Covert Covid Creativity…

Tanya…. The first four weeks of our Rāhui (Lockdown) seem to have whizzed by.  I haven’t completed any of the practical chores on my “to-do” list, but have enjoyed the opportunities to create in unexpected ways. My computer crashed, and it took a week to get it to our Earthsong expert Grant, who fixed it […]

Visits and Visitors

A visit to Whangarei Heads… From Waitangi we headed to Whangarei Heads to stay a couple of nights with  our old friends Steph and Annette on Seahorse Farm.  We swam, walked, ate delicious food, and were looked after warmly by them both.      One highlight was our walk from Urquhart’s Bay around the headland […]

Solstice Greetings from the Far South!

… from Ōtepoti-Dunedin, where for two weeks  we’re  housesitting for  friends, Fiona and Glenn Erik, former neighbours at Earthsong. It’s wear-merino weather here still, cold even on the sunny days… We’ve slipped easily into our gracious 1920s red brick homesit high on the hills of Ōpoho in North Dunedin, and are enjoying tending to gardens and […]

Ōwairaka

In late November we became involved in political action  on our local maunga in Tāmaki Makaurau – Ōwairaka/Mount Albert.  We had heard on the news that a small group of local residents had gathered half way up  the mountain to stop a tree-felling firm from carrying out the instructions of the Tūpuna Maunga Authority to […]

 Whirinaki Te Pua-A-Tane forest

Tanya’s four-day adventure with Stephanie.. On the last morning of our recent tramp out of the magnificent Whirinaki Podocarp Conservation Park (located between Rotorua and Te Urewera),  Steph’s acute eyes spied a whanau of whio, the rare native blue duck – parents and six ducklings –  preening themselves on a log, far below us in […]

Mulame: Lema Shamamba’s Exhibition

    We went to the opening of  Mulame in Objectspace Gallery in Rose Road, Ponsonby.  The exhibition, curated by Ane Tonga, comprises  a series of framed, embroidered  panels by our friend Lema Shamamba, depicting aspects of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it is powerfully political.  Since she came to Aotearoa ten […]

Town and Around

  Half of the Sky This stand-out Massive Theatre production, written by Lennie James and produced by Sam Scott, stars: Kura Forrester, Rose Henare Ashby, Grace Palmer,  Max Palamo & Pat Tafa It is on at Q Theatre in Auckland until Saturday 26 October …catch it if you can before it finishes! Three sisters, their […]

Place as Person

‘Place as person, landscape as identity: ancestral connection and modern legislation’ The 2019 Cumberland Lecture at the University of Auckland was given by Kennedy Warne, founding editor of the the NZ Geographic magazine, and a sensitive man with a deep feeling for Aotearoa and its many environments.   We really enjoyed his lecture on 22 August […]