Windy Tops

Category: update

  • Wellington Harbour bottle caps

    Earlier today I walked around Oriental Parade and up over the Southern Walkway, and hopping off at Kilbirnie before spending about an hour sitting under the northern end of the runway at Wellington Airport, watching the planes struggle in. It was cold, but the bank below the runway offers some partial shelter from the southerly with passing phases of rain, and it was bearable for a while with about four layers and a balaclava.

    What surprised me as I walked back towards town was the number of bottle caps washed up on that part of the beach around there. There were barely any plastic bottles, but there were thousands of bottle caps. They were typically the variety that comes from soft drinks and bottled water, the latter of which I think is a bizarre, inefficient and pointless thing in New Zealand, but perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

    I suppose the bottles must separate and be carried somewhere else with a different make-up and density, but apparently thousands of bottle caps end up right here. Putting thoughts about lazy thoughtless polluters and the hypocrisy of New Zealand aside, I’d love to know more about the physics of what’s happening here.

  • Workplace dizziness

    Lately I’ve set myself an informal rule at work whereby if I want to visit the junk food floor (for the primary purpose of obtaining junk food), I have to take the stairs there and back. I figure this fits in nicely with the posters that have appeared around the workplace suggesting that people take the stairs more often. So far the stair-climbing is okay, and probably a couple of times a day now, I’m working on developing the most efficient technique to balance myself when going up and down the stairwell between the 6th floor and the 14th floor. Even if irrational, evil sugar habits feel much more justified. What I didn’t expect when I set myself this game was that I’d come out of it each time feeling dizzy.

    It’s just around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around. And that’s only the first half of it. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced this when walking in the outdoors.

  • Kaka in Central Wellington

    I was walking home this afternoon and spotted a Kaka climbing around in the low branches of trees on the north side of Anderson Park near the Wellington Botanic Gardens, which was very cool. I thought it was a Tui as I approached until it became clear it was too big, and I ended up watching it for about 10 minutes before it flapped away towards Bowen Street.

    It’s the first Kaka I’ve seen since one about 6 months ago around Cone in the Tararuas (not counting a visit to Kapiti Island), and only the second that I’ve spotted near Central Wellington. It’s one of the great effects of having the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary just down the road.

  • Surviving for a week

    You may have recently heard something of Matthew Briggs, especially if you follow New Zealand’s general media. A month ago, his story was splashed around many front pages, after he and his dog returned from an ordeal where he slid off a bluff breaking a wrist, ankle and ribs, tied himself up and stopped the bleeding, and set up camp for a week waiting for rescue. Then, when nothing happened, he crawled for two days with his injuries to reach a back-country hut where two hunters who happened to be present walked a thirteen hour day to raise the alarm.

    He might have sold his story to a trashy women’s magazine (or to a trashy Sunday newspaper), but instead he’s written it up in detail for all to read and learn from, over at the New Zealand Tramper website. What he’s created is a first-hand account from someone well qualified in the New Zealand back-country, which is actually very educational about what can go wrong, how to deal with it, how mistakes can occur, and what it’s like to have to cope with the media after something like this. It’s published in five parts:

    It’s definitely worth a read. There’s also been an ongoing discussion about the event in the NZ Tramper forums.

  • Ecology and Conservation History on National Radio

    I seem to have been posting about conservation issues between tramps lately, and so it doesn’t feel too out of place to post some more, especially as I see tramping and conservation to be strongly linked.

    I had National Radio blaring in the background this afternoon and happened to hear parts of what sounded like an interesting documentary on the early destruction of New Zealand’s forests. It turns out that it was episode 2 of Nga Uruora: The Groves of Life – Ecology and History in a New Zealand Landscape. This is a series of six roughly 54 minute radio episodes that was developed to parallel Geoff Park’s 1995 book of the same name.

    Geoff Park, a “respected ecologist and writer whose primary concerns were conserving the last remains of New Zealand’s indigenous lowland forest ecosystems and understanding the colonial history that led to their near-vanishing”, died in March. National Radio is now re-playing all six episodes of the radio series between 4pm and 5pm on Sundays.

    If this timing isn’t convenient or if National Radio reception isn’t convenient, the episodes can also be streamed through the web, or alternatively purchased on CD via Radio New Zealand’s Replay Radio service. Links and details for either are currently available at the link above.

  • Tararua Plane Wreckage to be returned to Tararuas

    I should have posted the update a few days ago that the Shingle Slip Knob Plane Wreckage (earlier mentioned here and then here) is to be returned to Shingle Slip Knob in the Tararuas.

    The story from the Dominion Post is available on Stuff.

    The wreckage was taken illegally in March by Wairarapa Helicopters following a commissioning by the Sport and Vintage Aviation Society for a new museum being built. After discussions with the families of the pilots who died and were buried nearby, the helicopter company has now agreed to return the wreckage, with an agreement that DOC won’t revoke its permit to operate in the park. It seems there will be no prosecution.

    This is good news. The plane wreck has been on the side of Shingle Slip Knob since 1955, clearly visible from one of the most frequented tramps in the Tararuas (The Jumbo/Powell loop). Perhaps it was decided that prosecution of either or both organisations would not accomplish much or might work out worse for everyone. I still have trouble believing that nobody involved could have realised that it was most likely illegal to simply fly into the Tararuas and take things, or that nobody would notice, or that nobody would have a problem with it being done.

  • It’s only a magnet with a circle attached

    I bought myself a new compass yesterday, which was another Silva Field 7 baseplate compass, identical to the one that I lost last October. It’s the most basic Silva compass on the market. It’s often marketed as being “ideal for youth and beginners”. For me it seems to do the job perfectly well and while I’m not a navigation supremo, I’ve been working on it for a while now and I’ve not yet had any issues with having only the basic features. I guess they market it that way to drive people towards the more expensive parts of their range.

    For several months I’ve been using a baseplate Coleman compass that I found at Rebel Sport for a quarter of the price, and for me at least it works just as well as the Silva Field 7. It’s slightly larger though, if only because it includes extra features like a magnifier that I never use, and ultimately that’s why I decided to replace it. It’s only after I’d been using a smaller Field 7 compass for a while that I noticed the Coleman compass was actually quite heavy, and that’s why I bought myself another Field 7.

    It’s a shame they’re priced at about $35 for something so basic, which I think is more of a branding thing than anything else. If I could get a cheap un-branded compass of similar specifications then I would, but they’re hard to find on short notice. I suppose that all you really need is a magnetically sensitive needle inside a nicely divided circle. It probably helps some people to have a few features like a better grips on the dial thingee and a magnifier for maps (which I’ve personally never used), but I’ve yet to see anyone using something like a typically expensive sighting compass for tramping navigation in New Zealand. Perhaps it’s a consequence of the circles I associate with. They’re in the shops a lot so they must sell, and I’m quite interested to know what sorts of activities people use them for.

  • Good river stories

    Just in case you had any doubts about how dangerous rivers can potentially be at the wrong time (following from one of my earlier posts), Frank and Sue over at Our Hiking Blog have recently posted a telling story from Tasmania about just how quickly rivers can come up in the rain, how easy it is to be caught out and what the consequences can be like. It’s a serious thing and fortunately everyone mentionde came out okay on this occasion, and also a really good short read.

  • Stolen Shingle Slip Knob Plane Wreckage Found in Masterton

    Just as a follow-on to my previous post about the Shingle Slip Knob plane wreckage having been stolen, it seems that the wreckage has now been discovered in an aerodrome at Masterton, care-of the NZ Sport and Vintage Aviation Society who intended to display the wreckage in a the George Hood Aviation Museum which they’re building.

    Apparently they had no idea that they might be breaking some kind of law by fly into conservation land and taking things! I’m not sure why — if I wanted to reconstruct a New Zealand back-country hut for a museum in my back yard, would it be okay for me to fly in with a helicopter and take that from conservation land too? Perhaps the leave-it-as-you-found-it rule isn’t quite so obvious for people who don’t spend a lot of time in or near New Zealand’s conservation land.

    It sounds as if it was some kind of misunderstanding and I haven’t exactly figured out what I think about this at the moment. Supposedly DOC’s lawyers and the families of the pilots will decide what happens next.

    There seems to be a continuing discussion about this issue over at the NZ Tramper website.

  • Rain rain rain

    I like rain, and so far it’s been raining a lot this weekend. I have several friends spending their time in the Tararuas this weekend, mostly in the region of Totara Flats. It’d be really nice to have been able to be there, but unfortunately I’m still catching up with a few things that fell behind during the few weeks I was overseas. Last time I visited Totara Flats was also a weekend full of weather warnings, and we nearly became trapped there as a consequence of rising side-creeks flowing over the tracks, which made the excursion a nice little adventure. I imagine they’re having quite an exciting time right now, and a few days from now I look forward to inquiring as to how it went.

    I did get out for a walk in the rain this afternoon, however, starting in Otari Wilton’s Bush (a 10 minute walk from our current residence), and walking up towards the Skyline Walkway. The Kaiwharawhara Stream was as full as I’ve ever seen it — probably still safely crossable (not that there’s a need with all the bridges), but much higher and faster than its usually tame appearance. Walking along it for a few hundred metres was a telling experience, every so often seeing another temporary ad-hoc creek racing down the hillside and crashing into the stream valley at the end, making a lot of noise.
    (more…)