Elise Petit

Returning from New Zealand on the evening of Thursday 28 Feb, I barely had time to open and deal with the build up of mail both hard copy and electronic an catch up to speed with various areas of work before the NHPEM function on 3 Mar to celebrate 20 years of the museum in the current building which was opened in 1993. As current president it was required of me to make a speech, not my strong suit by any means and something that is forefront in your mind as it approaches. It was a relief that the day was a great success due to the work of my museum colleagues who had been tireless in their preparations during my holiday absence.

On Monday 4 Mar, I took my morning walk with my two dog pals whom I had missed so much while I was away. On the way back down the hill 'Pip' was determined to sniff in a hedge of lonicera in front of Orford Cottage, and relaxed as I was with the relief of the previous day's function now behind me I indulged her and 'Snow' even more than normal. I noticed a tatty looking object under the hedge and picked it up. It was a small purse made of soft material which seemed damp making me think it had been there some days as it had rained before we returned from NZ but not since.

There was identification in the form of credit and debit cards and a French railway pass in the name of Elise Petit, along with various other paperwork suggesting the owner of the purse had recently been in West Australia, and an amount of cash stuffed in with the paperwork, disorganized and dishevelled.

I knocked on the door of Orford Cottage and asked the lady whom I know quite well if she knew of an Elise Petit. Where I found the purse in the hedge was adjacent to where visitors to their house park their cars and I thought it may have fallen out of a car and somehow been kicked or knocked into the hedge. It was a good way off the road, unlikely to have got there by falling from a car passing along Launching Place Rd. Elise Peteit was not known by the the lady of the house so I took the purse with me and rang the police at Emerald when I got home, thinking the purse may have been reported lost.

The constable suggested I look for a mobile phone number in the purse so he could contact the owner straight away. There was none, but I gave him he name of the owner of the purse so he could check to see if there had been a report of its loss. I told him I'd drop the purse into the police station that afternoon. After I finished talking to him I counted the money in notes and coins and made the contents more tidy after a thorough search for contact details. There were all of odds and sods including cotton buds loose along with other paraphenalia.

I went to the police station that afternoon and handed the purse in. The police woman examined the contents of the purse and quickly went to get rubber gloves after seeing the cotton buds. I think this was some sort of protocol to prevent her getting Aids or some other infection, not that such had entered my mind as I had examined the contents earlier. She counted the money, notes and coins $171.70, and filled out a lost property form asking me questions about where I found it and my personal contact details. There were new forms she said which were unfamiliar to her. It took a long time it seemed to me who wanted to get about my business as quickly as possible. I couldn't just hand it in and leave, I had to wait while she went through the form as I had to sign it when she was finished. I could not help but be alarmed at her slowness and lack of urgency making me acutely aware that she was being paid for every minute while I was not. Eventually I was given a copy of the PALM Property form 1346860 and left. I told her I'd like to hear if the purse was returned to its owner as I could imagine the stress a tourist would feel at the loss of bank cards and cash, and it would be nice to know if there was a happy ending.

That night I recounted this to Lib. A few days later Lib asked me did I hear if the purse was returned to its owner. "No, I've heard nothing." A few days later she asked me again. The reply was the same. I found my copy of the PALM Property report and had a close look at it. There's a yes/ no tick box mid way on the form which has the words (without question mark) 'Wish to Claim'.  The No box was crossed. There was another yes/no tick box along side it with the words ' Forward details to finder' It was also crossed in the No box.

I was not asked these questions. The police lady had marked them of her own volition, and I had not examined the copy of the form when it was given me, I had quickly left. I told Lib that I will never hear if the purse was returned to its owner as the form had been filled out to that effect, without my sanction. What happens to the cash if Elise Petit did not contact the police I know not. Perhaps eventually it goes to the police Christmas fund or government revenue.

Life is a learning experience. Should I hand in found lost property again I'll pay particular attention to the paperwork as it is being done. If by some miracle of the internet Elise Petit gets to read this post I hope she gets her purse back with the cash. I've tried to find her by my own means unsuccessfully.

Just how her purse got into that unlikely place remains a mystery.

* This had a good ending. I contacted Elise through FB and she thanked me for the return of purse. See post April Elise Petit (2)

AUCKLAND and HOME

We left Whitianga on the Wednesday for drive back to Auckland, stopping for lunch at a delightful town the name of which escapes me just now. Dinner that night was excellent in a Japanese restaurant across the road from our hotel. Afterwards we went to a live comedy show two doors up from the restaurant where 10 comedians performed one after the other. It was terrible with foul language and crude jokes about the worst things you could imagine.

Next morning before driving out to the airport we went up the sky tower, supposedly the tallest free standing structure in the southern hemisphere. We watched a few brave souls do a sky dive down on a controlled speed descent on a couple wires. Not for me.

View from top. That wire in the middle is one of those the sky jumpers use.

Rob and Gord picked us up at Tullamarine about 6.30pm. Almost on cue there had been 60ml of rain in the previous couple of days, the first for many weeks and the hot weather had abated for a while.

WHITIANGA

We left Piahia on Sunday 24 Feb. I looked at the map saw what I thought was our destination at Whangarei only a couple of hours away so we took a back road through some fairly remote bush and picked up a coastal tourist road where we got back onto bitumen. The scenery was superb. After a while we were back on a major highway. Some Kiwis on our yacht trip in the Bay of Islands were from Whangarei and when they asked me where we were going next and I told them they said, "Why are you staying there, it's not on the coast and isn't really a tourist town, it's NZ's northernmost city." I said the agent worked out our itinerary.

We arrived at Whangarei about lunch time and pulled up to find the name and address of our motel in the bag in the boot. 'Beach Resort Motel' Whitianga it said. "Where the hell's Whitianga," I said to Lib, fumbling for the map, to find Whitianga was 4 or 5 hours drive away on the Coromandel Peninsula well and truly the the other side of Auckland. So we steered our Nissan Tida along the highway and arrived at the town of Whitianga about 5.30pm.

It was obviously a big tourist town with many new buildings in wide streets, an air of prosperity was immediately felt but with relatively few people about, not like Piahia which was busy with tourists from all over the world. The population multiplies in peak season which we had fortunately missed. This time our accommodation was spacious, had excellent cooking facilities and was upstairs with a great view of the bay.

Five minutes by car from Whitianga, a nice spot for lunch

A little further on the road to the next bay

We were here for three nights and two full days exploring the coast and finding so many quiet little bays and white sand beaches. This place is a little piece of paradise. Like the other places we stayed, there were no fly screens on the windows and no aircon. Neither is needed in the north on the coast; it doesn't get too hot and there are few flies if any and mozzies either, and no moths came in at night. You just opened the windows and let the breeze in.

Next bay

There were hot springs on this beach

Irony 2

I looked up the dictionary to refresh on the word Irony. It's a tough one to grasp and I don't really get it.

Try this - Conveyance of meaning (generally satirical) by words whose literal meaning is the opposite.

Or - A situation or utterance (as in a tragedy) that has a significance unperceived at the time, or by the person involved.

Or - A condition in which one seems to be mocked by fate or the facts.

Perhaps I shouldn't use the word at all. In the previous post I don't think the fact I sailed on a yacht built by/for Sir Peter Blake and then a few days later was reading an account of a bloke who interviewed  the man was ironic at all. Simply a coincidence. Certainly it does not fit the above dictionary explanations of irony. I must ask Maria at writing class to explain to me (again).

Irony

Nor would this go where I wanted. A view from 'Lion'

For some reason I can't get this further down where I wanted it

We have looked at the word irony in my writing class more than once over the years. It's a word my son Gordon uses regularly, I think mostly in the wrong meaning, but what the heck. For some reason I just can't retain the meaning of irony and I'm too lazy to go looking up the dictionary just now. I will tomorrow and maybe due to this post it will finally sink in to my poor ageing brain which has had its share of binge drinking and concussion (football) over time.

However it is ironic that I should meet a man in Beaconsfield some days before our NZ trip who gave me a book he wrote ten years ago when he was aged 50. Peter Sweeney is his name, a journalist working out of Perth for most of his working life but Berwick born and now residing thereabouts. It was a chance meeting, his book titled 'Half Time' (He intends to live to 100) is one of three he has written.

On our day sailing trip we walked down to the wharf half an hour before the ferry left for Russell about 20 minutes away (big ferry fast speed) as instructed to do so. The Maxi yacht Lion left from Russell as its port had more water depth than Piahia which is why it was a base for whalers and sealers and therefore vice and whoring and drunkenness one hundred or so years ago, reportedly the wildest location in the South Seas.

The crew of Lion were three, a skipper with the gift of the gab,competent, as were the other two, an attractive and strong lady and a man about my own stature who had incredibly powerful forearms from years of 'grinding' on the winches that enable swift changes to the sails on these racing yachts. The skipper told the history of the yacht with almost reverential tone to it's original owner who had it built, Sir Peter Blake.

It was a nice day as we headed out. Dolphins rose and played, dozens of them all about. The crew told us not to look at the dolphins as we hadn't paid for a dolphin tour. It was magic to see these beautiful creatures in such numbers and so close you could almost touch.

The skipper explained that the conditions were not ideal for sailing and the motor would need to be used quite a bit if yesterday was repeated. We didn't mind, it was just nice floating over the blue water. After a couple of hours under sail at reasonable clip with lessons given to the tourists in the work of grinding to change sails we pulled up at the 'Isle of the Princess' for a one hour break. A few swam ashore, Lib and I took the inflatable dinghy which did three trips to get everyone off.

A highlight was a pair of little birds Lib and I saw on our way up to the lookout. Black with a bit of white, I said to Lib they had the beak of a robin, but were not like anything I'd seen before. I asked a couple of Kiwi people if they knew what it was, both replied negative, and I asked the crew member with the huge forearms who also didn't know, but said he did believe a type of  rare bird had been released on the island because of the lack of predators there and a program to save this endangered bird. Later in our motel we were watching the tourist TV channel and a segment came on about the Stewart Island Robin which had been bred and released here and there, and was the little bird we had seen.

After a great lunch we sailed off again. The wind picked up and the resultant sailing was magnificent with the maxi  leaning so far over you'd swear it would capsize as it sped across the water at great speed. The crew and us tourists alike whooped it up in the excitement in what was a fantastic experience.

The irony? After we left Piahia I read Peter Sweeney's book. In one chapter he talked of interviewing Sir Peter Blake the renowned sailor. An amazing man, he won the around the world race at his third try, he won the America Cup. He was killed shot dead by pirates sailing up the Amazon river at age 53, so Peter Sweeney informed me.

I enjoyed Peter Sweeney's book and related to his thoughts and feelings on many scores, in fact most.

It was not possible to photograph when she really got going as it was hang on or go overboard

PIAHIA

From Opinono to Piahia was a short hop of a couple of hours from the West Coast to the East through farmland that seemed to increase in productivity, population and traffic. Piahia surprised us, it's a tourist town highly commercial in the Bay of Islands area, busy and crowded with people spilling from all manner of campers and vans and rent cars like ours on the foreshore onto the beach and into restaurants and ice cream shops.

Our hotel was a little of the main st and regrettably again had no cooking facilities in its excellent motel unit that was ours for 3 nights. Making up for this was the biggest and best bed I have ever slept in, a king size you seemed to be lost in. We did a load of washing in the hotel laundrette and emailed Gord who was looking after the watering at home and the chooks. We'd put the dogs in a kennel, not wanting to overload Gord, especially with all the thunderstorms activity and the shot gun blasts in the distance that occur regularly and sends dogs into panic, particularly if we aren't there.

Friday our first of two full days we took the coastal tourist drive to the north east calling in at numerous picturesque bays small and not so small, at one of which we had our picnic lunch which is a favourite activity of Lib and I these day followed by the read of a book, in my case in the nearest shade available, and in Lib's in full sun lathered in sunscreen.

We'd seen an advertising hoarding of  a day sailing trip on a sixteen berth yacht with gourmet lunch so on returning to Piahia that afternoon we decided to book for the next day only to find it was booked out. Plan B was the big tourist booking office near the wharf which also had a day sailing sign and book we did, $110 a head including lunch. I think it was the best $110 I have ever spent. We were on the Maxi yacht 'Lion' which was built by Sir Peter Blake I think in the 1980's and came second in an around the world event that Blake was determined to win and which he did at his next try in a slightly lighter and faster boat he had purpose built. This is the bloke also that won the Americas Cup for New Zealand after Australia's win at Fremantle in 1983. A serious and famous sailor.

I'll write more about this memorable day sailing in the Bay of Islands next time, but I just want to get a few photos up now and hit the sack.

This sort of scenery is everywhere

The yacht stopped at this 'Isle ot the Princess' for an hour

 

The view from the lookout, The big yacht central is 'Lion'

OPINONI

Lib and I left Opinoni two weeks ago on Thursday 21 Feb. On that morning we walked the shore of the river looking for a lucky stone for our friend Raelene. Years ago at lakes Entrance we found a stone on the beach at Lakes Entrance while walking with Raelene and her husband John. Raelene carried her stone as acharm all over the world till she lost her handbag one day I think in Morocco. So we have another for Raelene and we hope she likes it.

We stayed in the 'studio' apartment behind me, two nights

Looking towards the Ocean from the jetty

Opinono is on the west coast. Highlights were the Tane Matua Kaurri tree, 2000 years old it is estimated, and the Koutu boulders (good feed of oysters off the rocks), picnic lunch one day at a remote beach. We loved the area. 

'God of the Forest', Tane Matua

Hippy Geologist - we bought a painting at his gallery

Geologist said these boulders, there were several quite round were 6 million years old

Looking across the tidal river

Home And Tired As

Lib and I returned from our NZ holiday last night. It was highly successful and without mishap. We loved the scenery and the mild temperatures and the general laid back pace. We restricted our travel to the north of the north island after arriving in Auckland on 18 Feb. We had a hire car and spent 2 days in Opinono, 3 in Piahia, and 3 at Whitianga and an overnight stay in Auckland at beginning and end. I'm too tired now but over the next week I'll put up some photos and talk about some highlights, which were numerous.

For now let me just say it was a total pleasure to drive about 1500km over 11 days and not see one speed camera. Average Jo doesn't have to have a fishing licence and nobody on the boats wore life jackets as far as we could tell. There was a feeling of freedom, probably accentuated by our holiday mood. The economy is strongly tourist orientated and they certainly make you feel welcome, right down the pecking order to the cleaners and maids and burly bartenders.