Photoprint for Sale: Barrenjoey Head With Yachts, New South Wales, Australia

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

New Zealand Odyssey: The Silversmith's House, Whanganui Inlet

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

Whanganui Inlet, in the top left hand corner of the South Island, is so remote that this house came as quite a surprise high on its hill in thick bush looking towards the west, the Tasman Sea and Tasmania. Although, for some reason, I couldn't get very close to the house its design looked equally astonishing, in 1988 in a country full of mediocre architecture, this was impressive, imaginative and unique.

It was identified as 'The Silversmith's House' and when, recently, I asked around, I was told that it had probably been built by its first owner, a jeweller, Peter Meirs who now lives in Golden Bay.


© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

New Zealand's Westland: Hokitika Beach

Tracking west from Hokitika Beach you'll not see land until you reach South America. The sea rolls in, unimpeded for thousands of kilometres, leaving the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand one of the harshest in the world with few safe harbours most of which have tide-thrown bars at their entrances.

And yet in the mid-nineteenth century when this narrow strip of land between the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea was explored and raped minutely by gold miners from all over the world, its harbours - especially Hokitika's - were crammed with ships, tall ships, sailing ships whose skippers, picking their moments, took on the bars in the hope of coming to safe haven. Many didn't make it, consigning their passengers, crews and cargoes to the sea. 

Nobody really knows how many wrecks lie off these shores although timbers still wash ashore to join the litter of tree branches and stumps that are shot out to sea from Westland's rivers only to be cast up again by the westerly tides.

This is Hokitika Beach on a fine evening...


© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz 

Open 7 Days 23. Granity Store

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

GRANITY GENERAL STORE
102 Torea Street, Granity, West Coast.
Proprietor: Daryll Watson with Roz McNeilly

It’s a tough coast hereabouts, a narrow strip of sand and shingle, the restless Tasman Sea on one side and the steep, largely trackless bush behind.

In the hills that block the rising sun from the store there’s a treasure of coal. While it maintains Granity’s economy now, it could, in Daryll’s opinion (and no doubt many of his neighbours) lead to real prosperity if, ‘some large conglomerate could get stuck in and mine the coal on a serious basis’.
The majority of the people of working age who live in Granity are employed in the few privately owned mines or the vast open-cast state mine at Stockton. The Granity Store supplies them with milk, bread, postal services and all general household needs including the weekly Four Square specials.

There are also tearooms, which Daryll, a carpenter by trade, built himself and he and Roz are currently establishing a fish-and-chips takeaway.

Roz says the visitors’ talk in the tearooms is usually about the beautiful scenery of the Heaphy Track or nearby Charming Creek, with its spectacular waterfall, bridge and tunnels. The locals, on the other hand, deplore the ‘pounds’ of whitebait that leave the coast! Well, they can’t eat them all, can they?
Granity was named by gold miners from the large granite rocks in the area. A short distance north of the town is the mouth of the Mokihinui River, where once stood Kynnersley, site of the last of the big West Coast gold rushes of the 1860s. The town was washed away in 1867 and nothing is left except ghosts.

If you can stand the sandflies and the weather, you can still do a bit of gold prospecting around Granity. Daryll or Roz will sell you sandfly repellent before you go and fish and chips and a cup of tea afterwards if you feel you’ve had enough!

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.