So Many Months Since That Previous Post ...

I found a home, one that I love more than my beloved Genova … which is good, since that Italian door is so closed to me in these days. If we leave our country, our government won’t allow us back … except via a lottery system which is, as you can imagine, a nightmare.

I have access to the most beautiful river, in the world, ever … And a beach I adore, like those beaches I loved in those days before I flew from New Zealand, escaping a very bad marriage.

I am beach girl again, living by the tides, when I can.

I have a casual job, that I love and I finally purchased a laptop, screen and memory that allows me, once again, to claim that I am also a professional photographer.

I have been reunited with my external hard-drives, after not having them work via my ancient and dying laptop, that one that has been dying, since flying back home to New Zealand.

I lost my father in August.

I met a man, and he has become my anchor, my partner, and my most-loved friend.

The doors have opened, as we have found the courage to step through them … and now, in these days, I am finding the tribe I belong to.

We are blessed.

I hope you are doing well too.

Love, Di

Happiness is ...

I picked up my camera recently. Intense again, like I used to be when I wandered the caruggi in Genova. I spent days, simply following a friend & his dog; walking the river’s edge, and Manapouri’s lake-edge bush tracks, with them.

I am still working my way through the results but I feel like my soul was involved. It has been a while since I lost myself in photography, day after day after day.

My music of choice lately (read, on repeat), is Snow Patrol: Live & Stripped Back at Porchester Hall. I was late to Snow Patrol party however I am surely making up for time lost now.

My Queenstown life is a beautiful life. One day I wandered into town, with a friend. We had tickets to hear that incredible New Zealand writer, Witi Ihaemara. And he was so much more than I could have imagined. Another evening, I wandered along to a members-only screening of Liam Neeson’s latest movie - over at the exquisite Dorothy Brown cinema, (20nzd per year membership) in Arrowtown. The bookshop in there almost destroys me, in these days of limited income however, I enjoy the pleasure of browsing. It is one of the most beautifully curated bookshops I know, any place in the world.

Life has a sweetness to it these days. I simply want to savour it …

Scenes From My Life ... lately

Or perhaps I could title this small slideshow, Places I Love

I suspect, a life lived between Queenstown and Manapouri would please me, as much as I used to dream of a life lived between Italy and New Zealand, back when I liked the idea of forever summers.

But I suspect I had forgotten the joy of Fiordland rain pounding down, and the possibility of being curled up next to a good fire.

The photos below … Manapouri, with my little friend, Tui the Wonder Dog. The photograph of her at my feet … cosied up keeping warm, it was the place she always begins, when wanting to sit on my lap while I work at the computer.

There is a Manapouri Spring flower series. And a glimpse of Gemstone Beach, a much-loved south coast beach of mine now. St Clair beach in Dunedin, then a small taste of my life here in Queenstown.

The Fork & Tap cheeseboard, out in the pub garden … divine.

The wee orange, that tiny Toyota that takes me every place, parked down by the lake early one morning.

I’m grateful.

Invasion By Duckling ...

I was reading, quietly, alone on a blanket beside a lake near Queenstown.

I became aware of sound of many little birds, peeping. I looked up, there were 10 little ducklings, running up the small hill towards me.

It was a true invasion. Before I could even reach out to call to them, they were all over my picnic blanket, all over me. Their little cold wet webbed feet tickling my bare arms. Peeping around me, climbing up on my backpack, checking out my camera.

They swarmed me. I didn’t feed them. I looked up at their mother, standing off to the side. I said, ‘Is this okay?’

She looked at me, as if to say, ‘Sure, I’ve got 10. What can I do?’

I was alone there. I took as many photographs as I could manage while giggling over their antics. They’re not brilliant photographs, just my phone but I think they capture the moment. There’s one with a little duckling, out of focus, near the camera. She had just pecked it, as I took photographs.

They were hilarious.

Eventually they ran off, like a gaggle of hyper-active happy small children.

Two returned, and hung round for a while, so I walked them back to the lake edge, where the others were waiting.

Diego, an Italian guy from Verona, walked by with his partner, Macarena. I heard him speak Italian and called out a greeting. (Yes, I am that bad. I adore meeting up with Italians, back here in New Zealand)

We ended up chatting a while, it turned out that Macarena came from Chile. They had only just married, a few weeks earlier. Helen returned from her walk around the lake. I was telling them my improbable story of the ducklings, when the ‘team’ turned up again. Delighting us all.

This new Queenstown life is like that. Something beautiful happens most days, and I’m left pinching myself, not sure it can be real.

But the ducklings. Meet my new friends, the Duck Family.

La Vita è Bella!!

that boy.jpg

A small Italian boy reached up to touch the crystal droplets, just as I was taking the photograph, and I felt his curious little hand, so delicately exploring the chandelier we had both found at the Genovese Antiques Market, perfectly captured the wonder and curiousity I was feeling.

Life is becoming beautiful again. There has been a long period of sadness and struggle, possibly beginning when New Zealand went into Level 4 Lockdown, and life dragged me down low and into a sadness that was threatening to drown me

There were so many factors, since returning to New Zealand, and I was unable to save myself until, one day I did …

The story of self-rescue didn’t begin & end with one single action but with a series of actions. Finally I have arrived in a beautiful place, with the loveliest people, and have begun to unfurl.

Rain because there has been a magnificent Fiordland downpour going on all day. They were talking of 30-40mm but I’m thinking that perhaps there has been more. And it’s still falling.

Tonight, we found a new pub … a new gathering place, full of good people. At one point, we were there chatting, two Kiwis, 2 Brits, an Irish woman, an Italian and a South African. I loved it, of course.

La vita è bella! It is all unfolding in the loveliest ways.

Photographing A Takahe Release, in Fiordland, 2019

The Takahē, a New Zealand native bird, was rediscovered in 1948, by Dr Geoffrey Orbell. SInce then, the bird has slowly been making a come-back with Department of Conservation assistance.

The population dropped down to 77, back in 2015 when there was a stoat plague, followed by major flood that caused landslides, killing the flightless takahē. These days, the DOC Recovery Programme is using science-based conservation techniques to develop the population.

And so it was, that I had the extraordinary experience of photographing the latest batch of two and three-year-old takahē, being released in the Murchison Mountains. We picked them up from the Burwood Takahē Centre near Te Anau, checked them over and boxed them.

Burwood is where adult takahē teach the young birds skills they will need to survive in the wild. This release group was the highest number released into the Murchison Mountains. The previous highest number was 29 in summer 2015/16.

DOC Takahē Recovery Team senior ranger Glen Greaves says, “The Murchison Mountains has been considered the home of takahē since their rediscovery there in 1948 yet maintaining a robust population at this site has been challenging.  Achieving this, while also growing takahē numbers elsewhere, is a true measure of the success of our takahē recovery work.

“After battling for decades to bring the Murchison Mountain population up to its natural limit, maintaining these numbers would be a huge reward for takahē staff past and present, and for our partners Ngāi Tahu and Fulton Hogan, and our supporters.

“We look forward to future surveys showing that takahē have once again occupied long vacant territories around the Murchison Mountains.”

“With the overall takahē population growing at more than 10% a year, other suitable sites with low predator numbers for new wild populations need to be found,” says Glen Greaves.

Note that last photograph. A Kea was keen on checking out the inner workings of the Helicopter … and didn’t move until the pilot climbed right up there and shooed him away.

Source: DOC website.