Spring

I know spring has arrived when the kowhai tree two doors down flowers. It is offset by a mauve flowering shrub underneath. On Saturday I saw a bird in the tree and thought it must be a tui. There is a New Zealand folk song celebrating a tui in a kowhai tree and it is one of the quintessential spring images.
When I looked closely at the photo I realised it wasn’t a tui, it was a kaka.

Here is a tui, in the flowering plum tree on the bank above us.

This garden gnome is looking a bit weather beaten but he is enjoying the bright flowers.

It is Spring Festival time in the gardens.
People are encouraged to have their photos taken in the tulips

so we obliged.

There was a good show of different colours

and other flowering plants.

Update on the Christchurch Earthquake

The earthquake in Christchurch has not affected us but we have friends down there who have been severely shaken up and experienced minor damage. The worst thing currently for them is the continuing aftershocks – they have been getting up to fifty a day, some are quite sharp and have done further damage to already weakened structures. Lack of sleep and frayed nerves are making it a very unpleasant experience even if their material losses are small. So our thoughts are with Denise, Janie and Dave and all our other acquaintances down there. Kia kaha.

From this distance it appears that the immediate consequences of the quake were dealt with professionally and speedily by the civil defence and government authorities. There has been a vast community effort to help people – on Friday it was reported that there are more volunteers than jobs to direct them to. There will undoubtedly be lessons that can be learnt but New Zealand’s experience with planning for earthquakes and enforcing rigid building codes seems to have paid off this time.

This large billboard caught my eye last Sunday – the day after the quake. I thought someone might have decided it was a bit in bad taste and removed it. However it was still there this morning so I decided it was suitable for a wider audience.
Not sure they envisaged anything quite as eventful as a 7.1 earthquake though. For once the real experience would have exceeded the marketing message.

And the word that Denise was using sounded a lot like “frock”. Must be a Canterbury idiom.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Victorian writer of such classics of the time as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He moved to Samoa in the 1880s in an attempt to cure his health problems. He took the Samoan side in the colonial struggle between America, Britain and Germany for control of the islands and is generally held in high regard by current Samoans (although there have been some post-modern reassessment of him as another resource hungry European).

He was given the Samoan name Tusitala, the teller of tales. Vailima is his estate and residence he built on the hill above Apia.
The house is now a museum and contains many artefacts from the period he lived there.

After he died in 1894 he was buried on Mount Vaea above the estate. There is a track up that we managed to ascend just before it got dark on our last night in Samoa.

The tomb is much visited

and is inscribed with words from his poem Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

The ashes of his American wife Fanny (called Aolele, Flying Cloud, by the Samoans) were buried here after she died in 1914.
Finally from Samoa, here are the four hot, tired but happy climbers resting on the grave. (Sam’s singlet is for Vailima the beer).

Samoan Flora & Fauna

Here are a few photos of the variety of wildlife we saw in Samoa.
There are flowers everywhere. Everybody has neatly cultivated gardens and there is a perfusion of wild ones as well.

Floribundus Noreen being photographed by her daughter in front of more flowers!

There were a few cows. I don’t think they use them or milk as it would go off too quickly in the heat. They are reserved for feasts.

We saw many of these little birds scurrying across the road. They are very reluctant flyers and reminded us of New Zealand weka to which they are related. (I’m quessing they are buff banded rail.)

No blog is complete without cute kittens. These were in the village we visited and are useful in keeping the rats under control.

The village was in the process of being relocated away from the coast post-tsunami. This is the newly completed dwelling of the family who showed us round. It will be furnished with mats and their sparse belongings. They have few mod cons apart from television, stereo and mobile phone!

These flowers were up on Mount Matavanu

together with these baby pineapples

being photographed by my baby boy.

Pigs have the run of the place and are a hazard on the road. We nearly ran over piglets a number of times. This one seems to know her road code.

Chickens are commonplace. Like in Rarotonga they are found all over the islands including far up in the hills. This picture is for Denise.

We saw a number of darting geckos and skinks. This was about the biggest and had proportionally the largest tail I have ever seen on a lizard.

No photos I’m afraid but we did see a mother and calf humpback whale on the ferry journey back from Savai’i and Sam saw a number of turtles whilst surfing.

Apia

Apia is the capital of Samoa.
It is a small town of less than 40,000 inhabitants but a megapolis in Samoan terms. I quite liked it. There are some quite grand buildings and the place seems well organised and peaceful.
This clock tower is the centre of the town.
Nearby are commercial buildings,

department stores,

a cinema,

and of course many churches.

This is a typical street scene

and the buses are colourful, cheap and, often, crowded.

You can even get a haircut.

This is Noreen in her best clothes (note the local bag and fan) off for an important meeting with the Ministry of Health. (They were interested in her views on the midwifery services and her thoughts on training midwives. There is the possibility of some sort of consultancy role developing in the next few years.)

Afterwards we went to Aggie Grey’s for afternoon tea to celebrate.

This is a Samoan institution made famous by American servicemen in the second world war and Aggie Grey was supposedly part of the inspiration for Bloody Mary in James Mitchener’s Tales of the South Pacific which was adapted into the musical and film South Pacific.