A few more from Saturday

:: VID :: 350 Dunedin

24th October 2009 World climate change awareness day. 64 surfers paddle out at St Clair Dunedin, New Zealand to raise awareness for 350.org. Music 'Wave Decay' by Dunedin Musicians- Junk Shop Star

Music by Dunedin Musicians - Junk Shop Star

Local Ted Whitaker wins NZ Surf Film Fest

Ted Whitaker from Dunedin
1st Place National Winner in the Amateur Surf Film Festival
Open Category & South Island Regional Winner

350 Paddle Out

Purfect conditions at St Clair, an eventual crew of 64 joined hands for 350 today.
Thanks leroy for organising a fun event to raise awareness of humanities byproducts.

ended up a bit cramped on the inside for a while, boards flying everywhere

8 artworks in Meridian Exhibition

I rejoined the Green Island Art group about 6 months ago, I used to be a member in the mid 1990's for a few years. The Group has an annual exhibition in the meridian mall over labour weekend where I have 8 artworks on display for sale. If you are in Dunedin city over the weekend till Sunday afternoon and want to see my work up close and off the net, please drop by.

Beachlands

Beachlands Speedway is just over the sand dunes from our house, the neighbourhood gets a bit noisy some weekends if the wind blows onshore. Sunday it was pretty still though, so me and jay took a trip to our true local.

Brighton Beach Boardwalk Plans

'Huge merit' seen in design for beach article @ the ODT

Left: A response to the proposal a week later on the ODT opinion page by a local resident.

My opinion, leave it alone!! its only just established with Pikau, the dune system is pretty much flat anyway, and can be seen easily from the current access way points.
A fixed structure over the dunes would interfere with the natural functioning of the dunes by altering and obstructing wind flow. This creates an unstable system, and defeats the purpose of the new restored plantings.
Why can't the DCC just leave something alone. I love Brighton for its natural undeveloped charm. This Huge Merit is seen by a city councillor who obviously hasn't thought things through.

First Snow - SOLD to a good cause

First Snow
Sold for $300 at the Amazing Grace Charity Art Auction

15th October 2009

50% of the sale price was donated to raise money to get Grace and her family to Austria for treatment in the University Hospital in Graz. Grace Hughes is a five-year old living in Dunedin. Grace, for no apparent physical reason has never eaten – and has been nil by mouth since she was born.

Family Post - Caitlins new car

For friends and family overseas.

Caitlin is so stoked to have purchased her first car today!
a 1993 Suzuki Escudo
Just needs some roof racks for the longboards..

Some Phoam Published Images

A heads up for Harumi Shirakawa a Dunedin body boarder and physiotherapist.
I hear she has been working on quite a few injured surfers and is developing a really good reputation with her understanding of the surfing environment and the sort of punishment characteristic to surfers and body boarders. So next time you munt yourself, look her up.
Above: Recent Advert that ran in the Star Newspaper with a photo I took of her.
Got some shots in CPL's latest book Beached As, which hits the bookstores today, the 15th of October. RRP of $49.99 . Looks like a great Kiwi Beach Lovers' Christmas Gift for the stocking.
Above: One of my shots from the Cold Water Classic this year ran in a half page ad in KIWISURF for seventhwave wetsuits of LT

BEACH EDUCATION INSTRUCTORS REQUIRED 2009-2010

SURF LIFE SAVING Otago
Applicants must be qualified Surf Lifeguards, have excellent communication skills, must have a passion to share their surf safety knowledge and be professional.
Applications are available by contacting:
Surf Life Saving Otago, phone 03-474-6361 or otagosurf@sportotago.co.nz
Applications close: October 20, 2009.

The end of September

A few shots from my wee trip a few weeks back.

DAM YOU NOT - Christchurch - show your strength

How this affects surfing: River sediment from the mouth of the Hurunui feeds the beach at Gore Bay.
Please join us in a public demonstration of our concern at the Bridge of Remembrance on Cashel St, Christchurch at 12.15pm 16th October.

We will walk alongside the Avon to Victoria Square. Your support will help us convey to the authorities, here and in Wellington, the importance of this issue to the people of Canterbury.

Russel Norman from Greens and Nukuroa Tirikatene-Nash are going to speak at the destination of Victoria Square.

JOIN THE MARCH. YES WE NEED YOU!

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW The Hurunui Water Project (HWP) plans to build a 75-metre high dam in the south branch of the Hurunui River, creating a 7km-long lake, with about 525ha of the Hurunui's pristine south branch being inundated, papers filed with Environment Canterbury show.

Environmentalists are outraged, especially because of a proposed water-conservation order for the Hurunui River. Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the project "will effectively privatise what is a public resource, which is a wild river, and using the water to carry out a huge dairy conversion in Canterbury".

More reading on the battle of the Hurunui River

More from www.dambusters.co.nz website

Application for water conservation order on Hurunui

Green party call for submissions

City beaches still polluted

Dunedin City Council have been aware for a long time the inefficiency of the old sewerage pipes to cope with days of increased volume run-off from the stormwater pipes. Some downfalls cause flooding in areas of south Dunedin, and around Queens high school, where raw sewage is lying in the streetsw mixed with the overflowed stormwater from drains.
So I am not suprised at all to see this report in the ODT today.
Councils top priorities of city maintenance are roads, sewage, stormwater, and rubbish. Of late there have been many other empire building activities gaining the ratepayers dollars, sucking the cash away from the much needed upgrading of these core services.
DCC Storm and wastewater info

UPDATE 15th october 2009
from the ODT

Dairy farms first, DCC next read more here

"An admission they are polluting is a major first step."
"The city has extremely old stormwater drains."
"day is coming where rainwater has to stop mixing with poos".

The city council had a five-year short-term consent for discharges to enable it to come up with a new strategy, but it did not yet have consents for stormwater discharges. Cr Gretchen Robertson said the city council had three years left to come up with a "grand scheme" on how to improve the situation.

Finches in the house

Was working in my studio this afternoon, when I spotted a pair of House Finches playing on my driveway. By the time I whipped out my camera and opened the window, they suspected they were up for a photo session, and had positioned themselves perfectly on some trees even closer.

2010 SISA Calandar Released

From South Island Surfing Associations website www.sisa.co.nz

Please Click Here to download the 2009 / 2010 SISA Contest Calandar.
Wekastitch Cape Classic entry forms out now too. Entry Forms Here

The first event of the 2009/ 2010 South Island Circuit is set to kick off at Labour Weekend in Westport
The Weka Stitch Cape Classic is always a challenging and exciting event.
Hema and the boys at Buller Boardriders have been working hard to host another great Cape Classic.

$2000 prize for the Open. Weka Stitch are the main sponsor again so there'll be those great tents on the beach again to provide plenty of shelter for spectators. Bring the family !

~ from SISA website

St Kilda Dunes Fixed

Work on the Tahuna Outfall extension Pipe involved the destruction of a section of the sand dunes along St Kilda at John Wilson Drive. (below) a road was built across the face of the dunes to allow easy transport of machinery and pipe laden trucks.

Now that the Outfall Pipe Operation has finished, the Affected Sand dune area has been restored. (pic above)

Council closes scenic Ocean Drive again

Otago Daily Times By David Loughrey on Wed, 7 Oct 2009

John Wilson Ocean Dr was closed by the Dunedin City Council again last night, and will not reopen until a final decision is made on how to make the area safer. Dunedin Mayor Peter Chin said yesterday the closure was in the interests of public safety, and at the request of Dunedin-Clutha police area commander Inspector Dave Campbell, and "other experts who have advised council as to the risks in leaving Lawyers Head unprotected". The road was closed in 2006 for the construction of the Tahuna outfall, and deaths in the area ceased. Last month, the council decided to open the road on weekdays, during daylight hours, but leave it closed at weekends.

Resource consent for a security fence at Lawyers Head was to be sought, while use of the area was monitored for three months.

On September 24, police recovered a body from the area, a death that was referred to the coroner. Insp Campbell said at the time police would speak to the council about any issues arising from their investigation.

Mr Chin said: "The Dunedin City Council is currently exploring ways in which to secure the headland, and the gates will remain closed to all vehicle access until a suitable, acceptable solution is arrived at."

Yesterday I drove up John Wilson Drive for the first time in over three years.

Photo above: from the top of the cliff. Photo Below, the last shot I took of the same view three years ago before the drive was closed. ( note the erosion in the dunes.)

I was driving up there last week when I had to pull over before I got to the gates to let an ambulance fly past, then another, and 6 police cars, a firetruck.. then the search and rescue truck. Unfortunately a 46 year old man decided to end his life by jumping off Lawyers Head.

Suicide rates from jumping off Lawyers head had ceased completely since the drive was closed three years ago. This new suicide/death put the council back into reconsider mode about opening the drive to cars. My opinions below with no offence intended to the recently deceased man or previous deaths off the head in the last decades.

Whats the correlation between car access and deaths? can a jumper not just walk around the fences? too much effort to walk? or do they think the stigma of jumping off lawyers is more of legacy for their last act?

Obviously those Dunedinites whom have committed suicide in the last three years have found alternative ways of finishing their lives, than jumping off Lawyers head.

Surely the overall suicide rate has not lowered in Dunedin due to Lawyers head being inaccesable to cars? I'd be interested to know the statistics.

How can making the area 'safer' stop future deaths?

What are your thoughts?

Update 9th October 2009

Balancing wants article ODT Thu, 16 Apr 2009

6 October 2009 Statement from Mayor of Dunedin Peter Chin.

I have today instructed the Chief Executive of the Dunedin City Council, Jim Harland, to close the gates on John Wilson Ocean Drive until further notice.

I am doing this in the interests of public safety and at the request of the District Police Commander, Inspector Dave Campbell, and other experts who have advised Council as to the risks involved in leaving Lawyers Head unprotected.

The Dunedin City Council is currently exploring ways in which to secure the headland and the gates will remain closed to all vehicle access until a suitable, acceptable solution is arrived at.

NZ Surf breaks feature on Save the Waves list

Save the Waves have listed many New Zealand surfbreaks with the intention of helping to create World Surfing Reserves (WSR) across the globe.
This includes the New Zealand waves that were listed in Surfbreak Protection Society's and SEA's (Surfers Environmental Advocates) submissions to the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement review in 2008.
I submitted a select handful of Dunedin Surf Breaks for inclusion with the NZ Coastal Policy Statement see this post, although they were labeled as Dunedin.

Using Google Earth®, Save the Waves has constructed a map of all the nominated WSR waves worldwide. Attached is the plugin for Google Earth and below the instructions for how to use it. If you don't have Google Earth yet, you can download it from http://earth.google.com/intl/en/download-earth.html Download

To view the list and take a birds eye view of these surfbreaks you first need to download Google Earth®. Click here

Then download the Save the Waves WSR plug in file. Click here

When you have downloaded the WSR file follow the instruction below.

-Open Google Earth

-Load the "Nominated_World_Surfing_Reserves.kmz" file and double-click it to open up the "WSR Nominees Folder"

-You should see the Surfing Nations folders labeled alphabetically

-Find the New Zealand Folder and double-click it to zoom in on your country

Additionally if you have previous GE WSR files loaded uncheck them/delete them to make sure "Nominated_World_Surfing_Reserves.kmz" is the only file on your GE map.

Whale of a Day

Today I was all set to get stuck into the mountain of phoamwork that had been piling up over the last few weeks. But a text from Jay at 10am 'two whales off the domain', me and Caity jumped in the car (she now has her restricted!) and we set off. We didn't get back home till 3pm.
Top pic: supa clean lines rolled through while in the distance (the white dot below the actual closeup)a whale breaches. Below, sequence from the same spot and distance. can't believe how good my trusty old 100-400 performs sometimes even though the inner lenses are full of dust.


Above: A local family watch out at the whales as the back reef fires away.
Below left: local kids take the grandstand view off Barneys Island watching the whales, and the surfers at Below right and Below.


Yesterday, blog reader Finny sent me the images below he took of whales off the coast at Tomahawk. Not sure if it was the same pair.