27th Feb 2011

27th Feb: 2011

Christchurch, what a shocking situation, absolutely dreadful. When I lived in NZ for a few years many moons ago, I remember experiencing earth tremors periodically and although they were only minor tremors and weren’t really frightening you were always aware of them and hoped they wouldn’t get any worse than that. To experience something like what has taken place in Christchurch now on two occasions in a relatively short period of time must be absolutely terrifying. I have a young niece living in Christchurch where she works and has her own unit. Suzanne is ok and apparently her unit escaped relatively unscathed compared to a lot of others, a few cracks and minor damage I believe, her garden I understand wasn’t so lucky, has been desecrated but these are material things and all repairable or replaceable. The emotional trauma is something else; every one is different and responds differently to situations. How do you cope with something like that, how would you react? I really don’t know how I would react myself but I’m pretty sure after surviving two events I would be seriously considering moving on. I don’t know how it has affected Suzanne or what her intentions are but I wish her well and trust she will be ok.

Wednesday 23rd we relocated from Victor Harbor to Goolwa in the Murray River basin in readiness for the weekend wooden boat festival, spending the next couple of days wandering around this old river port, walking into town the kilometre plus for a bit of exercise. I also took the opportunity while the weather was fine and sunny to do some onsite sketching and photographing of a property a few kilometres north of Goolwa. What I thought was a small winery turned out to be an old historical inn that has been restored and turned into a B&B, wedding venue and restaurant. ‘Kinsbrook’ historic inn is straight out of Tuscanny, old stone masonry walls covered in creeper, shuttered windows, produce and flower gardens behind the main building, vineyard off to one side, gravel courtyard with its obligatory Aston Martin and classic white Bentley parked nonchalantly under shady trees the whole ambience is classic Tuscan and money. Inspirational subject matter for would be artists, so after taking a couple of dozen photos (the good thing about digital), I sat on the tailgate of the Toyota and made a fairly detailed pencil sketch so I can paint it later, a bit difficult when you have traffic thundering past just a couple of feet away.

Goolwa’s wooden boat festival wasn’t quite what I had visualised it to be but then I had overlooked the fact that Goolwa is a river port not an open sea port. Whereas I had visions of chunky old gaff rigged sailing boats and the such, there turned out to be a multitude of small wooden constructed river sailing boats, dinghies and even some small steam driven motor boats and of course ‘Oscar’ a restored steam driven paddle wheel river cargo boat, so that was interesting. Note I didn’t say I was disappointed, the show was well organised and well patronised, just wasn’t what I had visualised, but still it was boats and it was free, I’ll just have to go to Hobart for their wooden boat festival. Yesterday was Qld weather hot and muggy, but Sunday started off cloudy, windy and cold, not exactly what was predicted by the experts but you know how it goes, we didn’t do a second day at the festival but noticed a huge crowd in the locality when we passed through town, so it has been well patronised which is pleasing for the local businesses and as an added bonus the temperature has warmed up half a degree so that’s an improvement.

Cheers