Close up of Tui Mine

View from the Tui Mine site, looking out over the town of Te Aroha and the Hauraki Plains

 As part of the research I'm doing for my next mining project I visited the site of the Tui Mine with some friends this week.  As it is the most toxic site in New Zealand and currently being remediated, there is no vehicle access, and many dire warnings about accessing it on foot.  So we didn't know how close we could get until we got there.  The walk up Te Aroha mountain was very steep, through some very beautiful native bush. There were a few birds about, but not many- which is not unusual for the middle of the day.  

Tunakohia  Stream, fed with water from inside the mines

We crossed several sparkling clear streams and rills, but despite the temptations of the beautiful water we tried to avoid contact with it, sharing our water bottles with Tara the dog so she wouldn't drink from the streams.  After heavy rains, or when the mine site is disturbed (as it must be during the remediation work), these streams can be full of toxic heavy metals (lead, cadium, mercury).   

Some rusty old mining rubbish lying around in the bush

 As we got higher up the mountainside and closer to the mine site, we started to hear the roar of heavy machinery and even a muffled explosion. The lower level of the large area of the mine is the tailings dam which is the current focus of remediation work.   I managed to get a peep at it through the trees, but could only see a small section of new tailings dam under construction. It will replace the crumbling old concrete dam left by the mining company when they flitted off leaving 90,000 tonnes of toxic tailings perched precariously on the steep mountainside above the little town of Te Aroha.

Constructing the new tailings dam

Higher and higher we climbed, and eventually came to one of the entrances to the underground mines of Tui. I thought recognised it from an old home video I watched at Te Aroha museum last months where a group of ex-miners revisit their old work place. This meant I could visualise the inside of the mine (dark, wet, dangerous, deep), even though the entrance is decisively blocked (not that I would venture inside a Tui Mine casually anyway).

Entrance to underground mine (top right).  Tunakohoia stream flows right past (see it coming out of the bush just above the dog?)

The mine was abandoned 30 years ago and although the lush bush crowds up the edges of the site, nothing can grow on the cleared ground, so toxic is the earth.  Looking at it, it feels very raw and new, but after thirty years, anywhere else would have overgrown the stream with vegetation.

Mine entrance, with water flowing out with bright orange sediment 

The mine's water runs straight down the blasted cliff face to join the Tunakohoia Stream

Looking down from the mine entrance

I was very excited to be able to be right there, on the mine site, seeing with my own eyes the details and the context.  I was particularly looking at the colours, because that is the decision making I'm immersed in at the moment with my mining project.   I didn't see anything that looked like cinnabar, though the dark red lichen growing on many rocks is a similar colour. 

The only life in the mine clearing are a few kinds of unfamiliiar lichens, presumably the kind that flourish on a diet of heavy metals.

We did find this piece of quartz stained with the same bright orange that flows out of the mine. I don't know exactly what the orange stuff is, but everything I've read about Tui suggests its a highly toxic mineral. 

Tui Quartz

When NORPAC abandoned Tui so abruptly after the market for their dangerous product disappeared, they left a lot behind.  A hundred tonnes or so of ore apparently, and the tailings of course.  But the most visible/accessible stuff these days are all the bits of rusting kit and a few concrete foundations. 

After we walked back down the steep mountainside, we drove to the otherside of Te Aroha town, to the charming historic Domain with its multitude of mineral spas. A luxurious soak in a warm outdoor pool was just what our sore feet and tired legs needed.  When my fingers and toes were pale and wrinkled I finally felt cleansed of any contact with Tui's toxic legacy.

Oil on Rock

I visited the Tauranga oil spill today. Mount Maunganui beach was reopened this weekend and declared safe for swimming (with the caveat that you should get out of the water if you suspected oil contamination). So I wasn't sure if I'd actually get to see any oil, since all the other beaches in the Bay of Plenty are closed to the public.


There seemed to be lots of people on the beach: a salsa dancing demonstration was drawing a crowd, paragliders drifted down from the top of the mountain and plenty of folk were noodling around on the sand. I didn't see anyone in the water, but that may have been as much to do with the cool drizzly weather as fear of oil.


The woman at the information centre told me that I might be able to glimpse the stranded container ship, Rena, if I walked around the headland track and the sky were clear. There was too much haze to see anything but one of the naval vessels patrolling the exclusion zone, and the helicopters taking salvage crews to and from the Rena. But there were dozens of people walking along the track.


For the first section of my walk, I was going against a tide of local volunteers returning from their clean up clutching haz-bagged gumboots and talking animatedly as strangers do when a disaster unites them as neighbours. Tractors towed trailers loaded with sacks of oil, oily sand, oily shells and oily protective clothing.


I found just one little track that was not blocked with emergency tape. Taking advantage of a rare break in the crowd, I sneaked down to the water's edge to try and find some oil I could inspect up close. I've been thinking so much about how I want to represent this oil spill in stitching. My oil spill images last year were mostly inspired by photos from the Gulf of Mexico, but the oil in Tauranga is of such a different quality, I can't use that oil spill to represent this one. I didn't touch any of the oil I found, and I was careful not to get it on my shoes and track it around the Mount.


Rena's spill may be small compared to international spills. It's certainly tiny compared to what is possible if deep sea drilling were to happen off shore of New Zealand. But the fuel used in container ships is the nasty dregs of the oil distillation process, literally the crudest of crude oils. It looks exactly like tar, and nothing at all like petroleum or even machine oil.


The beaches are relatively easy to clean up, because the oil-saturated sand can be shovelled up. Clumps of oily shells and debris are picked out. The nasty gunk is hauled off out of sight to landfill and not even a stain remains.


It's fiddly work, cleaning oil out of sand, but the cleaner-uppers have done an amazing job. News photos from a week ago showed Mt Maunganui beach covered in thick black sludge and now there's no trace of oil to be seen on the apparently pristine white sands.


But off the sandy beach and around the headland is a different story. The oil still clings to rough rocks around the high tide mark.


Here the army cleanup crew has to scrape and scrub, which looks to be very slow and laborious. They are working very carefully, paying minute attention to each crevasse or stain on the rocks. Their work reminded me a little of my own slow, absorbing stitching practice.


Despite the hard work of removing toxic gunk, the crew I observed seemed in very good spirits. I think it must be extremely satisfying to be doing something so valuable, so tangible and so effective. After ten days, most of the volatiles have evaporated from the oil, and it no longer smells bad. In fact, the Port of Tauranga had a worse oil stench when I drove past it.


A couple of New Zealand fur seals lounged on some rocks just off the headland. Signs on the track assured us that they'd been checked and are free of oil. I saw a dozen or so seagulls, swallows and a tui on my walk, and heard a grey warbler, all in fine spirits. But I thought of all the sea birds that have been killed by the oil in the last couple of weeks, and those that have been saved but must be kept in captivity until their homes are cleaned up and out of further risk. And I thought of all the fish and other sea creatures that have already been poisoned, and those that will continue to absorb the toxic residues for years to come. And those very fish are what the seals eat. So I'm not confident at all that a nice clean beach means everything is fine now.


The salvo crew is working night and day to try and pump out the remaining oil on the Rena before it breaks up. They are apparently managing to move about 10 sluggish tons an hour, in conditions of extraordinary danger and difficulty. The huge cracks in the hull, the ship's alarming tilt, and the bizarrely disarrayed containers all suggest that it would only take a bad storm or a small tsunami (there was a brief tsunami warning yesterday which thankfully came to nothing) to send the remaining 1000 or so tons into the sea. We are all praying that doesn't happen, because if it does, the thick black sludge that has been mostly cleaned up since last week will seem like a drop in the ocean.

AJ Seely Gully

The sign says 'second biggest kauri 37 years old'

The other day I heard a radio programme about ecological restoration happening in the Hamilton area, and one of the sites discussed was the AJ Seely Gully which is in my neighbourhood. I have noted the entrance before but not yet explored it as the path appeared steep narrow, muddy and generally unformed. But the weather this month is all hot and dry so a scramble down the track doesn't seem so intimidating as in the middle of a rainy winter. I suggested to Robin that we go check it out last weekend. So we did and this is what we saw.

Not exactly a bridge, but a board walk over what would often be mud. The sign says 'careful'

It's not a big area, and its a nice easy walk when the ground is dry. The land is private and the tree planting the 50 year project of a local man who decided to restore bush long before it became fashionable. There are some impressively big trees only a few years older than me, that he planted. Best of all were the wonderfully quirky hand written signs. Worst of all was the rubbish, though Robin and I picked up most of what we could and carried it out of the gully.

'Miro, note clematis above'. We looked and looked but couldn't spot any clematis.

Gully Intrigue

Hamilton doesn't really have hills, but instead is riven with many gullies, like hills in reverse. One of these is near my present home and across the road from my old primary school. When I was little, my friends and I used to play on the edges of its impenetrable wild, weedy, scrub. More recent walks along Grey Street have allowed me tantalising glimpses of the gully transformed into an impeccably groomed lawn, cut by crisp, white concrete paths on which I've occasionally seen people walking.


Curious, I've wandered all the nearby streets trying to find an obvious way into this half-hidden park but with no success. In yesterday evening's sultry heat I was determined to solve the mystery for once and for all. On Beale St I found a path leading down to a small, scruffy, clearing smelling of sewage or dead things, between Boys High and Marian School. Not the right place or the right ambiance, so I retraced my steps and then entered the grounds of Boys High.

I've avoided that Beale St shortcut to Boys High for my whole life, even though it was the obvious short cut to my intermediate school. Back then I was too self-conscious and scared to walk through teenage boy territory, so for two years took the long way round. I wonder if something unpleasant did ever happen to me there, because I continued to avoid it even as an adult. Yesterday I told myself I am too old to care what anyone, let alone unknown teenage boys, think of me and finally used that track alone.


Once on the school grounds I followed the border between Boys High and the NZTC, seeing the elusive park more clearly than ever through the high barbed wire fence. My desired destination was obviously part of the NZTC grounds, and when the Boys High track petered out in a over-grown swamp I turned back. This time as I passed the NZTC the entrance was swarming with people, and I could hear choruses of amens coming from the windows.


Wondering if I would fail in my objective to enter the gully that evening, I walked back along Grey Street looking hard for any other access points. Suddenly, I spotted an open gate half way along a private right of way. I quickly ducked through the gate and down a steep gravel path and lo! I was in the park. A great expanse of velvety lawn stretched in front of me, broken only by lush flower beds, and beyond a beautiful orchard and vegetable garden.

I had the whole large area to myself, except for a few ducks behind a dam. In it's silent emptiness it reminded me of the description in Robert O'Brien's The Silver Crown (one of my favourite children's books) of the grounds of the black castle where Ellen rescued Otto from brain washing. The black footpaths in the book were one of the mechanisms of mind control for kidnapped children. That creepy association, and my fear of being told off for trespassing, somewhat spoiled my walk in the park. And now, with my curiosity sated, I'm not sure I want to go back again.

Found round the neighbourhood

I live in an interesting neighbourhood in Hamilton, just behind the Vege King, which is famous for its abundant and inexpensive fresh produce including this pregnant kiwifruit I enjoyed recently.

Walking along Heaphy Terrace, near St Aiden's Church, some bright stickers exhorting loving kindness have appeared on one of the mysterious green boxes that dot sidewalks.

This is what you see as you approach the box:

Then, as you pass it, this is the view from above:
The St Aiden's op shop came through for me recently with this awesome, authentic French beret. I have never really liked berets before, they always seem to look funny and feel like they will fall off if I move my head too fast. But now I understand the real deal is always going to sit right, because the French, they know their berets. This is heavy woolen felt with a leather band on the inside. It's like wearing a warm, flattering, pancake and makes me feel like a sexy mysterious poetess on my way to meet philosopher friends in a smokey cafe on the Left Bank...

... instead popping to the corner shop, where lately we've been enjoying some of the Phantom Billstickers Poetry Poster largesse. If I hadn't heard this interview with Jim Wilson, the Phantom Poster guy, I would be bemused that all the poets on our shops are from Tennessee. These posters are going up all over NZ and Tennessee, and Johanna wrote about some in Wellington on the Quiet World Project.

Sketchcrawl the Tron #2

A few of the sketchers starting out at the Waikato Museum forecourt

Our second Sketch Crawl in Hamilton was a huge success, with about 18 people sketching together. That's about three times as many as our first Sketch Crawl the Tron, including established artists, lots of art students and people who hadn't drawn since they were at school! It was very exciting to see so many people enjoying sketching, chatting and walking. We sketched at the St Paul's Cathedral, the band rotunda, and down to the river and the cute little gazebo under the bridge.

I experimented with my new watercolour pencils, using a brush dipped in tiny a jar of water to get a painterly effect on the go.

We had glorious early winter weather- crisp and clear; warm enough in the sun to comfortably sit around outside. I didn't need to wear all the layers I brought until very late in the day. There was one shower, perfectly timed for our refreshment stop at Metropolis Caffe, where we sketched eachother and the dishes on our tables.

A full spread of the opposite side of the table at Metropolis

After eating and drinking, people started to drift away, but not before I managed to snap photos of most people's sketches which can be seen in the Sketch Crawl the Tron Gallery. It was fascinating to see how almost all of us got more confident/looser/'better' at drawing over the course of the afternoon. (All the sketches illustrating this blog post are my own).

The sci fi corner of Browsers as seen from the gold velvet sofa

As the sun disappeared behind the buildings, a small, committed core of sketchers flopped into Browsers bookshop. Browsers is one of those spacious yet cosy second-hand bookshops scattered with sofas and armchairs. I managed to resist buying any books only by drawing them instead. I love the look of books on shelves and in piles on the floor.

Last drawing, at dusk at Rodeo Bar, Anna looking a bit like Emma Thompson, which inspired us to go see Last Chance Harvey that night.

It was a great day, but it's left me a bit burned out from trying, not terribly successfully, to take care of everything. Next time I'm going to find someone else to photograph the event and the sketches. I just couldn't get my act together to write down people's names to identify their sketches. I also didn't get as much drawing done as last time, though I was bolder in experimenting with colour and different kinds of marks. Despite my exhaustion, I am looking forward to doing it again in a couple of months.

Cute kids, stunning sculptures, and homemade rice crackers

My weekend was full of variety. I was out and about all day on Saturday, wrapped up in many layers, under a crisp blue winters sky.

In the morning I was showing small children how to make simple books at the Migrant Resource Centre, who had invited local artists to come along and show children of refugees and migrants some different art forms, in the lead up to their exhibition of children's art in June. There were lots of children with their parents, speaking many languages, and all very excited about making books. It was great fun. Even the tiniest had a go... I got the littlies to draw on a piece of paper and then we made their book together, with the child helpng to press down the folds.

Everyone over about 4 years old enjoyed making their own books, either or both of the examples I prepared. I showed them what Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord calls a Hotdog Book, which is universally popular simple structure, and a basic accordion with a folded card cover. Anyone lucky enough to be spending time with children should check out Susan's Making Books With Children blog and website. Its a brilliant example of the how-to-craft genre on the internet, full of inspiring ideas, excellent advice and clear instructions.

Henna handpainting

Some kids were so enthusiastic that after making several books, they wanted more, and when one little boy asked about folded paper games, we started making fortune tellers (aka cootie catchers) for everybody. It was wild! And there were six other art activities all just as busy and exciting as mine: painting, stencilling, flax weaving, drawing, pottery and henna handpainting... The henna handpainting was fabulous, but did inhibit book making participation a bit, as eventually every little girl there had hands covered in wet henna patterns, but the really keen ones just made books one handed! It was impressive.

Memories (cast glass) by Jenny Smith

I had to slip away a little early (straight after the delicious Columbian lunch) to go on a long anticipated expedition with my friend Aalix to the Waitakaruru Arboretum and Sculpture Park to catch the e:scape exhibition before it closes at the end of the month. It was a perfect still afternoon, chilly in the shadows but bright sunlight and a vigorous hillclimb to keep us warm.

The most book-ish of the sculptures: Absolute Divide by CK Reynolds (Rho print arial photographs on marine ply)

I nearly succeeded in having an entirely computer-free day on Saturday which meant I returned to the laptop with renewed enthusiasm for my work on Sunday morning. It was cold and rainy almost all day long, and by evening I was glad to stop staring at the screen and make a rustic potato and leek soup with home made rice crackers. I was improvising, but it turned out quite tasty and goes something like this.

Homemade Rice Cracker Recipe

1 cup rice flour
1/4 cup cold butter
3 Tbsp parmesan
1 Tbsp garlic granules
pinch salt
generous grind of pepper
1 tsp oregano
1/4 cup (rice) milk
1 Tbsp sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 200 degree. Put all the ingredients except the milk and sesame seeds into a bowl and rub or cut the butter in as though making pastry or scones. Mix in just enough rice milk (or other kind of milk) to make the dough stick into a ball but not be sticky. Roll or press out onto a greased baking sheet and sprinkle sesame seeds on top, press into the dough. Cut the dough into squares and slide apart on the sheet. Bake until golden brown and crisp.