ANZAC Day and Cape Kidnappers

Hi, it's Evelyn -- finishing a very old post -- ANZAC Day is April 25th, which is over a month ago!  We may have mentioned that Tom plays in several bands in the area. One of them performs at the ANZAC Day services in town. ANZAC stands for Australian and NZ Army Corps and was first used  to refer to the soldiers sent from these nations to battle in Gallipoli induring WWI. Today, the day is a day of remembrance for all veterans of all wars. Here are some photos from that event. I found the whole thing pretty moving and meaningful. I guess I'd like to have a day or two each year where we all as a community agree to remember that war is so awful and creates so many casualties of so many different types that we should always be striving to prevent it. We do have Veteran's Day in the US, but everyone goes to work on that day. Here in NZ on ANZAC Day, most stores did shut down. Most people don't work. Maybe it was just that the friend I happened to speak to about it had a father and grandfather who were in the army and all of Tom's friends are in the bands, but I felt that so many Kiwis were invested in the day's activities and services. Also, the man standing next to me during the service broke down when he spoke to me about his father, who had served in WWII. There are two ceremonies - one at daybreak and one a bit later. Tom is playing the later ceremony.

Tom's band leader was actually in the service as well. Tom is playing the drums, not the coffee cup.

Various student and civic organizations place wreaths at the base of the memorial. We stopped to look at them after the service.

Quick shifting of gears: Not too long afterwards, we took a trip to North Havelock to visit Te Mata and Cape Kidnappers. The scenery is pretty amazing. Aidan particularly loved wandering among all the hills and rock formations.

We got to watch a hang glider take off -- really cool!

...and away he goes!

Yes Aidan, pretty awesome. No Aidan, you cannot hang glide, too.

So many fun hills...

..and this is what we were looking down on.

My photogenic boys

Really rolling hills!

The boys and Tom spent some time looking for shells in the limestone - here I think you can see some seashells.

Te Mata is a pretty dramatic peak

--which, naturally, Kiwis use for extreme sport

The following day we took a walk out to Cape Kidnappers to see the gannet colony. We were not going during peak tourist season, which was great for us as it wasn't so crowded. It also was at the end of the breeding season, so there were fewer gannets around than there were even a few weeks prior. The walk was really beautiful -- but had to be completed before the tide came in, so we couldn't dawdle and take as many photos as we would have liked.

See? Amazing!

--with all these nooks and crannies you can imagine how we would have liked to dawdle.

Yes, really, look at that sky -- and yet I didn't feel the camera did it justice...

The rocks were so varied in color and texture - it was so amazing.

This photo is from A&J's next album cover

A view out towards the ocean

It was cool to look back and see the cliffs we had just walked along.

OK, ok, we *did* take a lot of photos - but we couldn't help ourselves!!

All this --- and we hadn't even seen the birds yet. And then we did. And we heard them - a skipping, keening call. These were beautiful, huge birds.

The colony sits on a series of little rocky islands just off the coast

lunch with the gannets!

None of our photos really captured the pretty orange color of their heads very well, but here's another shot.

We snapped a couple more on our way back -- we barely made it before the tide came in -- we were walking through water by the end, but it was awesome!!