The local coastal landscape:

Made on a recent poodlewalk with Kayla and Maleko. 

This picture was made whilst flying across the southern alps in the South Island.   I was on an  early morning flight heading  towards the west coast of New Zealand : 

This picture is  a few minutes latter than the ones in this post.  

I was enroute from Christchurch  to Adelaide.  

Thanks to Madeline taking Ari for a walk this afternoon  I was able to walk along the foreshore rocks with Kayla and Maleko this Sunday.

There were  heaps of people  walking along the cliff top path, which is part of the Heysen Trail,  in the afternoon sunshine--with children, in groups, with their dogs.  They were still walking at 5pm. 

I suddenly realised that it was a long weekend--Queens birthday weekend.  People had come down the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast for the weekend.   

Whilst Suzanne is in Cuba and Mexico  for 4 weeks I have been minding the standard  poodles at Encounter Bay and trying to make a few photos whilst I am on the daily poodle walks.

The photos are for the Fleurieuscapes book  that I am slowly working on.  Slowly because I am not  sure where I am going with this body of work about the Fleurieu Peninsula, or what I am trying to do with it. It is about the specifics of the place whilst avoiding the sublime, the picturesque and the beautiful as much as possible. 

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 This picture was made on  an early morning poodle walk with Ari. The autumn mornings have been very still, gentle  and calm.

 I have been spending my days sitting at the computer at Encounter Studio trying to sequence the photos  in The Bowden Archives book.  I take a break by starting to select images  for  the next book--Tasmanian Elegies.  

I'm on the road to Melbourne this week. I  am staying  here for a couple of days  to work on editing the images  of the Bowden Archives book with Stuart Murdoch.  He has kindly volunteered  to help me. I am  just too close to the work.

I was able to do a bit of photography  yesterday around the Southern Cross Station

 I was waiting to meet some friends in Richmond  and I had a hour or so to take some photos around Docklands.

I was on the early am flight when I  flew out of Christchurch to Adelaide via Melbourne.   We left Christchurch as the sun was rising  over the Canterbury Plains. 

The early morning  light flickered across the tops of the high country before as we fly over them before crossing  the Southern Alps on our way to  the West Coast of the South Island. 

I was very fortunate to  see the early morning light over the high country  though which the Waimakarri River flows on its way to Peagasus Bay in the Pacific Ocean.  

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Re-Start is a temporary mall built from 64 shipping containers in Cashel St in the CBD of Christchurch, New Zealand. It was a response to the 2011 earthquake,  and when I was there in  early 2017 Re-Start --basically a pop up mall---was a very  successful, people gathering place.

The containers were bright and colourful and the place had a funky, vibrant  vibe.   It was such a contrast to the rest of the CBD. 

Re-Start's  days are  numbered. The place is due  to be closed down on Sunday, April 30, as  its role as a transitional space is complete  as  the new CBD retail spaces come on stream. I understand that there will be a  permanent Farmers Market. 

The story of Christchurch’s iconic transitional shipping container mall is being farewelled with with a farewell photography exhibition-- 61 Days to Re:START: An Exhibition in Photos. Unfortunately none of the photos in the exhibition are online.  

One of the notable characteristics of the CBD in Christchurch that I realised from my walking around the city was the amount of street art on the walls of the earthquake damaged buildings. I was also  surprised about how  good work the street art  was.  An example:

This eagle mural  (by DALeast?)  is one of the many murals that I saw around the CBD whilst I strolled around.  The quality of the work Christchurch suggested that  international artists as well as  New Zealand’s street artists.  Is that the result of street art festivals since the 2011 earthquake?

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I made a couple of abstracts whilst I was in Christchurch for my mothers's funeral. This one was made when I was wandering around the CBD. It was  near Cathedral Square:

I had spend the morning wandering around the CBD thinking that I should come back and photograph what I was seeing by way of a destroyed  city. 

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