A Photographic Stroll around the Mount
Tuesday, 3 June 2014 (yep, it was 3 years ago!)
We celebrated a beautiful Winter’s day with a walk around Mount Maunganui. Now there’s double-barrel mimicry in that name. Commonly known as The Mount. Or Mauao. Breaking down the Maori name, Maunganui gives you “Maunga” – mountain; “nui“- big or great. So by saying Mount Maunganui, you’re basically saying Mount Mountain Big. Why don’t we just call it Maunganui? Just so. Kapish?!
I have divided my many photos into 2 categories: water and boats, and then, scenery. It really was a stunning day to walk around a stunning landscape. And a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what a magical part of the world we live in.
Water and Boats
There were heaps of people walking around Maunganui at this time of the day (about 4pm), some loping, jogging, pushing prams, running, or sitting in the sunshine – we even spied one man with a huge leg cast, leaning on a kneeling scooter. He seemed to negotiate the flat terrain just fine. Beats crutches I guess!
My father gave me my first camera as a teenager. It was a Minolta. I remember I spent all my pocket money on rolls of film and processing photos. What a difference it would have made to my life back then, to have had digital opulence. Have digital camera, can take 1000’s of photos and view them instantly on screen, @ no extra cost! One of my favourite hangouts as a student, was to go down to the harbour and take endless shots of the boats in Hout Bay and Kalk Bay, Cape Town, South Africa. So this walk on Saturday took me back, a mini trip down memory lane. Water. Capturing images…..
There is something truly magical about boats. I have always been drawn to them. The irony of it is that I do not own a pair of sea legs at all. In fact, the only time I ever went out on a boat, was when I was 19 years old and my step mother and I went for a 5 day cruise from Cape Town to Durban on a luxury cruise liner. We stepped on board and found most of the passengers were rich elderly folk, while the crew were virile young Italian and Greek men. Within minutes I had several dates or “appointments” set up, from a lowly deck hand right up to the ships purser.
What a great time I had, trying to make each appointment at a designated place, and time. In between severe bouts of sea sickness. My stepmother and I desperately lurched our way to the on-board pharmacy to buy sea-sick tablets, which we’d swallow – only to spew them up within 10 minutes. We were fine if we stuck to the upper decks but you can’t sleep on deck! We had these lavish meals we simply could not eat, as we couldn’t stomach them!!
Our fellow passengers would laugh sympathetically at us as we would eject ourselves at top speed to run kamakaze-recklessly, upstairs, to gulp the fresh air in crazy desperation. They told us that they had come through a severe storm in the Bay of Biscay, and that they had lost much of the deck furniture in the catapulting swells. They had all huddled together in the dining room, sleeping side by side and praying for their lives to be spared. So they were highly amused that we couldn’t handle such calm seas!
I remember also, a seemingly ancient English gentleman who was travelling alone around the world, who put his gnarled hand on mine and said something to the effect: “If you get lonely, remember I’m in room 301. The door is always open. Remember; room 301.” I later learned that he had leaned over to my stepmother and whispered the same endearment into her ear. We had a good giggle over that one! What were we to do with him? Read a bedtime story to him??
Scenery
It’s days like this that makes the cold, dark days of winter bearable. They lift the spirit and inject a lightness of being. I felt drunk on happy rays. The light was amazingly saturated prisms of colour. Like looking at a changing landscape painting.
I ever tire of this beautiful sacred mountain. Time, seasons and changing light creates beautiful images like a living painting. And to be the artist, we simply need to walk, admire and record! 😊
