Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The Taranaki region is named after the volcano that dominates it.
Some people still call it “Mount Egmont”.
One of the world’s most “perfect”/photogenic volcanoes, Taranaki is the primary “author” of the region’s obviously-fertile soils…and of its “black” beaches.
Leave a CommentSandfly Bay is also seal-approved – one species of fur seal does like to slumber there – but the pictured individual belongs to a much rarer species, of sea lion.
New Zealand’s sandflies are deservedly infamous, globally.
However the name of this spectacular Otago Peninsula ocean beach does not “honour” sandflies; it refers to the fact that on a windy day this is a place where sand really does fly!
On a milder, sunny day – such as 23 March, 2019 – Sandfly Bay loses its “sting”, and its sandy beach provides a warm, perfectly form-fitting, easily-adjustable “mattress”.
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Wet sand is often attractive in its own right.
Arguably, however, its greatest “talent” is its ability to enhance the beauty of whatever objects happen to be present within, atop, or above it…be they clouds, islands, shells, seaweed, crustaceans, birds, pebbles…or – in this instance – some wonderfully weird boulders on the Otago coast of New Zealand’s South Island.
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Wharariki is often cited as New Zealand’s most beautiful beach.
It is quite easy to reach, but its “remote” location – on the northwest “corner” of New Zealand’s South Island, – still keeps visitor numbers relatively low.
Screensavers are now out of favour, but for some years an image taken from a cave on Wharariki Beach was Windows 10’s default.
Thus – mostly, unwittingly – many millions of human eyes have (vicariously) looked across Wharariki’s sands to the Archway Islands.
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New Zealand’s biggest spit is big, even if Australia’s biggest – the star of #3 in this series – is circa four times longer, and rather more massive.
Farewell Spit is the northernmost tip of NZ’s South Island.
As mentioned in the previous post, a spit is a highly dynamic landform; this is especially so if much of that spit is low-lying, bare sand.
At low tide, Farewell Spit’s “above water” length comfortably exceeds thirty kilometres.
At high tide, or during some storms, it is well shy of thirty kilometres; much of its far end then becomes a submerged sandbar.
My photo was taken at 6.10 pm in July 2010; it looks across from Terra firma to Farewell Spit’s firmest, tallest, best vegetated, most stable section.
Had I been looking down from a satellite or a high-flying plane, Farewell Spit’s appearance would have been altogether more singular.
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Venerable and majestic as it is, the pictured river red gum is neither the tallest, nor most massive, nor oldest example of the Australian mainland’s most widely distributed and most widely-loved eucalypt species.
The pictured tree, however was “the hero” in the most famous photograph ever taken of Eucalyptus camaldulensis.
87 years ago one of the most influential Australian photographers saw this tree, standing on a sparsely vegetated plateau, with Wilpena Pound’s flanks behind it.
The tree has stood there for at least several centuries; “the Pound” is circa 800 million years older.
Harold Cazneaux (aka “H.P. Cazneaux”) captioned his 1937 tree portrait, The Spirit of Endurance.
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If it had presented itself to us a few days earlier, the “unanswerable question” would have qualified for the “quirky moments” series.
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You can see this post’s species in Australia too, but not with such a spectacular, snow-capped backdrop.
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This post’s actual footprints come from bears in Alaska, birds on the Indian subcontinent and continental Australia, a Tasmanian wombat, and humans in an African desert and Australian suburbia.
The musical bonus is courtesy of one of the greatest jazz musicians – equally so as composer, virtuoso instrumentalist and inspired improviser.
There’s also a metaphorical footnote which involves New Zealand’s largest farm…
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A particular pleasure in the intertidal zone: seeing and experiencing – even entering – wonderful things that are only available to you at low tide, or at certain very low tides…
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