Posts by ChrisW
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to BenWilson,
the reflection of the branch burst in the ASB tower is kind of cool.
Indeed, but how about the Ghost Rider in the Sky then?
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Some of their handiwork remains in the Kopuawhara valley, but more than bridges and tunnels and rails are needed to make a railway.
Third one is the upper half of the Kopuawhara Viaduct.
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The site of No.4 camp in the Kopuawhara valley, from the railway line, looking downstream. Monument at the left across the stream, in 1938 there were tiny houses for married workers on the now scrub/ forest covered surface below it, linked by a road bridge across the stream to the single men's camp on the lower surface at the right, where there were about fifty flimsy huts and the cookhouse/dining room.
There was and still is a small channel in the surface at the back of the camp against the slope to higher ground. When the flood came over the bank into the camp there was also an uncrossable torrent scouring that channel deeper. There were men awake to wake and warn their workmates, but they were all trapped on an island between two uncrossable torrents in the dark when the bridge was swept away. And within 15 minutes or so the island was submerged in fast water neck deep and more.
Fewer than half those in the camp that Friday night/Saturday survived, most on the roof of the small corner of the cookhouse that held up against the speed of the water and the battering by flood debris. Some many gone somewhere in summertime ...
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Jos,
I see what you did there, thanks Jos. I like it both ways - the imperfect raw stitched version as if the obelisk in yearning/ streching for the sky had popped up a segment of the frame to accommodate its apex.
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Today is the 75th anniversary of the Kopuawhara disaster, when 21 people working on construction of the last section of the Napier-Gisborne railway were drowned in a flash flood that came in the dark about 3.30 am and swept away the single men's section of the No. 4 works camp, on the southern side of the hills south of Gisborne. (Before and after photos via the link.) Another drowned in another works camp flooded by another stream on the northern side of the hills, in the same rainstorm.
Sunday - 140 people gathered at the monument in their memory, having walked over 2 km by foot track and the railway line after a long drive on forestry roads, with the requisite access permissions granted for the occasion. The monument was erected in 1942 when building the railway was completed, on an elevated site where it would be prominently in view from trains passing by on the formation here seen in the background.
The monument inscription - worth studying for the poignancy of that sure memorial, in these uncertain times for the railway they built.
Among the speakers were sister and brother,12 and 6 years old then, living at the No.3 camp a few kilometres downstream but safe on higher ground, with their memories of the day and its aftermath 75 years ago. 12 + 75 = 87, pretty impressive.
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Capture: Art On The Street, in reply to ChrisW,
I met this couple of colourful characters outside the Gisborne Contract Bridge Club.
Wider shot reveals the secret of their cheerfulness despite being out in the midday sun on one of the particularly warm days a week ago.Alas! I saw the cheerful pansies looking a bit the worse for wear a week later, then next time - someone had taken offence at the irregularity and like many an item of street art before it, obliteration!
Tar and Cement (1966, Verdelle Smith) came to mind –
"where were the lilacs and all that they meant
nothing but acres of tar and cement" (well, sort of ...) -
Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Jos,
When peppers go bad...
Jos, that's beautiful! Though perhaps not for the squeamish, there's splendid colour, light, texture and multi-layered imagery of life and death there. What chance of a sequence, if you have a sacrificial surplus?
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to BenWilson,
Next, Jupiter, below the horns of Taurus. The moons clearly visible at 24x. You'll have to blow the picture up to see these details though.
For a direct camera image this/yours is very impressive!
I've followed these four Galilean moons of Jupiter over a few days or a week of nights several times with good binoculars or a small telescope, sketching their relative positions to show their obvious changes from night to night. It's a great feeling, the sense of connection to Galileo first seeing them with his first home-made telescope and doing just that in 1610, recognising the pattern of orbiting moons each with a different period, a major step in the Copernican revolution.
Might you consider trying this photographically, and showing us all a sequence of cropped images (ie enlarged)?
I don’t think my camera would be up to it, quite apart from my lack of tripod. It has excellent optics but, well, here is the moon 2.5 days after yours by way of comparison. Indeed the light and atmosphere is different, but getting x25 by combination of optical and digital zoom there are only 1.3 megapixels of definition.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to BenWilson,
3. Looking South from the same spot over Oakley Creek. Handheld again, Southern Cross and pointers, and the lower part of Argos, keel and sails.
Alternatively - perfectly framed to show the comparison between the Southern Cross and the 'False Cross' directly above it.
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Hard News: What did you do yesterday?, in reply to 81stcolumn,
952m Mountain
Te Aroha
Te whakapono
Me te rangimarie
Tatou tatou eCheers 81st, kia ora, and may the journey continue, yours and young 82nd's there, Ngati Rangitane and Ngati Pakeha, with more mountains to climb.
