Grandad's photos

When you are 1, you need to be able to get around. Caleb scoots around very successfully by bum-shuffling.



Presents are great, he was catching on to the idea and liked the touch & feel book with the tractor tyre tread.



A fine cake was made by Melanie from next door.



Some felt they were out of the limelight a bit.



But Caleb thought it was a pretty good day!

We have always enjoyed watching the greenfinches eat up the sunflower heads, but this year there only seems to be one bird.



But this one is eating a prodigious amount of seed. Even a sparrow came along to observe and was told to shove off.

It's no fun on a merry-go-round without a kid, so Stacey came with us to the Glenbrook Steam Trains, where they had a big collection of old motors (running), steam engines, vintage cars and this very fine merry-go-round, powered by a steam traction engine running a generator.



There was a Type 54 Bugatti - very rare.



This is the traction engine running the merry-go-round.

Here's some of the things from my photo albums. When I was about this big, holidays at Raglan were the usual summer event, swimming and catching sprats. That's Robertson's Ford Consul, the 4 cylinder low powered version of the Mark I Zephyr.



And I went to the 1963 Grand Prix at Pukekohe - look, no Armco, rollcages or seat belts! I wonder if the Orchid Special ran in the sports cars? Hard to take race car pictures with an Agfa Clack.



The Auckland Harbour Bridge was a major project, here is a picture in 1958 from Ponsonby and another in 1959, taken from the Northcote end. Workers used to work under sea level pouring concrete in the foundations, living in a compressed air environment.



Aeroplanes were always an interest, here are some pictures from an airshow at Rukuhia in March 1962. These DC3's were converted to have extra large windows and called ViewMasters, operated by SPANZ (South Pacific Airlines of NZ). Not for long, as happens to small airlines competing with Government monopolies. Bristol Freighters flew the freight and carried cars across Cook Strait.



A Vickers Viscount in NAC colours, arriving in the rain at Whenuapai 1960. That was the Auckland International Airport then, and turboprops were 'the new sound in the sky'.

Very hot today, 30 degrees C on our thermometer. Cats don't seem to mind too much, even with a fur coat. Look at that smile!



My parsnips have not germinated after nearly 6 weeks. I will have to put in another packet of seeds. They're a worry. Those strings are to stop cats digging.



Here's something I bet you didn't know. Monarch Butterflys have 6 legs, but you only really see 4 if you look at them. The front two are rudimentary and have special spikes and sensors so they can tell (a) this is a swan plant and (b) no-one else has laid an egg on this particular leaf. So there you go, one egg per leaf!

Finally, clear skies. The comet has faded to magnitude 4 and is only just a naked eye object in Auckland skies. It is between the Southern Cross and Venus and about 1/3 up in the sky, best viewed after 10pm. It is now circumpolar, visible all night, rotating around the South Celestial Pole. These pictures are taken with f5.6, 20 seconds 200 ASA, 300 mm Nikon at about 10pm 31 January.




Unfortunately this full moon is spoiling the dark skies.