I used to live out here on the peninsula. There are so many stunning stories to tell of the Albatross Colony, of penguin and seal colonies, of beaches and birdlife, of a coastline that leaves you looking out across an ocean that doesn't stop until it reaches South America ... some 6,000kms away.
Loved it.
Much-loved friends in New Zealand just got news of a well-deserved victory.
To celebrate, I'm posting photographs of a lunch we would love to take them out to ... at the delightful L’Art'e Cafe and Gallery, if we were there in that land downunder.
I love this kind of view ...an empty road opening up in front of me.
Gert informed me that this song is mine, in those days as he watched me fill with the joy of that South Island roadtrip in the little red car.
I hate leaving, dislike saying goodbye, right up until that moment I'm on my way and then I am happiness-filled.
Leaving is one of those things I do best. And out there, I usually stretch myself to the limit of what I can stand and beyond sometimes, then it's okay to come home again.
I'm not a wild thing, I'm just a smalltime wanderer who doesn't like to stand still for too long.
There are tracks like this, leading to the beach, back home in any New Zealand summer.
That place where the delicate scent of the yellow lupin merges with the smell of the sea is fairly close to heaven ... or that's my idea of it all.
Of all the flowers in the world, so far, these are the flowers I would fill my garden with ...
The humble yellow Lupin. Colour-specific because no other lupin smells like the yellow lupin, otherwise known as L. luteus.
In Dunedin, they mostly grow in that place between the land and the sea, in the interstitial zone.
Following the sandy tracks that led to favourite beaches around Dunedin, the yellow lupins filled my soul with something that felt like joy.
I lived on the edge of Otago Harbour, out on the peninsula, and scenes like this were everyday kind of scenes. And I often slipped out of the house, usually with my dog, and wandered out into those early mornings ... any season. It was always stunning.
I never took them forgranted, I loved every day that I spent out there. It was only that I needed to see the world. It was good to go home and visit it all again.
