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Published: December 15th 2006
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Sunset over the West coast
The west coast is really stunning - so sorry lots of photos Sunday 20th August 2006 After a shower I stood outside to eat my breakfast, I could hear and see the sea nearby - I like that :-) Barrytown is more of a village, not even that. It is a tiny little place by the sea on the West Coast. But it is has a really nice feel to it and the locals (met all ten or so of them last night in the bar!) are really friendly.
Across the road from the bar/lodgings is a little place with a shack out the back. I wander round and meet a really friendly guy called Jimmy. He offers me a cup of coffee - hot water provide from the stove in the middle of the shack. After coffee he is going to teach me bone carving...
I sipped my coffee drawing out designs, with a specific meaning in mind - eternal friendship. I finally come up with a design I am happy with. "Wow, looks like that'll be a piece of piss" was Jimmy's response. He handed me a piece of bone, slightly curved, cut from a cow shinbone. I drew on the design and started to do a rough cut
out with a band saw. I then ground the sharp edges off and started to get closer to the smooth curves of the design. Then after much sanding and polishing I produced the finished product - five hours for a tiny little necklace! ‘Piece of piss’ my arse!
I then joined the Stray guys to walk round the extraordinary Pancake Rocks - formations of rock that look like huge stacks of pancakes. They are right on the coast and part of the joy for me was watching the powerful waves crash into the rocks. There is a blow hole there too, but it wasn't working for me :-(
A bit further down the road we were shown a cave... well kind of - one person had a torch, but the batteries died...
We then were dropped off further up the road and told it was a 'short walk' back to the Barrytown, along the beach, where green stone is often found. Greenstone or jade is one of the icons of New Zealand. It was very important to Maori as a material for tools, weapons and decoration. There are greenstone necklaces for sale in every tourists/jewellery shop in
New Zealand. You are supposed to receive greenstone as a gift, not buy it for yourself. Another belief is that when looking for 'raw' greenstone on the beach or in riverbeds, that the greenstone isn't found - it finds you... Well it didn't choose to find me that day! And an hour further down the beach (this was an IDEAL kite buggy beach!) I got to the short road back up to the bar/lodging. Of the eight 'prospectors' on the beach only one of us found a piece - sorry I mean were 'found by' a piece of greenstone.
For an evening meal I had delicious roast chicken with all the trimmings, from the bar. After dinner fun consisted of watching Ocean's Eleven in the 'DVD room', followed by drunken table tennis. I found, like many such bar games (pool, darts, ‘pull-a-pig’) my performance was enhanced the more I drank!
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Hollz
non-member comment
pretty little things
Great necklace!!! there is a lot more meaning to something you made as opposed buying it in a store...