Photographs from nine day Ohiwa Harbour Birthday adventure.

Flowers from a cactus like plant, I suspect it is an aloe, that were planted throughout the camping ground.

This is a medicinal leaf that Maori people  still use for natural healing of a number of ailments.
When I  do my research I'll be more specific.

Fungi I found underneath a tree, it's a great time for photographing fungi at the moment.

 I recommend you go bush walking (if you live in New Zealand) with your camera.

Nikau Frond

Every time we visit Ohiwa we cruise into Opotike and go for a bush walk at the Hikuatua domain.

The number of  native and exotic trees planted in that area are very impressive.

It''s a lovely walk that is filled with native wood pigeon (Kereru) and Tui.

I recommend you seek it out of you are ever over that way, you won't be disappointed.

We went for a long windy drive through rough gravelly roads in search of a place called the boulders camping ground.

Along the way the farmers had lots of  signs about no shooting on their land, I thought this sign was particularly humorous and unfriendly.

Either the farmers were paranoid or they really did have problems with people trespassing.

During our walks we disturbed at least 7 male cock Pheasants so the no shooting rule must be working.

A Praying Mantis was waiting for us in our cabin.

I love these little guys because they are so photogenic.

 Their eyes follow you as you change angles to capture a good likeness.

                              I want to get a good shot of one eating a fly some day.

                                                                                  

This is the view from the top of a hill looking over towards Ohope.

that we walked up every evening and photographed .

It has almost a 360 panoramic view of the whole area. 

It used to be the site of a Maori pa.

It takes around half an hour to walk up and the view never disappoints.

View of Whale Island (Moutuhora)  from the top of the hill

Impressionist photo of Graham on top of the hill.

Graham has discovered an interest in photography as well and has made an amazing panorama of the hilltop view from a series of photo's he took.

he downloaded some open source ( free)  programme which apparently made a panorama more easily and way better than  if he'd done it with photoshop.

I'll see if he will let me post it on here for you to see; it's magic.

Because he is an engineer/programmer he has a good grip on technical matters.

It's great to see him shining with creativity on something besides programming,  

I hope he keeps it up.

I've warned him how addictive it can be.

Creativity Quote of the day

I once tried standing up on my toes to see far out in the distance, but I found that I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.

Xun Zi