Christchurch Earthquake 22 Febuary 2011

We were hoping like hell that we were on the road to recovery after the September 4th, 7.1 Earthquake.
Unfortunatly at 12:51pm on the 22 Febuary while I was home at Oxford having lunch, I was in my office as the house started to do another of those big wobbles that we had been having less of latley. I wasn't too bad here, a sort of slow rolling shake that sort of dragged on a bit. When it had finished I thought "I hope like hell that wasn't the outer limits of another big shake in the city". We turned on the TV and sure enough breaking new texts were travelling across the screen with coverage to follow soon. What followed was scenes of the devestation left by a 5KM deep 6.3 earthquake centered 5Km from the city. Many, many buildings have been extensively damaged and so far 38 fatalities and possibly a couple of hundred still trapped in buildings. We are ok out here 60Km from the city and all friends and family have come through unharmed. Below are a bunch of pictures i have found on the net of the mess my home town is in.

I understand 3 people may have lost thier lives in this bus.

it appears on part of the CBD was spared

Manchester Street. Jess works just around the corner. She was at the university at the time where no one was injured.

The old churches really got hit hard.

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This one is most destressing and was a CHCH land mark. our most famous building. They think someone may have been in the spire at the time

And this one was also if major historic importance. The first buildings of governence build in CHCH in the 19th centuary.

One of the worst affected buildings before and after. my uncle use to work in this building when i was young and i knew it well as the Christchurch Drainage board.

Buckland Peak 19-20th Febuary 2011

Uncle Roddus Tramping Diary:Tramp No 100

Buckland Peak 19-20th February 2011

Buckland peak is a 1300M hill overlooking Westport and sitting beside the Buller River on the West Coast.

This was my second visit after an impromptu trip there three years ago after another club trip was canned due to weather. The main reason for a revisit was to get up onto the tops this time as on the last trip we didn't bother as the tops were covered in cloud. Brendon and myself left the car at 11:40am on an overcast but very warm and muggy day. I had noticed a slight tickle developing in the back of my throat on the trip over and wasn't feeling 100% by the time we started of on the first leg of the trip, which is a 5.5Km slog along a very uninteresting 4 wheel drive track. After an hour or so we got to the start of the climb and the lower reaches of the forest, this first section being skinny Manuka trees. With the high humidity and heat as well as me feeling a bit drained, we sweated our way up through ever changing bush, being followed by fantails, and enjoying the beautiful diversity of flora around us. This piece of forest is stunning. We had noticed that the tops were shrouded in cloud as we were approaching the mountain along the access road and this was still the case as we dropped down into the top of a gully where the hut was. We didn't see the hut at all until we were almost right on top of it. Almost resigned to the fact that I might not get onto the tops again, with the forecast for the morrow not to inspiring, we settled into the hut with a cuppa and waited to see what might happen later in the day, we did have good daylight till about 9pm. Looking through the hut book I first noticed that it was almost exactly 3 years since my last visit, being 3 days difference to put it on the equivalent weekend. There were plenty of names of people I knew who had been up there and almost all of them reported the same thing, tops all covered with cloud, and so they didn't bother heading up.

 Later on the clag around the hut cleared and just before 6pm I ventured out for a look and found that the cloud had also cleared off the tops above us, but as i couldn't actually see Buckland peak from here, wasn't sure what was the conditions up there. I was feeling a little better after our rest and drinks and we decided to head up to the ridge and have a look at the tops. With ultra light packs now, we made quick time to the ridge and got out first clear view of the peaks. The mist was hanging around lower down the valleys but a light breeze had pushed them off the tops and after some observation and deliberation it was decided to have a go for the tops and if the mist rolled back up the hill we would make a hasty retreat. Our luck held and we managed to do a quick reconnaissance of the tops and got to enjoy the fantastic views of the Paparoas and other surrounding mountains as well as enjoying the cool rock formations of the peaks. The views and the tops themselves well surpassed my expectations. With daylight fading we enacted a hasty retreat back to the hut, arriving just as it was getting dark. After a late tea I had a restless night with what ever illness was infecting me.
The morning dawned with us again shrouded in mist and we set off about 8:30am for the trip back out the way we came. Again I felt the effects of this bug and although we still made good time out I was really feeling it. The last 5.5 km along the access road were the longest  and hardest of my tramping career.

A view of the hill from the access road with wisps of cloud sitting on the tops, bugger!

The Early part of the climb

And there were a few trees.

An a few more trees

This fella as just sitting there in the middle of the track, lucky we didn't stand on him.

I just love these twisted specimens.

The very tidy 6 bunk Buckland Hut

Looking over to the Buckland Peaks from the ridge above the hut.

The mist in the valley below, will it come back up before we get to the tops.

Another shot looking along the Paparoas.

These shots(as good as they are) really don't do justice to the magnificence of the views we got to enjoy.

I wasn't expecting the tops to be like this, it was a pleasant surprise

Just breathtaking.

One of the rocky outcrops on the Buckland tops.

Beautiful vistas

Made it.

Uncle Roddus Music Site Recommendation

Hi Music Lovers.

So far this month I haven't been listening to very many albums as such but have been exploring plenty of music from some very cool Blogs and web sites and so I though I would just give a quick nod to these sources of excellent music.
The first one I have been  playing the most music from so far this month is the enormous ALL ABOUT JAZZ.
This massive site is a sort of Magazine type site which highlights contemporary Jazz from all over the world, with articles, interviews and reviews of  all sorts of jazz bands and musicians. Also Musicians can upload MP3 tracks as samples of their work for us to download and check out. The site posts one track per day on their daily MP3 page and at present have over 2000 free and Legal songs for your listening pleasure. I have downloaded the last 12 months of free tracks and have been giving them plenty of airtime on the stereo. Most of the songs come from the artists CD releases and overall the quality of the recording and quality of the music is excellent. Most areas of Jazz seem to be covered from jazz ballads to BeBop to fusion to avant-garde and free jazz to swing and even some electronica. As I said most of this music is of very recent vintage and I am unfamiliar with most of the names of the musicians but they mostly appear to be professional and some quite successful in the current jazz scene. I have explored other sites in the past that have free legal songs from unknown and unsigned artists trying to get a little attention and mostly the music quality isn't that great, with the occasional exception. All About Jazz free downloads are far far superior in quality to any other similar site I have explored. Highly Recommended.

The next site I want to rave about is the Massive Mutant Sounds music Blog. I discovered this wonderful Blog whilst searching out various albums and they came up several times over many searches. I decided to look a little deeper at their site and discovered a huge collection of very rare and obscure weird music, most of which I had never heard of at all. With almost 3000 posts, dating back to 2007, musical styles ranging from post punk indie to krautrock to euro prog to avant-garde electronica to jazz to sound collarges and other strange and unclassifiable sounds, there is a lifetimes worth of  wonderfully obscure discoveries waiting exploration. The site appears to have been originally started by a fellow called Jim but most of the music posted now is by Eric Lumblea From the excellent Vas Deferens Organization. So if you like your music well outside the box do check out this blog and you will be well rewarded.

I think I have mentioned the one and only Voodoo Funk Blog before. Frank has just recently got back from another digging trip from Africa and found another great brace of rare Afro-funk and Afro-beat records and has posted another MP3 Mix of his discoveries. It is an awesome mix  and one of his beat so far. This great blog is a great source for an intro to this wonderful African music from the late 60s to the late 70s and Frank has about 30 mixes for your listening pleasure on his blog, as well as some very interesting stories about his digging trips.

Last but not least, those who actually read anything I write here will already know about Rare MP3 Music blog. Run by the hard working Chuntao, Rare MP3 specialises in mostly posting  rare and out of print LPs  of 60/70s rock and psychedelic music as well as forays into prog. country, bluegrass and other genres. Chuntao puts in a lot of effort tracking down these rarities that are not available elsewhere on the net at the time of posting and mostly not commercially available to purchase easily. She also post many obscurities from the blogs loyal followers, many of the records coming from Canada. I have assembled a vast archive of wonderful rare rock music from this blog over the last 18 months and have found many many obscure treasures I would not have found otherwise.

Ryde Falls - 5th Febuary 2011

Uncle Roddus Tramping diary:Tramp No.99

Ryde Falls - 5th Febuary 2011

The Ryde Falls track starts only 5 minutes drive from home at Coopers Creek. A nice amble of about 2 hours one way through the black beech of Oxford forest. The day was warm but low clouds shrouded most of Mt Oxford as Aunty Roddus and I left the car and headed off along the well formed track to this lovely waterfall which I have visited several times, but this was Aunty's first. We made good time to the falls, in just under two hours where we had a snack by the campsite at the junction of the two west branches of Coopers Creek. We then headed up to view the waterfall, just 2 minutes walk from the campsite. After the photo shoot, Aunty was eager to head back, but I wanted to get some more shots of the falls. She headed off and i climbed up the steep track beside the falls onto the area above the falls. It is difficult to get any good shots of the top part of the falls, as they are almost inaccessible but the area above the falls is beautiful. I didn't stick around too ling as Aunty was getting too far ahead of me, so I scrambled back down and set off at a brisk pace to try and catch her. It took me 45 minutes to catch up and my time getting out was just over 1 1/2 hours. Went home and rested for the afternoon watching the Wellington Rugby Sevens. 

Coopers Creek near the campsite

Ryde falls Campsite

Track to the Falls from camp

The lower tier of the falls

The best shot I could get of the whole falls.

The area above the Falls

The track in from the carpark.