Heritage Week

We are taking the opportunity to widen our horizons a bit and rediscover Auckland. Unfortunately the weather is rather bleak for doing so as there are many walking tours of the suburbs. Yesterday we went on one to Grafton, much of which has disappeared with the motorway. In fact I flatted there as a student in the early 1960s in a big old villa. The bathroom had a fearsome caliphont and the kitchen was built into the back verandah. I lasted a few months then went back home, before venturing overseas. Anyway we started at the Grafton Cemetery where a lot of the early settlers were buried. Over 1000 graves were removed when they built the motorway in the late 1960s Newton, not a very salubrious area, then or now.

Then over Grafton Bridge which is closed to private vehicles between 7am and 7pm and used only by buses for a quick connector ride from the city to Newmarket. If you think you sneak across in your car you will have somebody with a big candid camera photographing your number plate so you can be sent a $180 fine for doing so. It does seem a bit mean but it does make it a bit more congenial walk over without an excess of car fumes, and it speeds up bus journeys for those who use the busses a lot like me. This is the third bridge on the site - the first was a pedestrian bridge only, then Sir Arthur Myer had the other erected in 1910 at a cost of $140 000which sent the Australian contractors bankrupt as they didnt get paid until the end of the job. Last year the bridge was earthquake-proofed which we are all very pleased about after recent events in Christchurch.

Then on we went to Auckland Hospital with unremarkable architecture. No traces whatsoever of the old buildings some of which I have in memory, However it is good to have a new big hospital within a couple of kms from home should we ever need it.

On to the Domain entrance with its fancy gates - one large with a nude statue of an actual athlete from the 1930s, which caused a huge uproar when it was erected, without figleaf. I must say being so high up therfe is not much to see anyway but we were told they had train trips from Hamilton in the early days for people to some and see for themselves. The second gate post is much smaller and just has a swan on it! Once bitten twice shy.

From there to Outhwaite Park, where the Outhwaite family lived in a very grand house. He was English, she was French and was friend and benefactor of Suzanne Aubert and her work as I read in her letters and biography.

The last section of the tour took us to some of the residential streets tucked away behind busy thoroughfares, not in such a good state of repair as in Ponsonby.

Happy Birthday

to Elisabeth. Had the usual family gathering a trois over a cup of coffee and cake, then departed for the foodhall to save on fuss and bother. She had celebrated with her friends with a party at her place at which there was a special guest appearance of Noise Control at some stage of the night (or morning).

Father's Day Tea Table

Portraits by Elisabeth

Floral Art

Spring has finally sprung into action in our neighbourhood. The tulips are in our front porch , the cherry blossom and manuka blossom on our way up to Three Lamps.

Domestic Art

Have been busy on the domestic front recently and these are proof of my endeavour - lemon honey , made from some lemons from my neighbours tree up at Orewa, an easy microwave recipe.

Then there is a sultana, currant and marmelade loaf made from an old recipe newly published in Alexa Johnston's new book "A second helping". The fruit is soaked in a cup of hot tea overnight. It is delicious.

I recently got out my spinning wheel and spun a couple of skeins of yarn, using some natural grey fleece and some brightly coloured rolags of wool I bought many years ago, inserting small pieces of the pink and red wool between the two grey strands when plying them. I will be crocheting a baby blanket of granny squares when I have done a lot more skeins, in slightly different colours.

Our Knitterati domestic craft group is going to evolve into the Floralarti at the Rose Festival in Novemember and I have been knitting some roses to make into brooches. They are easier than it would seem.

Art

Elisabeth painted these pictures of Dieter and friends from old photos. He was working at the freezing works in Mataura on his first visit to New Zealand, this was several years before we met in Germany. He was on a 6 year working holiday that saw him hitchhike all the way from Europe, across the Middle East. He occasionally met up with another hitchhiker or two and they would travel or pitch camp under a bridge for the night. When I met him I thought it might be quite fun to travel overland like that too, so he went out and bought some maps and told me all ab out sleeping outside like that. He would be armed with a knife for protection. That was when I chickened out and flew to Singapore to see my parents who were there for a year or two.