Memories of Mason Bay
These photos were taken by Amanda(hugnkiss) Symon and Tim (Sir Timoti) Popham. Thanks for the great times, guys! We'll have to do it all over again sometime!
(Top) Upon arrival on Stewart Is the crew immediately began repacking the supplies for the rather long (and puke-making for some) journey by boat to Mason Bay. An exciting journey of flying china, bleeding forehead and puking fisherman's wife. We'll never forget that, Aroha :-)
(Bottom) Arriving at Mason Bay - there was a huge sigh of relief from many people. Personally I thought it was great FUN!
This was home for the first two weeks. There were two more tents larger than the large red/white one in the pic. They blew down not long (second or third night) after they were put up. Amazing what a 40 knot wind can do.
(Top) View of the Gutter, a small bay at the western end of Mason Bay. Looks tropical? Think again! Imagine such an exposed place with howling cold wind, sand blasting against you, seaspray and salt in the air. This is the view from the urupa (burial site) where my attempt at fieldwork was conducted. The wave you can see breaking on the rather large rock formation can sometime be over twice as high again.
(Bottom) One of the extremely rare fine and relatively calm day we had. Nothing quite like a spot of beach cricket at lunchtime. Times like this made it all worthwhile.
Yes, it was time to do some work. This was the fine afternoon we had after a rather shitty morning. Out came the radar (GPR - Ground Penetrating Radar) and we were making great progress that afternoon.
(Top) More fiddling with the radar. As you can see, it was a very fine afternoon. Definitely shorts and t-shirt weather. Unfortunately that didn't last for very long. The fine progress was stopped by more crappy weather and even later by unfortunate accidents with the laptops.
(Bottom) The EM31 (for all of you non-geeks don't worry, think of it as a giant potato gun) was more tolerant of the weather. We finished the survey after 10 hours in the howling wind. Not the best condition to work in but it was the best we had.
A very large policeman with a quite large paramedic in our camp for the day. And no, they were not there to play football!
The two paramedics, cop, three or four mental health workers, a psychiatrist and a camp member leaving. If you really want to know the story I'll tell you if you buy me a coffee/beer.