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...
A couple of old cottages on the edge of Basque Park. I like the way they cling to the steep little green strip that breaks up Fleet Street.
Seems they may be the last of the old houses in what used to be Auckland's most densely populated suburb. From what I've learned the park was created by demolishing homes with unpaid rates during to Great Depression. The idea was to give some relief to the most overpopulated area of the city which sounds like it was basically a great slum.
In my memory the area has been a bit of an industrial wasteland but in recent years that has turned around as high rise apartments go up and once again it becomes a populated part of inner city.
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