So I have returned to New Zealand.

To be honest, I never thought I would ever return.  Certainly not through lack of desire, but rather lack of means was my assumption.  But I must never forget the generosity of family, and so it is through the good graces of my mother,  who covered the flight, that I once again find myself in this land of wonder and strangeness. But it is a land of banality too, in the way that my own land is banal. People often drive poorly here, are impatient, are charged far too much for everyday needs, are experiencing a widening gap between rich and poor…

It feels like a churchy land too. There are Catholics here, Pentecostals, Mormons, Protestants, Jews. The countryside is littered with small churchyards and accompanying wooden steeples of varying sizes. Clearly, this was fertile land to religiously indoctrinate not too long ago. New Zealand’s first industrial installation was at Russell in the Bay of Islands only in 1838, and that was a bindery to print religious texts in the Maori language (latin characters) to be given away to  the indigenous to ‘bring them into the Fold’. An old building in New Zealand would date from the 19thC.  But this, too, is familiar. An old building in Edmonton, Alberta Canada where i originally hail from dates from 1904. When an old settlement in Quebec can date from the 1600s, it puts into perspective just how long it took to actually settle the West in Canada.

I have borrowed my older sister’s car and driven up the North Island in a kind of loop over five days, returning yesterday to the news of an impending cyclone over the coming weekend.  Good timing in my return it seems. Cyclones are not something one often encounters on the Prairie as a young lad and I wonder how it will seem different in any way from a regular storm, if only with more rigour? Even the term “cyclone” seems far away in memory; like one of a compendium of weather types memorized for a fifth grade quiz.

While pottering about in NZ I:

• visited the Kauri Gumdigger’s Park

• shopped at Kauri Kingdom

• locked the keys in the ignition at the extreme northern tip of New Zealand (-34.4377946469, 172.717010258)

• toured Pompallier House

• visited the Kawiti Glow Worm Caves

• walked early one morning on 90 Mile Beach (at least 10 miles of it all to myself)

• took some night time exposures along the Strand in Pahia

• walked a lot on Karekare beach

• walked “the Hill” at least a dozen times in Auckland

• wandered through numerous cemeteries wherever I went (a favourite thing to do)

Following is a series of images culled from stuff I found interesting during my week and a half here so far: