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...
Rotorua, Rotovegas or just plain old Vegas, you know you've arrived when that delightfully sulphuric rotten egg aroma has a firm hold on your olfactory senses.
We visited to ride some of the fast flowing mountain bike trails behind the town with the kids. Once we'd worn ourselves out on the trials and washed off in the pools it was time for a bit of culture at the old Bath House, now the Rotorua Museum. Set in a sort of steaming Victorian time warp, the old tudor style building is surrounded by formal gardens, thermal vents, various monuments and croquet and bowling greens.
The sketch possibilities here are endless, I sketched some of the taonga inside the museum, the ancestral carvings that stand guard at the gates and a crack at the whole building, though I quickly regretted it when I realised the how much detail there is!
Comments