Stars, School Holidays and a Shipwreck

Welcome back to feature friday, after a wee break for the school holidays today we are bringing you a collection of images, a couple from home in Dunedin and a few more from our time away.

During the holidays my daughter and I travelled north to visit family in Blenheim where the autumn colours were in fine form and the weather conducive to lots of outdoor activities and exploring.

H o m e

While we were in Marlborough sunning ourselves, Nick was busy in Dunedin with a number of large contracts due during April. On the photography front he ventured out to Blackhead Beach one evening with his buddy Denero for his first attempt at photographing the stars.

S t a r s

" I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." -Galileo Galilei

The ocean reflected in time at The Perc St Clair.

F a r m L i f e

Nick flew up to join us for a long weekend at the end of the holidays, celebrating our gal's birthday and squeezing a bit of exploring into three days.

This included a trip up the Wairau Valley to the home of my childhood where my brother and father are currently farming.

Our farm tour with Dad in week two was a fairly sedate one with Nick practising his drone skills, rounding up a mob of sheep and giving the angus bulls a wee bit of exercise in the bull paddock. We had a great look at the deer living on the rolling hillside, all pretty happy to pose for pictures.

This was a marked contrast to our first weeks farm tour when we explored new/incomplete roads on steep hills, and old roads also on steep hills with sizeable ruts.

Realising as a large rut caved under our vehicle that what remained of my childhood country courage seemed to have failed me, I quickly decided to exit the vehicle with daughter in tow and walk back downhill despite two stags at the end of the roar also inhabiting that particular hill. "Is this safe mum? " my daughter asked with concern - errm good question.

Other highlights of our farm visit: catching up with family, feeding Pierre - the fat and friendly pig and Pickles the little yet vocal piglet. Grace enjoyed the farm dogs particularly Shandy the half grown pup and Toby the very smoochy oversized ginger cat.

While out collecting the walnuts Grace had a rather terrifying encounter with what she believed to be a ram charging across the paddock towards her. Nope not a ram this turned out to be the over friendly Lambington, a large hand reared lamb looking for some food and some human affection.

O n a m i s s i o n .........

S h i p w r e c k

Another highlight from our trip to Marlborough was the Wairau Lagoon walkway, beginning 1.5km south of Blenheim and leading to the rusting 'Waverley' shipwreck.

At the end of her life the Waverley was towed from Wellington to the mouth of the Wairau River in 1928 where she was destined to be sunk to form a breakwater. The weather intervened in this plan and flooding swept the ship to the Wairau Lagoon where she currently resides.

So another great autumn holiday in Marlborough and a wrap for this weeks feature friday. Nick is up in Gisborne this weekend taking the wedding of some good friends and hopefully capturing some great images of an area that is new for us.

Come back next week for a look.

H a v e a g r e a t w e e k e n d f o l k s!