January 11 - Waikumete Cemetery, Glen Eden.
This is my grandmother’s brother’s grave, looking a bit worse for wear, he died in 1920. It rained off & on while we were there so we didn’t stay long but it was a pleasant morning walking amongst the wildflowers looking for the grave of a relation of someone in England. Didn’t find it unfortunately.
My downfall & the reason I need to do more walking….
Gorgeous carnation grown by Dennis, smells good too.
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January 12 - Wellpark Reserve, Wellpark Ave, Westmere.
I lived at 42 Wellpark Ave until I was married so we took a little trip down memory lane today. Westmere is an older suburb of Auckland, the house I moved into when I was 9 mths old was already 90 years old in 1941. The above is now a reserve where ‘the gully’, as we called it, was back then. Below is the street from one end to the other, #42 is on the right about half way between the two cars.
Running down behind the houses on our side of the road was a chicken farm when I was young, by the time I left it was unused and quite dilapidated, we used to love climbing over the fence to play in the hen houses, yuk! Now it has been changed into pensioner flats!
We took our lunch and sat in the reserve, the weather was another perfect day.
This is #42 as it is now, it used to be a beautiful old Victorian Bay Villa (built c1850) before Dad rebuilt it in the style of the day in 1951, totally spoilt it! I’m sure I have a photo of the house back then but the only one I can find is this one taken on my wedding day in 1963! It looks like they’ve moved the front right wall back a bit and put in french doors and a verandah. That’s how it used to be before Dad rebuilt it except it was back level with the front door.
The house at #40 hasn’t changed much over the years though, it still has it’s drystone fence:-
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January 13 - No walk today, instead we had lunch with Liam & Flynn before they went back home to Melbourne.
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January 14 - Otuataua Stonefields, Mangere.
First stop - the airport to say goodbye.
It was another perfect day so on the way home we did a bit of a tiki tour of Mangere as it was Dennis’ turn for a bit of nostalgia, he used to own the Airport Dairy. As we drove past Ihumatao Quarry Rd I noticed a sign for the Stonefields so we investigated, neither of us had heard of them before. We spent the next couple of hours rambling around them, in the hot hot sun I might add!
It’s amazing the places you find in the city you’ve lived in all your life that you’ve never heard of.
There they go, they flew right over us!
Click on photo to read the information.
Looking out to Puketutu Island and the SkyCity Tower in the far distance.
One Tree Hill in the distance.
Not sure but this could be the remains of a Maori Pa. (I didn’t notice that splodge on the camera lens until later!)
My favourite photo of the week.
This tree was growing as a long hedge, was probably someone’s front garden once, looks like a native tree but I don’t know it.
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January 15 - a rest day, too tired after yesterday’s effort.
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January 16 - Oratia Farmers’ Market, Parrs Cross Rd, Oratia.
We spent a lovely morning browsing amongst the fresh produce for our weekly fruit & veges, strawberries, snow peas, green beans, mini roma tomatoes and three new herb plants we didn’t already have including a purple sage, plus a few seedlings for our garden.
The two things I especially went for, Maori potatoes and Echo Valley olive oil, weren’t there but we did have our lunch sitting in an old (very small) band rotunda listening to the live music.
Chocolate fish with our coffee!
All set in the midst of a vineyard.
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January 17 - we were just on our way out when visitors arrived so that put paid to today’s walk.
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