Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
Shrouded with Cabbage Trees (Ti Kouka in Maori) give it a real country look despite being in the middle of the city. Incidentally, cabbage trees are gaining popularity elsewhere - in UK landscaping as a hardy cold weather palm where they are known as the Torquey Palm, but the most impressive examples I've ever seen were in the lake district of southern Chile.
**Since initially posting this, the owner has been in touch with some interesting facts about the house and John Street;
"During the renovations we found pages of the AUCKLAND STAR newspaper used as wallpaper pasted to two of the internal walls dated April 7 1886, in remarkable condition. This was quite common on early NZ dwellings where building materials were hard to get.
When the section was first sold and the house was built, John Street did not run all the way between Richmond Rd and Jervois Rd. The top half between Richmond Rd and Summer St was called Oliphant Street, which is the address detail on the last paper title. By 1895, from the maps I have found - the rest of the sections were formed and the road joined up with John Street. It was renamed all John Street in the late 1930s."
Thanks, Richard very interesting stuff!
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| Auckland Star newspaper pages found in internal walls, April 7, 1886 |
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| Auckland Star newspaper pages found in internal walls, April 7, 1886 |
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