Friday, December 19, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Desert Defenders Winter Woolies - video 3
Here is the final installment our trip to Waiouru and playing on the NZDF land courtesy of Desert Defenders Off Road Club and their Winter Woolies Variety Club fund raiser.
Desert Defenders 3 - Land Rover edition from David Kinane on Vimeo.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Two great products
I use LightRoom to edit my images and so am intrigued by the iOS app that is now available. Adobe have put together this marketing video on Vimeo. The choice of transport...?
Monday, September 15, 2014
Maungatautari Ecological Island
Having got back to Taupo in the dark on Saturday night, we quickly ate and crashed early. It had been a long and exciting day. On the Sunday we decided to detour our way back to Auckland by re-visiting Maungatautari Ecological Island, just outside Cambridge, if you have not been there I highly recommend it.
We spent three hours in there and managed to take the following images:
Kaka
North Island Tomtit
Fantail - piwakawaka
One of the primary reasons for purchasing the Defender was to enable us to get to places where we can observe and photograph New Zealand native birds. You can see more of my bird images on my Flickr page.
We spent three hours in there and managed to take the following images:
Kaka
North Island Tomtit
Fantail - piwakawaka
Desert Defenders - "Winter Woolies" Tour - videos
I strapped on the GoPros to the car for the day and took over a hundred short clips that I have now edited into three movie clips. Two of the clips are below, the third will arrive next week. On my Vimeo account I am only allowed 500mb upload per week and only one HD movie per week. The first two movies now exceed my weekly allowance and the second one is not in HD! So this will take two more weeks to upload the three videos as HD, be sure to return regularly!
Desert Defenders - Winter Woolies trip
The DDORC held their annual "Winter Woolies" tour this weekend. The NZDF land at Waiouru is opened up and we were allowed to play. We drove down to Taupo on Friday afternoon, and had a great evening. The trip down was quite wet and so we were not really sure what the day would bring. It was an early start, we had to be at the domain for 7:30 and so we had to leave Taupo before 6:00. Breakfast was an on the road affair and we arrived for check in and scrutineering at 7:50 so we made good time.
We pulled up behind a nice red 110 Defender and a new 90 pulled up behind us. The paddock was full of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, some of them were really tough trucks. We soon learned that we were in the tough truck group and had to move over into the shiny column.
The NZDF gave us a briefing on spent ordinance and what to look out for. It was a sobering moment, we were playing on a military firing range after all. The day was basically a tag along tour. With lots of fun along the way. The mounain's brooding presence was implied and felt, but seldom seen, the day was marked by low clouds and drizzle, a complete contrast to my last visit earlier in the year.
Despite the rain and perhaps because of it we had a lot of fun. I decided to defend the Defender's honour by trying to negotiate the bog and inevitably got stuck! Obviously I have no images of that! However, "Big Red" did the hill climb challenge and we opted out of that. I really must get a compressor so that I too can lower my tyre pressure when off road.
Below is a selection of images from the day. Will we be back? Most definitely. We started the weekend a shiny and returned a grimy! You can follow me on Instagram and see all the images of Land Rovers that I take as I see them around and about.
We pulled up behind a nice red 110 Defender and a new 90 pulled up behind us. The paddock was full of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, some of them were really tough trucks. We soon learned that we were in the tough truck group and had to move over into the shiny column.
The NZDF gave us a briefing on spent ordinance and what to look out for. It was a sobering moment, we were playing on a military firing range after all. The day was basically a tag along tour. With lots of fun along the way. The mounain's brooding presence was implied and felt, but seldom seen, the day was marked by low clouds and drizzle, a complete contrast to my last visit earlier in the year.
Despite the rain and perhaps because of it we had a lot of fun. I decided to defend the Defender's honour by trying to negotiate the bog and inevitably got stuck! Obviously I have no images of that! However, "Big Red" did the hill climb challenge and we opted out of that. I really must get a compressor so that I too can lower my tyre pressure when off road.
Below is a selection of images from the day. Will we be back? Most definitely. We started the weekend a shiny and returned a grimy! You can follow me on Instagram and see all the images of Land Rovers that I take as I see them around and about.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Latte Run to Riverhead
Summer is really on its way back. We have had a fantastic couple of days of weather. Blue, cloudless skies with the barometer rising. The days are really getting longer, spring starts next week. What could be better than a run out to the Riverhead Tavern for a cup of tea? Well driving out to Riverhead in a convoy of Landrovers! It was a great run, nice and relaxing. Stan even managed to get himself into a couple of images...
Next planned trip is the Winter Woolies trip to Waiouru in mid September, a very different outing. I took some video of the day and is at the bottom of these images, enjoy. I think I have got all of the trucks that attended today.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Best of British
The Land Rover Club was approached by the organisers of the "Best of British" celebration at the Cloud, if they could supply some Land Rovers for the Monday of Queen's Birthday weekend. Having had two wonderful cold but clear and sunny days, we arrived at Queens Wharf today in the rain! But there was a great spread of Land Rovers represented from the club. Not exactly off-roading, but a good showcase for the club and for the marque.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Volcanic Plateau - Day 1
I had pitched to Gary, Darrel (who took the majority of the images below) and Steve the idea of doing the 42 Traverse before the road closes to 4X4 vehicles for the season. However on closer inspection it was made clear to me that if I valued my paint, which at this point I do, then I should not do the traverse. So having already booked the hotel rooms we ended up being a weekend in search of some tracks! I hit the books, hit the maps and started asking around. What I quickly learned was that there are a treasure trove of tracks for off roading, but you need to know who to ask!
Short of time we put together a list of 5 tracks that we thought would be worth exploring and headed off to Rotorua. We had breakfast the following day in Taupo at the pub. Food was great!
and set off for our first track, well road really as it turned out, maps are misleading things.
The first track was Mangatepopo Road on the western flanks of Tongariro, one of three active volcanoes on the central plateau. Conclusion, dusty, easy, dull. It is simply a jumping off point for the Tongariro Crossing track and was full of cars parked up. But we had fun anyway.
After this we set off for Raetihi and a road that led to upper Ruatiti. We had spotted a vehicle track that implied there was a link back to another road. So we barreled on up this windy gravel road, through some epic bush and river scenery to the end of the road. In fact we got to the homestead of the station. So we enquired at the homestead if we could go on the track through to Erua Road? We were told that it was a cart track back in the day, but they consider it to be a "paper track." We would be lucky to get a horse or a quad through there now. I was left with the distinct impression that if we were more local, the track would have been a go. So we turned around and re-traced our steps.
You can see more of my bird images on my flickr photostream.
By this time it was already well past mid-day and we had more to do. So we set off for the Tukino Ski field on the Eastern flank of Ruapehu another of the active volcanoes in the region. We opted not to mess about in the river beds at Tangiwai, not really wanting to tempt fate!
The Tukino Ski Field Access Road shows up on the Topo50 maps as another vehicle track similar to the one we wanted to explore linking to Erua Road. This track was really an off road track and promised to be great fun. Again really it was a rough road and not an offroad track. We went as far as we could but came up against a locked gate, with a phone number on it. We called the number and were told that if we had called earlier in the week we would have been given the key and could have progressed to the Tukino village. Again, this is an example of local knowledge. There was nothing on the Tukino Ski Field site to indicate that there is a gate, why would there be? In the winter the gate is open! We had a little excitement up there though as Gary got stuck in the scoria as he executed a three point turn, so I had to tow him out.
RuapehuWeekend from David Kinane on Vimeo.
Short of time we put together a list of 5 tracks that we thought would be worth exploring and headed off to Rotorua. We had breakfast the following day in Taupo at the pub. Food was great!
Who's Logo Lies Beneath?
and set off for our first track, well road really as it turned out, maps are misleading things.
The first track was Mangatepopo Road on the western flanks of Tongariro, one of three active volcanoes on the central plateau. Conclusion, dusty, easy, dull. It is simply a jumping off point for the Tongariro Crossing track and was full of cars parked up. But we had fun anyway.
After this we set off for Raetihi and a road that led to upper Ruatiti. We had spotted a vehicle track that implied there was a link back to another road. So we barreled on up this windy gravel road, through some epic bush and river scenery to the end of the road. In fact we got to the homestead of the station. So we enquired at the homestead if we could go on the track through to Erua Road? We were told that it was a cart track back in the day, but they consider it to be a "paper track." We would be lucky to get a horse or a quad through there now. I was left with the distinct impression that if we were more local, the track would have been a go. So we turned around and re-traced our steps.
However, our trip was not in vain. At the bridge at Ruatiti, Darrel spotted some birds in the river I had a feeling that they may be Whio (Blue Duck) a very rare duck indeed, there are only 2500 left in the world. They have very specific requirements for their habitat. They need to live in fast flowing, rocky rivers that are clean and have steep sided banks or canyons around them. Add to this that they live in small family groups and are territorial and you start to understand their plight. At this location we saw 4 Whio so I got out my big lens and went in search of these birds and spent a happy 20 minutes or so capturing the following images:
By this time it was already well past mid-day and we had more to do. So we set off for the Tukino Ski field on the Eastern flank of Ruapehu another of the active volcanoes in the region. We opted not to mess about in the river beds at Tangiwai, not really wanting to tempt fate!
The Tukino Ski Field Access Road shows up on the Topo50 maps as another vehicle track similar to the one we wanted to explore linking to Erua Road. This track was really an off road track and promised to be great fun. Again really it was a rough road and not an offroad track. We went as far as we could but came up against a locked gate, with a phone number on it. We called the number and were told that if we had called earlier in the week we would have been given the key and could have progressed to the Tukino village. Again, this is an example of local knowledge. There was nothing on the Tukino Ski Field site to indicate that there is a gate, why would there be? In the winter the gate is open! We had a little excitement up there though as Gary got stuck in the scoria as he executed a three point turn, so I had to tow him out.
Next on our list was Clements Mill Road, this road is listed on the second edition of the North Island 4WD tracks book that we had. So we had to explore it. It took us through some fantastic native bush that Steve was pretty sure is pre-colonial, in other words it has not suffered from any logging. But with a name like Clements Mill, I suspect that we were looking at second growth timber. Whatever the past has wrought on this forest, what we saw was epic. However the road was far from epic. We pushed into some promising side tracks only to discover that we stumbled upon locations where people were living off grid. Not quite time to get out the Banjos, that joy would have to wait until the next day.
We stopped to talk to some local hunters who suddenly appeared out of the bush, this became a bit of a regular thing too, more of which later. They suggested that we try the quarry track, which we did and it was entertaining, but again not challenging. As we set off back to Rotorua and a well earned feed and rest we were entertained by a spectacular sunset which I stopped off to photograph before pressing on. We finally got back to Rotorua at 8:30 having spent thirteen and half hours on the road!
I took my Go Pro cameras with me for the trip, but the batteries have been playing up, I think I either need the extended life battery kit or some new batteries as they did not last long in the car and took ages to charge up. Never the less I did manage to get some footage of the day. So enjoy!
RuapehuWeekend from David Kinane on Vimeo.
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