that haven't made the referendum. I particularly liked the 'Maori make-over' given to the Union Jack on one long-listed flag. Don't know how I'd feel if the project had had some input from, you know, proper designers and all.
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to George Darroch,
Are you being facetious? A lot of people are.
It's hard not to be ... a well-paid flag panel talking to empty halls around the country (I would have gone to my local meeting ... if I'd known it was on! And I'm one of the well-informed.)
A longlist of oddly amateur designs mixed in with a few that stand out, much chattering, then a shortlist of two flags that are essentially the same, one that's slightly different and one that's well, odd (try and imagine it being carried into an Olympic stadium by our Val).
THEN much more chattering and we add another flag to the referendum, one that didn't make the panel's cut the first time. Hell, I might even try to have TWO more designs added to the referendum. I think our new flag needs some green in it ...
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to Shaun Lott,
Just because Red Peak is better than the panel options doesn't make it a good or even a very well considered choice.
Quite agree. I think I'll start a social media campaign for the flag I like and get another one added to the referendum. I expect JK to be fairly relaxed about that.
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I left 'proper' journalism earlier this year, feeling after some 20-odd years in the one place that it was time for a change but also because I could feel the disillusion growing.
The couple of years we all took a wage freeze because the company asked us, because it would help the company survive were not repaid with loyalty in any way, shape or form - the next three pay rises were all below the cost of living, there were fewer people to do the same or more work, experience and institutional knowledge were not valued.
Everyone screams 'digital' and 'synergy' but no one knows how to make digital pay and in the meantime old-fashioned journalism where there were reporters and subs, where stories were crafted without reporting to Facebook comments, is disappearing.
[cries salt tears into farewell gift coffee mug]
