Living in New Zealand: Building a Brick-Lined Gabion Retaining Wall is Another New Skill to Learn

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Having a large garden presents opportunities and associated challenges. I've never putting a retaining wall before: so I hope this works!

I have no idea whether this terracotta pipe is still being used by one of our neighbours!

The made-to-measure gabions from http://gabionworks.co.nz

My hand-dug, hand-levelled trench

I was very relieved when the two wired together boxes fitted!

Though we have over a thousand bricks around the property, it’s not enough to fill the boxes, but it is a chance to get rid of all the old bits of pipe and rubble we have.

Lots of this dirt (mainly loess and some clay) will be bagged to be put inside the gabions, like sandbags, with bricks on the exterior surfaces.

Filling the gabions is challenging (not just the shifting of bricks etc. uphill!). There are very few rocks on the property, apart from the massive volcanic ones that sit below the loess and clay.

I hope I don’t find one of those where I plan to put the shed…

Living in New Zealand: Lyttelton Legend Bill Hammond

There's an exhibition on at the Christchurch Art Gallery of Bill Hammond’s work. Bill Hammond is a Lyttelton legend and one of New Zealand's most well-known painters. We went to a talk by his friend, Laurence Aberhart, who told lots of stories about Bill. Bill had a dry wit and was enormously good fun to hang out with.

Before the talk, we looked around the exhibition and it was fantastic to see this work again:

Volcano Flag by Bill Hammond at the Christchurch Art Gallery

I miss the Lava Bar. It was somewhere I often went to on my own when the boyf was working hard in his London Street wine bar. I would walk up the street from my flat at number 6, sit at the bar and have a plate of their nachos and a beer, or maybe a glass of red wine, filled to the top of their little glasses. Often Bill Hammond would be sitting at the bar as well. I bet he misses the Lava Bar too. 

We are lucky that there are still lots of great places to eat and drink in Lyttelton. But there was something about the Lava Bar that can't be replaced. It was quirky and busy and cosy all at the same time. It felt like home but you could always get into a good conversation with a stranger.

The Lava Bar may be gone, but Bill Hammond goes on. His work will outlast us all.

Giant Eagle and self portrait…

Living in New Zealand: Old Christchurch City Still Exists in Places

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I don't leave port very often, but this week I had an appointment in the city. It seems that every time I go in there is something new to see as the rebuild continues eight years after the last big earthquake struck. But there are also a few old things hanging around, like the tram, derelict buildings (including Christchurch Cathedral. I have no idea how they are going to fix that but they plan to) and these steps. There must be a story behind these steps.

Living in New Zealand: Motueka

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Spending two weeks in the Motueka area, I was struck by how much the landscape is dominated by agriculture. Many of the hills are covered in pine forest and the flat lowlands are devoted to orchards of apples and kiwifruit and strings of hops.

Kiwifruit vines

Strings for hops

The commercial orchards require a lot of chemical input. There used to be a factory at Mapua that made agricultural chemicals, many of which have been banned.  

As reported by New Zealand Geographic:

…this sad and barren land is a highly toxic waste area laced with agricultural poisons strong enough to kill the hardiest plague of insects. Lying empty and abandoned since 1988 when the Fruitgrowers Chemical Company (FCC) finally closed after 56 years of manufacturing a cocktail of toxic agricultural chemicals and pesticides, the site has sat unused and unusable.

The legacy of the factory is still being felt with contaminated land that cannot be used for home-grown vegetables (as instructed by a recent letter from the council to residents). And it can’t be a coincidence that there are very few mosquitoes or sandflies around Mapua…one of the nicer side effects of being near a toxic chemical plant that has contaminated land and water far beyond the confines of the area that has been remediated .

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The best parts of Motueka are down by the estuary, the grandly named Port Motueka. If you look past the Talley's seafood processing plant and head office, you can see the beauty of this tidal landscape. 

Motueka estuary and the Janie Seddon

And the river is beautiful.

Though the narrow bridge is pretty hairy to cross, especially with so many big trucks around.

The Coastal Cafe is a good place to be on a dry day. It makes excellent coffee and  you can watch the birdlife amongst the boats.

And you can wander up the coast to see the wreck of the Janie Seddon, which was scuppered in the 1950s and is gradually being reclaimed by the estuary.

For more on the history of the Janie Seddon, head here.