whakairi(a)

whakairi(a): to hang, as in e whakairia ana ngā kākahu horoi e taku wahine.
The washing is being hung by my wife.

We took a drive out to Taieroa head this week. There was an official welcome for Ellen and so her managers from Wellington were in Dunedin, it was the perfect opportunity to do some sight-seeing!

There is a stone embankment all the way around the peninsula which was originally built by convicts from the Parihaka settlement of Maori in the North Island. These Maori used passive resistance against the encroachment of Europeans, and were essentially enslaved after a bloody attack by men on horseback and were then transported around New Zealand. Many ended up down here breaking rocks and building the roadway.

At the end of the peninsula there are the remains of a pa, which were Maori hill forts, which was built to defend the area when successive waves of Maori were moving South from the North Island. There is also a British-built cannon underneath the hill which was installed to protect Dunedin from invasion by the Russians (?!) Repeated clearing of the native bush on Taieroa head has produced a habitat suitable for nesting of the Royal Albatross and there is now protection of the site for these magnificent birds. On the rocks below the head we saw sea lions and a yellow-eyed penguin, one of the world's rarest. Awesome!



At the bottom of our street is St Joseph's Cathedral (above) which is one of Dunedin's most magnificent buildings. The original plans inicluded a 60 metre spire but repeated attempts to complete that section have met problems, with insufficient foundation work being the current bug-bear.

Ellen and I often joke that we wish we lived further down the hill so that we could look out on St Joseph's, rather than the local high-school gymnasium, a monolith of concrete, which is our main vista from the living room.

Our front balcony does get a nice view of the harbour if you crane your neck. It is now home to my first worm farm which is a good alaternative to composting that I am trying out.