My birthday cakes :)

Passionfruit Cheesecake and Carrot Cake – yummmm…..

Dove-Myer Robinson Park

Last Friday I had to go to Parnell to pick up a book so we took our lunch and spent a very nice couple of hours walking around Dove-Myer Robinson Park, better known as the Parnell Rose Gardens. The park is named after the popular and longest serving mayor who served Auckland for 18 years, there are around 5,000 rose bushes planted there and this is the best time of the year to see them. Wow, what can I say, I leave it up to the photographs to speak for themselves. Roses as far as the eye could see!

 

 

 

See what I mean? Then we walked down through the park to a little beach called Judges Bay that looks like it is cut off from the sea by the main road along the waterfront. However, the tide still comes in and out so I guess the road only goes over the top of it somehow.

Here we see a train going past with the container wharf behind that and then the bay with Devonport & the Naval Base on the north shore in the distance.

All of a sudden this helicopter came in to land on the helipad somewhere in amongst the container wharves.

And then this one took off, what a clatter!

This happened while we were walking up the hill to this beautiful old church that is still used today. St Stephen’s Chapel was one of the first Gothic Revival churches commissioned by Bishop Selwyn. The chapel was built in 1857 and has a Greek Cross plan. It was originally built for the signing of the Constitution of the United Church of England and Ireland in New Zealand. 

I was delighted to see the grave above is the resting place of Vicesimus Lush who I was reading about only recently.

While I was looking on Google I came across another photo of this tree taken during the winter, I wish I’d thought of framing the church with the tree, oh well we can’t all be great photographers!

Looking over towards the park we’d just come from, boy that was a steep hill!

With the Sky Tower in the background, it’s in the city a few kilometres away. The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere.

The end of another lovely day in paradise (when it’s not raining).

More from Whitianga

This the old stamper battery that was used in the Moewai gold mine in 1908.

Then inside the museum we stepped into the 18th century and spent a wonderful hour remembering what we’d learnt in school about Captain Cook. This is his map of the area, didn’t do too bad did he?

View Larger Map

These two paintings depict the wrecking of the H.M.S Buffalo there in 1840 while collecting Kauri trees which were used for the ship’s spars, the beach was named after her.

An old butter churn that could churn out 200 gallons of butter in 1½ hrs.

And so that was our visit to Whitianga. On the way home I spied this beautiful sight and shouted stop! Luckily we were the only ones on the road at the time. Somewhere near Hikuai.

And no this isn’t the road we were on, NZ roads are slightly better, this is the farmer’s driveway.

Next time – the day of the Roses…..