Kiwiblog

A very amusing article about Great Barrier Island:

Members of Auckland’s singles scene who are becoming frustrated with the so-called “man drought” may have an option on the horizon – there’s a shortage of women on Great Barrier Island. …

Although local builder Haz Got has already been snapped up, he said he had always noticed the shortage of women during his 20 or so years on the island.

“Particularly in winter – winter’s a real sad state of affairs for some of our red-blooded gentlemen residents.”

Mr Got admitted island men might be a bit fussy.

“We are picky about our women folk. There’s only certain women folk that will fit the bill,” he explained.

“You get your fancy ladies with their lipstick and their high heels and they come in here and wave their arses around and they think they’re in,” he joked, “But the boys aren’t interested.”

I’m a regular visitor to the Barrier and the locals are very down to earth. You have to be to live on an island with no central electricity supply!

Headed up to Paraparaumu Beach during the week to catch up with friends who have a holiday home there. I went to university with Michael and we catch up regularly for movies and drinks. I hadn’t seen his younger sister Elaine for around 20 years, so it was a bonus to catch up with her also.

Not sure I made the best impression on her kids though as she introduces me to her daughter who is 13, and I proclaimed “Fuck I feel old”. When I first met Elaine she was at school herself, so suddenly realising she has a daughter who is only a couple of years younger than Elaine was when I met her, really makes you realise how much time has gone by.

The weather wasn’t great but their dog still enjoys chasing sticks into the ocean. It really is nice having the beach five metres away from the house.

It got me thinking about where my ideal holiday home would be, if my finances get to the stage where I could afford one. I have a mental shortlist along these lines:

1. Marlborough Sounds. I’d love a place down there, preferably as remote as possible so we have no road access and no neighbours. It would mean I need enough money to buy a boat and a house there, and sadly that is more a pipe dream for now. Ongoing costs of a boat also a factor.
2. Kapiti Coast. My family had a small batch at Waikanae and then a farmlet (15 acres) at Reikorangi so I know Kapiti very well. It is logistically the easiest option as just 45 minutes from Wellington. The beach is nice, and the prices not too unreasonable. The downside is it isn’t really remote enough.
3. Great Barrier Island. I absolutely live the Barrier, and if I lived in Auckland that would be where I want my holiday home. I’d probably spend half the year there if I could. The downside is I do not live in Auckland, flights over there cost quite a bit if regular, and pretty expensive to buy. I’d be more tempted to build something custom.
4. Wairarapa. I don’t mean Greytown or Martinborough but rural Wairarapa. Three friends of mine have places north of Masterton, and they are wonderful remote. No neighbours, superb bush and views and the prices are actually quite affordable. The downside is having to drive there and back regularly, and the distance to the beach.

Not sure how I will ever decide. If there is ever a Mrs Farrar, I guess she’ll decide for me

Wonderful weather today. The Barrier really is much warmer than Auckland, despite not being that far away – just as Kapiti Coast I suppose is warmer than Wellington.

This is a photo of my current office, taken yesterday. To get mobile reception you have to go outside, so I set up the laptop on the balcony. As offices go I could get used to this one!

For a while it looked like I might have to get used to being outside, as yesterday when we returned from the race, the house was locked, with the key inside the door on the other side. After some investigating I found a window that would open, but it was a bit too high up for easy access, so I ended up having to offer my back as a human foot stool. I think it still has imprints of footprints on it!

This is one of the balconies, and view from it. I wish I was here for longer.

I’ve mentioned before there is no mains power on GBI. Pretty much every house has solar power, but a few also have wind power. That little turbine helps power the house – it complements the solar power as it can build up power overnight.

And this is a solar powered water heating cylinder on the roof.

And the main solar panels. If I move from my apartment into a house, I’m definitely going to look at solar power panels. I love the idea of generating your own power for free. Of course you do have significant one off costs, and I’m not quite ready to throw away mains power totally, buf if every house was partially solar powered, we’d have a far smaller national energy bill.

You get very little sounds from cars or machinery here, so really notice the bird life. Certainly don’t get these in the back yard at Wellington.

Great Barrier Island had its annual (since 2006) Wharf to Wharf race. Nikki competed as an individual runner (you could also cycle it, or do it as part of a team), while I took part in the more appropriate role of support person, or as the term is generally called – water boy. Nikki was running to raise $800 for the local Kaitoke school. Personally I’d rather just write out a cheque!

Now the race is basically a marathon – just 1 km short at 41 kms. But it is not a marathon around the island. It is a marathon over the island! The first 23 kms are over and up muddy mountain tracks, and as it had poured the night before, I mean muddy. The final sections are on the road, but that’s a road with half a dozen hills on it, including two which would be difficult at the best of times, let alone at the end of a marathon.

This is the briefing at the start of the race at the Port Fitzroy Wharf. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how the local police officer, Kylie, was also the firefighter, the ambulance office and the coastguard skipper. Well she is also the race marshall!

This was taken at the second checkpoint. People come out of the forest behind, cross the road and head up the steep track opposite. Tragically the very first competitor, a mountain biker, was going so fast he shot out before those helpful cones were in place. And before anyone could yell out to him he had turned left and shot down the road. He went 5 kms downhill until he realized his mistake. He had been leading by around 20 minutes.

This is where they came out of at the second checkpoint. There were around 100 competitors all up.

A bumpy ride down the stairs to checkpoint 3. That was the end of the muddy tracks.

Nikki exiting at checkpoint 3.

And again heading down the final stretch to the Shoal Bay Wharf past Tryphena.

The organizers did a superb job of managing the event, especially with a 7am start (meant waking up at 5 am if you are staying in Tryphena to get to Port Fitzroy in time). No competitors got lost, despite the challenges of having half of it through bush, and they even have a 4WD that picks up anyone who couldn’t finish it within nine hours. The sponsor was Great Barrier Airlines, who of course flew many of the competitors in. Was a very smooth flight in on Friday night. My connecting flight from Auckland was delayed, but a nice thing about GBA is they wait for you if they know you are late!

Nikki was the 5th fastest woman runner, which was a pretty good effort considering she is used to flat roads, not hilly, muddy tracks through bush. Of course there were only less than 100 competitors (includign biking) all up, so that makes a top 100 finish easier

The organizers are thinking of seeing if they can add an extra 1.2 kms on, and make it into an official marathon, with the title “New Zealand’s hardest marathon”. Could become an iconic event!

I’m on Great Barrier Island for the weekend. As usual, blogging will be somewhere between limited and non-existent.

I’m a regular visitor to Great Barrier Island and yesterday afternoon booked tickets with Great Barrier Airlines for my next visit.

Then a few hours later, I see on the TV news that GBA had one of its planes crash after takeoff, and I get a degree of nervousness – especially just a few months after a propeller fell off another GBA plane. Now this may just be “bad luck” as I understand these are the first incidents for many many years – maybe even decades.

The Herald reports:

The 50-year-old was one of four passengers in the Piper Cherokee, which plunged into a swamp at the end of the Claris Airport runaway on Great Barrier Island about 1pm.

That swamp may have saved lives!

Great Barrier police officer Kylie Robbins – who is also an ambulance driver, volunteer firefighter and rescue-boat skipper – said she and a doctor and nurse from the Aotea Health medical centre waded through the waist-deep waters of the swamp to reach the trapped and injured passenger.

Heh that is very Barrier. The police officer quadruples as the ambulance driver, firefighter and rescue skipper!

She was taken to the island’s medical centre in Ms Robbins’ four-wheel-drive police car, which doubles as an ambulance.

And also leads the Christmas Parade every year!

The damage to the plane could be seen from the air, he said.

“It looked like a wing was buried or broken off. The other wing was sticking up.”

The craft seemed “fairly intact”.

“They are very lucky to have walked away from that. When I called up the hospital, they said [the patients] seemed only moderately injured.

The planes used are tiny. There is no centre aisle – you get in over the wings and even short arses like myself have our heads almost touching the roof when seated. Stuff which makes a crash more likely to be fatal.

Apart from the swamp, what may have saved them is they were taking off, so fell from a relatively low level.

Great Barrier Airlines deputy operation manager Mike Maguire said the plane “failed to sustain a climb after take-off due to unknown causes and descended into a swamp”.

There is speculation that a very strong wind gust tipped the plane onto its side. If that is correct (and there will be a full TAIC) investigation that concerns me even more than a mechanical failure. You can fix mechanical failures but you can’t fix the wind!

The Herald reports:

Passengers on a Great Barrier Airlines flight watched in horror as a propeller came off in mid-air, smashing a window on their aircraft and ripping a door off.

“It was like an explosion going off inside the plane,” one told the Herald yesterday.

“The propeller came off and hit the side of the plane …

“Both propeller blades came off – the whole thing just destroyed itself. It just completely self-destructed.

“A door got ripped off and the side of the plane got smashed in – we all got covered in glass.

“There was a huge amount of debris that we were just covered in. There were chunks the size of golfballs that came back and hit you.”

I can imagine. The planes are tiny. No centre aisle. The roof is just above your head when seated – even for me. To have something hit the plane and rip a door off would be far more terrifying than on a larger plane.

I actually met the owner of the airline a few weeks ago – at the Great Barrier Island Black Tie Ball. I remember him telling me how they have never had a crash – a good achievement. This incident however, while not a crash, if disturbing. The internal and TAIC reports will be of great interest. Hopefully they will be public before I next travel there, and have to decide my mode of transport!

As someone who has flown to and from Great Barrier Island around eight times in the last year, I was unnerved to read this Dom Post article:

A commuter airliner was forced to turn back after a propeller blade spun off the engine, sending aluminium shards into the cabin.

The three-engine Britten-Norman Trilander, with 11 passengers and pilot Sean Deeney, had just taken off from Claris Airport on Great Barrier Island on Sunday afternoon, bound for Auckland.

The blade struck the fuselage, then fell out of the fuselage and to the ground.

Regardless of how many propellers a plane has, I don’t like planes that lose any of them.

Mr Deeney shut the engine down and returned to Claris immediately. He told Mr Maguire it was a “normal approach and landing” on two of the three engines and the plane taxied back to the terminal.

Mr Maguire said the passengers had been concerned. “Any time you are in flight and something goes wrong there is reason to be concerned,” he said.

“The passengers were a little bit alarmed but were grateful to the pilot. He did an exceptional job getting the plane on to the ground. Everybody shook his hand and told him what an exceptional job he did.”

I’ve always flown Great Barrier Airlines and the pilots are good. However I will be very interested in the outcome of the official TIAC investigation.

Took part in the annual Great Barrier Island polar plunge yesterday.  I managed to stay in for the full ten minutes. Just before we all went in someone spotted a couple of fins and as we were debating sharks or dolphins, six dolphins appeared together literally surfing in on the waves. It was an amazing sight. They must have heard the noise on the beach and came close to show off.

After the plunge we were given hot pumpkin soup to thaw out.

This is the view from the house at Whangaparapara. Imagine waking up to that every morning?

On the Saturday it rained all day, and this leads to flooding towards the North of the Island. We were lucky that by pure chance the rental car was a four wheel drive as the road just ahead of here was under a good two feet of water. I’ve not driven a four wheel drive before so was a bit nervous going through the water as it was crashing over the bonnet and if we did get stuck, there was no cellphone coverage. The flooding lasted for 100 metres or so. Managed to get through to Motairehe which I had not seen before. Next time I want to see Kawa where there are graves for the SS Wairarapa.

This is down at Tryphena. Sunday was a warm sunny day. But the nice thing about the island is that even when pouring, it is a great place to be. At home in Wellington having the rain pour down is depressing. But over there, you could happily just spend a day watching the rain come down, as the views are so great.

This is the view from the South-East of GBI, on Cape Barrier Road, It is 4WD access only so had not been there before. Just magnificent views.

Part of Cape Barrier Road before it become 4WD only. Most of the roads are unsealed.

I’ve yet to go there in summer. I want to avoid peak time when lots are there, but would be nice to go when the climate is at its best. Will probably organise a group to go.

I’ve just extended again my stay in Auckland, and now won’t be back in Wellington until Monday. Am going to be on beautiful Great Barrier Island (again) over the weekend, which for those who are new has no Internet, mobile phone or even power supply (solar and generator only).

There is one small 20 square metre area where you can get a mobile signal so possible I may do a post or two, but more likely no posts under late Sunday or Monday after 4 pm today.

Even though it may take a while for me to collect them, I’d appreciate it if someone can text me whom ACT selects for Mt Albert on Saturday and whom Labour selects on Sunday.

Have a fun weekend all.

Am flying up to Auckland at 11 am today, but went to the Airport early so my flatmate could drop me off and use the car to get around.

As I sit down at a table in the Koru Club, the guy opposite me informs me I haven’t posted since 6.45 am this morning, and he has been hitting the refresh key!

Incidentally there will be a posting drought from late Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, as will be on Great Barrier Island again. I have to say I love that place – it is a great location to get away from it all.

Idiot/Savant looks at what would happen if the Foreshore and Seabed Act was repealed. I tend to favour repeal of the Act, but also would like the Court of Appeal ruling to have been tested by appeal to the Privy Council or the Supreme Court. Maybe one can repeal the Act, legislate to allow the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from the Court of Appeal ruling, and then whatever the Supreme Court decides, forms the basis of negotiations between Crown and Iwi.

Adam Smith at The Inquiring Mind links to an article in The Times on the huge number of subtitling mashups done of the bunker scene from Downfall. Over 150 mashups have been done, including three by Whale Oil. They are Winston’s Downfall, Helen’s Downfall and Judith’s Downfall.

Aaron Bhatnagar blogs on how Waiheke Island and Great Barrier Island residents will be polled on whetehr they want to remain part of Auckland City, or transfer to the Thames-Coromandel District Council. I don’t think many do want to change but as 10% o residents signed a petition, the Local Government Commission is obliged to run a poll.

Paul Walker retires from blogging. A real pity – I enjoy all the economist blogs, even though they are not high traffic. Maybe if they all combined together?

Bryce Edwards has done a series of posts on the party that shall not be named. They are a fascinating background read. One day he should publish them as children’s horror stories

Finally Adam Smith scans in and blogs every day a good Letter to the Editor. Have a look at this one from the Co-vice-president of the Maori Party responding to Chris Trotter.

This is Kaitoke Beach – was two minutes from the bungalow, and as you can see almost deserted. The whole island has beaches like this.

This is one of the spots we went fishing. It is Whangaparapara Harbour on the west of the island.

And this is Tryphena Harbour in the south. Tryphena is the only place where you can get voice and data cellphone coverage – and only for around 100 metres or so!

This is the north end of Medlands Beach on the East. Quite popular in summer I am told.

I’ll have a few posts and photos of the long weekend on Great Barrier Island. It was wonderful to get away, and I loved not having phone and e-mail. The weather was hot and sunny all four days – unbelievable good luck considering we are officially in Winter now.

One can take boat or plane to GBI. The boat takes over four hours so it was easy to choose the 30 minute flight. The aircraft are tiny – no middle aisle – everyone gets in through a side entrance.

The flight over was great as you travel so much lower down than normal – got great views of Auckland, and as we went over GBI itself, I swear we were just 10 – 20 metres above the bush.

We landed at Claris, in the centre of GBI. Rental car was waiting for us – a minor problem being it was a manual and I last drove a manual oh around 15 years ago. Luckily the co-driver was not so limited, so I got relegated to the passenger seat.

This is the main road to Port Fitzroy in the North. The main roads are sealed in the South, but are gravel in most places.

This is the bungalow we stayed at. It is solar powered and was great – two minutes from Kaitoke Beach and a fireplace for heating. Would recommend it for anyone else wanting a nice place to stay.

They had a nice special – $500 each for return flights, three nights accommodation and the rental car for three days.

From around 3 pm I’m going to be on Great Barrier Island for a holiday, until Monday evening.

The bungalow we are staying at has no phone, no cellphone coverage and only solar power electricity which may not even support a laptop. There is no central electricity supply on the island – it is pretty much all solar and/or generator – no streets lights etc.

So in all probablity no new blog posts until late Monday – a good excuse for everyone to enjoy the long weekend. My plans involve thermal pools, fishing, bush walks and maybe some diving. Oh yes possibly a small amount of 42 below to keep warm

While I will be on holiday, the blog won’t be totally idle. I have done the odd time delayed post which will appear over the next few days.