Wakefield Quay - Nelson

Greenmeadows Park - Stoke

If you’ve lived in the area for more than 2 years you know where these centrally located playing fields are, just 50m from the Main Rd shops.

What the heck is that on the beach

….couldn’t quite make it out from this angle….

….there seemed to be a couple of industrious young lads doing something….

……a closer inspection was definitely required late yesterday afternoon…..

perhaps a “Burning Man” art piece, Nelson style, just replace the desert with Tahunanui Beach?

Probably best described….once….

….as an “ole time” charmer, today better termed a character home, this one…….

But the budget for the “reno” would most likely put most avid doer uppers off.

Nelson calling – this time its Arborists

Not scared of heights?

Must be a bit of work on locally at present.

Either that or some local chaps, Arborists, have relocated south, chasing the extra work & hours in Christchurch……..

……anyway ……..the up – side  is that two separate vacancies were advertised this past weekend.

Interested or know someone else who is – you know what to do.

Passengers, if you look out the window……

……then that down there below us is Stoke, voted in 2010…..New Zealands No. 1 place to live.

What looks like a line in the centre left of this photo…….

….well that’s what we call, well why not…Main Rd, Stoke. Creative….huh?

Its a little bit distracting

as you cross the Trafalgar St bridge over the Maitai River heading into town,

this sculpture catches your eye, and interupts your vision.

Actually officially unveiled by The Duke of York back in 2005, “Reef Knot” was to commemorate the bicentennial of the “Battle of Trafalgar”

….and no I’m talking about the one on Saturday night at Trafalgar Park.

Nelson’s Matai River…

not hard to imagine why folk like to live close to this is it.

Its just 1-2 minutes walk to town to.

Someone else, actually many someone elses….

……just partaking in, and enjoying another typical Nelson day.

Semi Final Rugby comes to Nelson

The calm before the storm.

And lets hope, like the subject of my earlier tweet this morning, the weather is of the typical Nelson style.

Certainly the day started well, and there were only minimal clouds.

From the back (top) bleachers you sure do get a great view.

Just to get you right into the mood, right into the feeling of being there…..here’s a couple of panoramas taken just this morning of Trafalgar Park in Nelson.

Be aware the road outside will be closed 5pm – 10pm tonight, more details over here in the article written by the Nelson Mail .

A picture perfect shot

of the outlook from a spot ………

……..on Nelsons famous “Boulder Bank.” Man are we lucky to live here.

Check out the clarity of the sea water too.

Looking in a South Westerly direction…..

…from Nelson central, this would be the vista that would meet your eyes.

Its looking towards Victory Square lower centre of photo with the Toi Toi region beyond and into the hills beyond. Much of what you see in the lower part of the photo is central Nelson’s commercial zone.

One thing that I find…

many property buyers in Nelson ask for

is a character home, and yes….we have quite a few of those.

Sealords new Trawler arrives

When I say new, I mean new recruit, because its not a brand new ship.

Up til just recently the Ocean Dawn was based out of Chile. She is pictured above arriving into Nelson haven on Wednesday afternoon.

The good news is that the “Independent 1’s” replacement, has an extra 10% storage capacity, and that translates into more local jobs.

One of the reasons that…

Nelsonians in the evening drive-time make there way around Rocks Rd

on the seaside is so they can end their working day driving home to this sort of vista.

Only for a natural lifetime

is how long these baches are allowed to last on Nelsons famous Boulder Bank.

And currently there are only a few left.

So once that persons lifetime frankly goes, so too does the bach. End of Story.

Wildlife on the Boulder Bank

just another nature friendly

day in Nelson.

Living here in Nelson

if its not about sports in the great outdoors

then its about any type of watersports. And with so much water, from lakes, rivers, estuaries, to Open Sea all so close by its no wonder.

The Boulder Bank….

from a different angle than you have…….

……probably seen in my previous photos. This time its from the north looking towards the south, and that’s Nelson in the distance, with the 2 x Port Nelson container cranes middle right of shot.

The obligatory sign.

For many this is the first…

view you experience arriving in Nelson for

the first time by road. You get the first glimpses of sea

…..that being of Tasman Bay out there in yonder distance.

The good news..…you’re nearly there……not much more than 10 minutes now, and you’ll be in the centre of town!

St Johns Anglican Church - Hira

quite a cute little

place, even if I do say so myself.

Kick me….can I be dreaming….

…well actually no….I’m not…but each and every time I hear that “noise”

……I can tell you…...a noise that I know instinctively is not a “turbo-prop” …….

One day soon this aricraft will get NZ certification to be able to take paying passengers up, in “BLUE BEAUTY.”

And me, even at $1000 or so per hr (cause according to the chap I spoke to at the opening of Air New Zealand’s new $16 million hangar last year…..thats at the very least a conservative fuel burn figure for an Aero Vodochody L-39C) let me tell you…….I’ll be one of the first lined up to shout my wife a trip as soon as he’s ready! Ok I’ll then be next up after her to.

FROM THE “JUST IN CASE” YOU ARE INTERESTED DEPT (+ Excel maniacs*)

According to a first hand pilots report here, “while at climb power settings and low altitude, the IA-25 turbofan burns about 330 gallons per hour (GPH), but this rapidly decreases to less than 140 GPH in cruise at 18,000 feet.” In case you’re curious, for Kiwi’s……read numbers here like a range of 530 ~ 1249 litres p/hr. Just about makes you want to own a “servo” doesn’t it?

* –why – because you just have to calculate everything….that’s why!

Wow them currency rates….

haven’t seen the NZ dollar buying that much for years and years.

Tis truely amazing what HDR can do

because when I looked out the window this morning…….what I saw was fantastic.

I saw a “just past full moon” shining over the water, at a great angle from the south west…….but a first shot…..well to be fair, it just did not do the scenario justice…..at least, not as I saw it anyway.

To be fair to any camera (and CCD / CMOS / sensor fabricator) this scenario must be one of the worst that a cameras internals can ever try to capture/replicate.

So switching to HDR mode, I peeled off 9 bracketed shots in succession, by “x” times. [surely a great way to get your shutter count up:-) ]

But no that was a bit overdone, so now time to switch to “exposure fusion” mode.

Yup now we’re talking….

…….much much more like the image I wanted to portray……the outcome much more depicted the vista that I was witnessing at that earlier hour.

But looking at it…the HDR shot didn’t look too bad……and hey…I didn’t even move the sliders up too far. (Goodness knows how good this could have looked after a “nights processing” in India….but hey that’s definitely another story)

Any preferences…….your thoughts?

Pretty spectacular sunset the other night

and I suspect some of that ash cloud was assisting too.

Definitely some ash up there

Lots of talk in the media about the ash cloud from that Chilean eruption lately.

Strange, according to the media, seems that the airlines really can’t win, whether they do fly or not. Surely if a plane suffered engine failure and worse, then the media would be all over that too. As of last night Air New Zealand have now joined others like Jetstar in not flying. Lots of media coverage to follow I’m sure.

Any way yesterdays photo taken from Nelson looking South SW a bit earlier at around 6:30am shows a bright moon.

Contrast that with one taken 25 hours later, difficult to spot the moon in the centre there at all, something’s definitely got between it and Earth I reckon?

Though it has had some advantages, witness our sunsets over the last few nights like this one.

“DUH” Update : I saw it yesterday on Spaceweather.com, but crossed it off because for some reason I thought they had shown that the eclipse was only visible to viewers in the Northern hemisphere.

As my wife pointed out tonight, I was more than likely looking at the aftermath of this mornings eclipse, and that, probably along with the ash, explains the shadow nature of what I was seeing