Just before Christmas we had an evening trip across to Haulashore Island with the Nelson Camera Club. After a quick ‘pot luck’ dinner, my wife was left with her Kindle as I went off in search of photos.
The view of Nelson’s Port Hills from Haulashore Island is a theme that has attracted photographers for more than a century. Here’s an early example from the Kingsford collection at the Nelson Provincial Museum (date unknown):
My guess is this was taken towards the end of the 1800s. The small cottages in a row towards the right of the picture were the first to be built up on the hill, around 1860. Two of those three still remain. The left hand one was replaced with a two-story glass-fronted building you can see in roughly the same position in the photo below, taken on this trip. The other two are nestled in beside it, partly obscured by the tree.
On the left can be seen the slip which blocked our regular walks for a while, following the floods of a year ago. It has now been cleared and repaired:
Finally, before we leave the hill, here’s a magnificent old building with a very doubtful future. Its owner appears to have chosen ‘demolition by neglect’, after being refused consent to knock it down and having spurned offers to purchase by concerned neighbours, keen to see the house restored.
We have a strange attitude towards heritage buildings in New Zealand!
Back to the present. Nelson Harbour and the port were looking great:
I concentrated on some of the wildlife on the island, starting with a pair of oystercatchers which had a nest nearby:
These pictures show the very rounded rocks which make up the shoreline here, the very end of the process which has created the Boulder Bank. They’re quite loose and tough to walk on for any length of time. The next day I discovered muscles in my legs that I didn’t know I had.
Shags were a difficult subject, unwilling to show their heads while roosting:
The trees provide good roosts for these birds but really suffer in the process. Many had died as a result.
Photographers were a much easier target:
Traces remain of the structures used to dredge out the harbour entrance when the ‘Cut’ was created back in the ’30s. I’m not sure if these were part of that project:
The end of a good day:
