DOC tree planting weekend

Hi all,

So a few weeks ago Drea heard about a Department of Conservation trip that went down to the Catlins (an area about an hour south of us known for lush native bush, New Zealand wildlife and wet wet weather) . The purpose of the trip was to plant trees in a Yellow Eyed Penguin reserve that had been burned in a fire and cleared of vegetation about 15 years ago. The fire killed many of the endangered yellow eyed penguins that had been nesting in that area at the time. Since then, the land has been acquired by the DOC and a process of revegetation has led to the return of penguins to the area. This trip would continue the process of vegetation with the introduction of some of the larger native tree species such as Totara and Rimu (and several others I can't remember the names of) Anyway, Drea tried to sign us up only to find that there were no spots left. Then on Wednesday we received an email stating that 2 spaces had opened on the trip so we tried to sign up. Alas we were too late and the spots disappear only for one spot to reopen on Thursday. So Drea, figuring that a weekend without me meant a weekend of good studying signed me up. Sounded like fun so I went along with it.

We all met shortly after work on Friday night and drove down to the Tuatuku Lodge.
The lodge is owned by the New Zealand Department of Forest and Bird (who were co-sponsoring this volunteer trip to the reserve). The lodge had three cabins on the property. One that held 10, one that held 4 and a cute little A-frame for 3. I ended up in the A-frame but myself which was actually pretty nice. Especially after I woke up in the middle of the night, tripped over my bag and landed hard on one of the other beds.

The next morning the DOC staff cooked up a nice breakfast and we went off to Te Rere. We met up with another group that came up from Invercargill and proceeded to the reserve. Once there we divided into groups and planted the trees in between some Flax plantings that had been placed in previous trips.

Here one of the trip leaders is showing us the correct tree planting techniques.

It was a bit drizzly out but it could've been worse.

A successful tree planting

The site overlooked some beautiful and rugged coastline.

The waves would crash against the rocks and sometime fly up over the cliff which was about 60 feet high.

Here's looking back into the reserve from the top of the cliff.

Unfortunately my battery died at this point. We went back to the lodge after planting a couple hundred trees and were fixed a delicious meal with wine and homemade bread all courtesy of the Department of Conservation. Then spent the rest of the evening getting to know the other members of the group. Most of them were University students specializing in ecology or biology, so it was interesting to hear from them about their studies and how it related to things we had been seeing out at the reserve.

The next morning we went out to a nearby beach and went to town on a couple of gorse bushes. The gorse is an invasive weed covered in spines and little yellow flowers that Drea and I think smell like coconut oil. They can be pretty but in New Zealand they're a horrible nuisance so we set about with axes and saws and cleared the headlands of the beach in a few hours. We followed up the work with a short nature walk and then headed back home.

Drea and I are now looking at other DOC volunteer opportunities that we'll hopefully both be able to take part in.

Dave

Costumes, Kilts and Beer

Hi all,

We have literally had a ball the other weekend. The extended revelry started Thursday at 3pm with the Speights Brewery Tour with Cadbury Chocolate pairing and naming contest. Generally the Speights brewery tour is a delightful tour in and of itself. But since it was Cadbury week here in Dunedin they decided to do a little combo event. The tour was your basic brewery tour, in essence, an extended sales pitch with the basics of the beer making thrown in. (For those beer purists out there, I'm pretty sure Speights doesn't follow the German purity laws - our first stop was where they add in all the sugar) But at the tasting part of the tour they combined the tasting of their range of 7 beers with about a dozen of Cadbury's finest chocolates. Yum and Double yum!

Here's our tour guide Jane

Did you know that a Hogshead, Half-Hogshead, Barrel, Kilderkin, Butt and Pin are all types of beer kegs

So they made the mistake of allowing us to pour our own beers. Here's Drea's turn behind the tap.

Here's my turn.

Here's the result of too many rounds of pour your own.

As part of the tasting they were having a naming contest for the chocolate beer pairings. They have beers like Old Dark and it was paired with some Cadbury Old Gold and the suggested name was "Old Favorites" (I know, no wonder they were having a naming contest). The prize for best name for each pair got a $50 gift certificate at the gift shop. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Friday night after work was the night of the Ball. After visiting the Larnach Castle on the Peninsula back during my parents visit we found out about the Larnach Castle winter ball. They decorated the ballroom in Victorian splendor and invited about 200 folks to attend in their finest Victorian costumes. The festivities included the dancing to called dances with Scottish Folk band accompaniment, dinner and the traditional Address of the Haggis (tastes like meaty stuffing, and not altogether horrible) where the host recited this poem by Robert Burns (didn't make sense when he recited it aloud either).

The Address of the Haggis

We'd reserved our costumes about 2 months ago and hadn't really given a lot of thought to "Victorian Costume". We were told on the invitation to go to a costume shop in town that would take care of us. Long story short, any one with the slightest bit of fashion history knowledge will see from the pictures that my costume is decidedly not "Victorian". (In fact, when we returned it, we realized the costume was titled "medieval prince" - only about 400 hundred years off. But men's style's are timeless, Right???)

Wrong.

Please note all the appropriately dressed attendees.

We also ran into our tour guide from Thursday's brewery tour! Small town eh?

At least we found someone else that went to the same costume shop.

But poor fashion sense aside we had a great time. The food was excellent, albeit a bit on the late side, and the called dances were great fun. Here's a video I took of one of the dances. I think this one was before the caller had had too many beers and started messing up the calls.

I think it's hard to look good doing this dance regardless how good you are at it.

When we got home we had a bit of fun with our costumes. Here's a couple videos of us being silly...

Drea thought I looked like a russian dancer (and it's true, I'm getting old)

I thought she looked like a vampire (scary!!!)

Then on Saturday night, after all this revelry, Dave's company had their own costumed night out on the town. We had our winter drinks and dinner at the Scottish restaurant next to the train station. The theme of the evening was Braveheart. Drea was a little partied out from the preivous two days (plus they would've charged us $50 for her to attend. I know, booo!) so she stayed home and studied. I borrowed a kilt from a friend of mine but didn't decide to spring for the face paint or the giant sword so my costume was pretty bland compared to the night before. Here are a couple pics from the evening...

The guy to my right came dressed in drag in a costume that made no sense. Only for the truly brave of heart, I guess.

More to come on Dave's weekend away planting trees coming soon.

Love to all,

Dave and Andrea

rugby matches and jaffa races

Hi all,

As always, we hope you are doing well. It's been an exciting week so far in dunedin so we thought we'd share a couple of the highlights. On Saturday, as part of client entertainment junket, my company gave Andrea and I free tickets to go and watch the New Zealand All Blacks (the national rugby team) play against the defending world champions, the South African Springboks. It felt like the entire city came alive for this game and you got a feeling just how important Rugby is in this country. It was just about all anyone could talk about for the week leading up to the game. The game was fast paced and exciting and hopefully Andrea and I didn't alienate any of our company clients with our neverending questions. "Why is a score called a try, shouldn't it be a did?" "why is this match called a test?" "I can't figure how anyone loses possession of the ball, it just seems like one team has it, there's a call or a tackle, then another has it. This just doesn't make any sense?!?" and the more common, "what the heck just happened?". But besides that it was a neat experience.

The questioners

The incongruous pregame crowd entertainment was a showing of the Selwin Ballet. From our perspective it looked like some very husky and not particularly good ballet. Turns out it was a bunch of guys attempting to "take the piss out". In other words, a giant goof. But it looks like it took a great deal of practice and it was entertaining to see the prima ballerina lift and carry the male lead dancer.

The Selwin Ballet

As tradition for all New Zealand Rugby matches the All-Blacks performed a HAKA prior to the game. This is a traditional Maori war dance intended to produce fear in ones opponents. below is the grainy distant video that I took of the Haka but to be honest it's probably not worth the bandwidth to download. But I know some of you will anyway so here it is....

For a better idea check out this link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zvs4T4RU30

It was a close game with several lead changes. With about 5 minutes left the All-Blacks were up by 3 when a streaker tried to take the field but was briskly tackled by one of the field security personnel. What followed was a distracting (and rather disturbing) wrestling match between the security guard and a naked man for several minutes. The poor security guard was getting no help from any of his companions who were watching barely 5 meters away. (To be honest, I wouldn't of jumped in there either). The worst part was during the shenanigans we missed the go ahead try by the Springboks. Boo. All told Springboks 30 - All Blacks 28 - Streakers 0

The other excitement of the week is that Saturday kicked off Cadbury Carnival week. That's right, those delightful people who bring you the cadbury bunny and cadbury easter eggs make lots of chocolate right here in Dunedin and have a weeklong festival to celebrate it. Oh Yeah!!! Monday's event was the Jaffa race. For reference, a jaffa is a small chocolate candy in an orange candy shell. The race takes place down Baldwin Street (the steepest street in the world!!!) just a couple blocks from our house, So we took a long lunch break to get down there and watch the race. The organizers put individual numbers on 30,000 of these little chocolate balls and then dumped them at the top of the hill. People sold raffle tickets for each of these balls and if your ball was one of the first ones down the hill you won a prize. It was a neat little event (that I'm eternally grateful I didn't have to clean up after). The neat and unexpected part was not only the roar of the candies as they raced by but the intense fragrance of orange and chocolate as the wave of candies passed you by. Here's a video from my position up by the steepest part of the street....

Here's looking down the hill at the crowds gathered below.

The rest of the week should be exciting as well. Andrea and I are going to the chocolate and beer tour at Speights Brewery on Thursday, followed by the Larnach Castle winter costume ball on Friday. Then on Saturday Dave's going in a kilt to a company function (with Braveheart theme).

So stay tuned.

Love to all,

Dave and Andrea

ps. post jaffa race update - there have been two car accidents on Baldwin street since the race due to greasy conditions. yuk!