A wedding, a pregnant wife, and a busy evening job at the Herald has meant my blog’s gone unloved for months – which is a shame because I’ve had some great adventures. A while back I abandoned my seriously morning-sick lady for two weeks and sailed to the Auckland Island and Campbell Island groups in […]
As Rebecca and I renovate our old wooden house we’re turning up some interesting, disgusting, objects. Most impressive is this beautifully mummified creature which was preserved in the gap between the building’s inner and outer walls, and looks a lot like one of Jim Henson’s Skeksi creatures from the Dark Crystal movie.
I love to go a-wandering Along the mountain track And as I go I love to sing, Rebecca’s knapsack, plus my own, On my back. Val-der-ree… A week ago Rebecca and I set off up valley to cross the 5380 metre Renjo Pass. It was ambitious of us, considering our rubbish fitness, the tough time […]
Adios, folks. Rebecca and I are off in the morning to Nepal, where I’d count it one of my peak life experiences to see one of these in the wild: Realistically, that’s about as likely as Don Brash performing a haka for Queen Elizabeth – but I dunno… sometimes I think I was kind of […]
Well it’s been ages since my last post, mostly because I’ve been super busy – I’ve been subediting for the NZ Herald group (which is thoroughly enjoyable – it’s like doing crosswords all day), and on the few breaks from that I’ve been doing some serious hunter-gathering. Recent species caught, killed and eaten include some […]
So it turns out that the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia kind of under promise and over deliver. I just got back from a week there, courtesy of Tourism Malaysia and AirAsiaX (read the Dominion Post article here…), and it went a bit like this: ‘Today? Oh, snorkelling very bad. Too cloudy – no see shark, […]
Big ups to the friendly farmer with the crayfish creek on his property: I now have two native New Zealand freshwater crayfish in the pond. I think I’ll called them Reggie and Ronnie (Ronnie is the big one). Check them out: Like the infamous Kray twins of London’s East End, these two have been sentenced […]
Phase one of Operation Spawn of Ponsonby is now almost complete (and we’re talking about popping out frogs, not sprogs, here, in case that headline was misleading); the ultimate goal of Operation Spawn of Ponsonby being, of course, the establishment of a self-sustaining population of frogs, fish and (hopefully) freshwater crayfish in the gaping industrial […]
Very, very excited by my new favourite animal in the garden – check him out: a juvenile and rather pretty green and golden bell frog who I found hiding under the cucumber vine, keeping out of the hot midday sun like the sensible Aussie immigrant he is. Finding a frog under the vine was a […]
I walked past the Ponsonby Sohole the other evening and wow has it taken off. Where once there was a gaping hole in the heart of the Ponce there’s now a gaping hole with a charming pond at the bottom – and the beginnings of an eco-system. A quick background: a properly hideous development was […]