Australia, Shepparton, Travel, Victoria, Wild Horses

A Walk Around Victoria Park

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Daily Photo: Where the Cows Used to Graze

I was staying with relatives in Shepparton for a few nights when someone suggested I take a walk around Victoria Park. I had no particular expectations, but a local recommendation is usually worth following, so I went to have an explore.

The area that would eventually become Victoria Park was once considerably less inviting. Before it was developed as a park, the land was used for grazing, including by local dairy farmers who would let their cows graze there between milkings. It was probably a perfectly sensible use of the land at the time, although it doesn’t immediately sound like the sort of place where you would go for a pleasant afternoon walk, unless you happened to be a cow.

The area was named Victoria Park after Queen Victoria in 1901, and at its centre was a body of water that was, to put it generously, more swamp than lake. By 1928, someone had decided that the swamp had probably done enough, and clearing work began to create a proper lake suitable for boating, swimming and general recreation.

As I walked around, it became obvious that Victoria Park had gradually accumulated the sort of things you expect to find in a well-used local park. Over the years a swimming pool, playground and skate park were added, while a wetlands area connecting towards the nearby Goulburn River became another feature. Today the park covers about 43 hectares, with nearly two kilometres of walking tracks winding through it.

What had once been an unsightly swamp and a place for cows to spend the hours between milkings had become a surprisingly pleasant part of Shepparton. There was the lake, established trees, open grassed areas, walking tracks and plenty of people making use of the park. It had the comfortable feel of a place that belongs to the locals rather than somewhere designed to impress visitors.

I walked around the lake, stopping occasionally when something caught my eye and taking photographs as I went. This is generally how I explore somewhere unfamiliar. I don’t particularly need an itinerary. Give me a walking track, a camera and somewhere I haven’t seen before, and I’m usually quite happy to see where it leads.

Victoria Park wasn’t somewhere I had planned to visit before arriving in Shepparton, and I probably wouldn’t have found it without that recommendation. But that’s one of the things I enjoy about travelling. The places that stay with you aren’t always the ones you’ve been told you must see. Sometimes they’re simply somewhere a local tells you to go for a walk.

Although, where people who live in town let their cows graze in between milking is quite beyond me.

#fromthefootpath, Australia, Brisbane, Queensland, Wild Horses

Streets Beach in Parklands

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Daily Photo: Brisbane’s Unexpected Beach

I came across Streets Beach quite by accident.

I’d been wandering around Brisbane’s South Bank on a summer’s day when the temperature had pushed past 30 degrees, which is about the point where walking around a city begins to feel like an unnecessary test of character. I was looking for somewhere to escape the heat for a while when I suddenly found myself looking at something I hadn’t expected to see in the middle of the city. A beach. Not a river beach, not a stretch of sand beside the sea, but a proper swimming beach sitting among the South Bank Parklands, complete with sparkling blue water, white sand and enough subtropical greenery to make the whole thing look faintly tropical.

This is Streets Beach, Australia’s only man-made inner-city beach, and it’s a rather clever bit of urban planning. Nearly 80 tonnes of white sand surround a lagoon of clear blue water, with palms and subtropical plants completing the illusion that you have somehow wandered away from Brisbane and ended up somewhere considerably closer to a tropical island. I stopped for a while and watched people swimming, sitting in the shallows and doing the sensible thing on a hot Brisbane afternoon: not walking around unnecessarily. I, of course, was walking around unnecessarily, although I was beginning to question the wisdom of this decision.

There was something wonderfully odd about the place. Behind the beach were the buildings and traffic of Brisbane, while in front of me people were lying on the sand as though they had spent the morning travelling to the coast. It was one of those unexpected city discoveries that made me stop and look twice.

And, naturally, I took a photograph.

This was slightly more complicated than photographing an old building. Standing on the edge of a busy inner-city beach with a camera pointed towards the water required a little more thought, mainly because I was keen to photograph the beach without looking like a middle-aged bloke with entirely the wrong intentions. I spent a few minutes trying to find an angle that showed the sand, water, palms and surrounding city without accidentally making myself look like I should be explaining my presence to security.

Eventually I found a spot that made sense, took a few shots, and moved on.

This is probably one of the reasons I like wandering around unfamiliar places. I rarely know exactly what I’m going to photograph when I set out. I just keep walking until something catches my attention. Sometimes it’s an old building, sometimes a forgotten corner of a town, and sometimes it’s an artificial beach in the middle of Brisbane that requires you to think carefully about where you point the camera.

On a day when the mercury had passed 30 degrees, finding a beach without having to leave the city seemed like a pretty good discovery.

#dailyat6am, #fromthefootpath, #fromtheroad, Australia, Brisbane, Queensland, Wild Horses

The Nepalese Peace Pagoda

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Daily Photo – An unexpected corner of Brisbane

I wasn’t really looking for this.

I’d been wandering around the South Bank in Brisbane, doing what I usually do in a city I’ve never quite gotten around to knowing properly, which is walking without much of a plan and seeing what turns up. Brisbane is a difficult place to wander through without eventually finding something involving water, gardens, restaurants or people wearing considerably less clothing than you are.

Then I came across this.

Tucked away among the greenery was this wonderfully ornate building, looking as though someone had accidentally transported a small piece of Nepal into the middle of Brisbane and then decided it was probably best not to mention it.

I stopped.

There was something about the contrast that appealed to me. Around it was modern Brisbane, busy paths, landscaped gardens and the general movement of a city going about its business. And here was this intricate little world of carved timber, pagoda roofs and details that demanded you stop for a closer look.

So, naturally, I took a photograph.

I don’t remember setting out that morning with the intention of photographing a Nepalese Peace Pagoda, I didn’t even know it even existed. But that’s one of the things I like about wandering. You can have a destination in mind, but the best part of the journey is the thing you didn’t know was there.

#dailyat6am, Australia, Melbourne, Victoria, Wild Horses

She Matters: Amy Bowden

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Daily Photo – Australian women killed through violence since Jan 1, 2024

Tucked within Melbourne’s iconic, graffiti-covered Hosier Lane, I came across a mural wall of silence amid the urban hustle. Scores of red-framed portrait posters created a memorial grid, bearing the names and faces of Australian women killed through violence, punctuated by a stark banner line beneath them. Like many passersby, I paused along the alley, drawn in by the powerful simplicity that turned a famous tourist thoroughfare into a raw, haunting space for collective memory and the ‘She Matters’ campaign. If like me, you have only no idea what the ‘She Matters’ movement is, well after some research, I can tell you that it is an Australian public activism campaign founded by activist Sherele Moody to honor women lost to violence. Featuring red-bordered portrait paste-ups across public spaces like the one I came across in Hosier Lane, the evolving memorial continuously adds new posters to make the stark reality and ongoing scale of femicide visible to the community. Further to the post campaign, there’s also a podcast series to go along with it. Although rather than framing stories through the traditional true-crime model, it centers on the human lives lost to femicide, domestic abuse, and intimate partner violence across Australia.

To find out what the podcast was all about, I listened to the episodes telling the story of Amy Bowden, and I have to say, they’re very good. Although that feels like something of an understatement.

If you’re interested search:
Amy Bowden: Coercive Control, Death and a Mother’s Fight for Answers – Part 1
Amy Bowden: Coercive Control, Domestic Violence and a Death Police Failed to Examine Properly – Part 2
Please be aware that these episodes discuss coercive control, drug use and death – not suitable for children.

#dailyat6am, Aotearoa, Central Otago, South Island, St Bathans, Wild Horses

The Vulcan Hotel Ghost Story: The Legend of Rosie in St Bathans

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Daily Photo – Is the Vulcan Hotel Really Haunted?

By the time I arrived in St Bathans, the temperature had climbed to a positively tropical three degrees, although thanks to the heavy snow that had fallen several days earlier, it still felt like the sort of day where a thick pair of socks was an essential item of clothing. The tiny gold-mining settlement was only just coming to life and while it wasn’t completely deserted, it’s quietness wasn’t particularly surprising. St Bathans has a main street of roughly 500 metres, a handful of historic buildings and the general atmosphere of a place that has never been particularly interested in keeping up with the modern world.

At the centre of it all is the Vulcan Hotel, a building that looks as though it’s been sitting there quietly watching Central Otago change around it. It is also reputed to have a resident who has been around for considerably longer than most of the current guests. Her name is Rosie, and apparently she is a ghost.

The story most commonly told is that Rosie was a young prostitute who was murdered in Room 1 of the hotel for her small amount of gold in the 1880s, supposedly by a client. Her ghost is said to haunt Room 1, where guests have reported seeing her, feeling her presence or experiencing the sort of unexplained disturbances that are particularly easy to explain, except for the fact that you’re staying in a 19th-century hotel in the middle of nowhere. There is, however, a slight problem with the story. There doesn’t appear to be any contemporary newspaper report of a woman being murdered at St Bathans in the 1880s.

There is an even more awkward historical detail. The famous building known as the Vulcan Hotel wasn’t actually the Vulcan Hotel in the 1880s. It was the Ballarat Hotel. The original Vulcan was a different building altogether and was destroyed by fire in 1931, after which the Ballarat became the hotel we know today. So Rosie, if she really was murdered there, was technically murdered in the Ballarat Hotel, which makes the whole thing rather harder to put neatly on a tourist brochure and kind of spoils the Room 1 story. 

However, there is another version of the story, one that is considerably more elaborate. It all starts with an anonymous, hand-sewn booklet called The Tragic Tale of the Vulcan Ghost, by a Lady who tells the story of a woman named Rosie O’Dowd. Rosie supposedly came from an impoverished family and began working at the hotel when she was only twelve years old. The years passed and she eventually fell in love with a wealthy traveller named Piers Osmond, who regularly stayed in Room 1. Osmond gave Rosie a snow globe, got her pregnant and then disappeared, which seems a particularly efficient way of destroying someone’s life.

Rosie then lost her baby during childbirth and, overcome by grief, apparently went mad outside Room 1 before disappearing, never to be seen or heard from again, well in living form at least. Her body was never found, but her spirit supposedly returned, leaving the Vulcan with at least one permanent resident. 

It is a wonderful story, but there is very little evidence to suggest that Rosie O’Dowd or Piers Osmond actually existed. There are no obvious historical records confirming the romance, the pregnancy, the snow globe or Rosie’s disappearance. In fact, there are several different versions of Rosie’s story, with different names, different occupations and different accounts of how she died. The more you look, the more the historical Rosie seems to dissolve into folklore.

But standing outside the Vulcan in a tiny settlement at the end of a long Central Otago road, I found that I didn’t really care. St Bathans is full of stories from its gold-mining past, and Rosie is simply another one that has survived because people like having a ghost attached to an old hotel. The miners have gone, the goldfields have disappeared beneath the tussock and the streets are now so quiet that you can stand in the middle of them without having to worry about traffic.

Whether Rosie O’Dowd ever walked into Room 1, whether Piers Osmond ever stayed there, or whether a snow globe ever sat on its bedside table is impossible to say. But somewhere along the way, somebody gave the Vulcan Hotel a ghost, gave her a name and gave her a rather tragic story. And now, more than a century later, Rosie remains in St Bathans, haunting the local hotel.

Which, for a ghost, is probably about as Central Otago as you can get.

Kokonga, Maniototo, South Island, Travel, Wild Horses

Treeline In Snow Near Kokonga

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Daily Photo – Treeline in snow near Kokonga

Continuing past Kokonga, the landscape softened into a quieter, almost forgotten stillness. Just past a bridge, along the edge of a snow-covered paddock, a line of bare trees stood beside a river, a fenceline and a simple farm gate, the human touches cutting through the white blanket. Looking past the gate, a track led further into the field and through the trees, entirely untouched, smoothed over by a fresh layer of snow, ice and frost that has a way of turning the ordinary into something remarkably serene.

There is an understated charm to these quiet corners of the Maniototo, where a wooden fence and a cluster of wintering trees can hold as much presence as the grandest mountain range. The mist hung low over the distant fields, blurring the boundary between earth and sky, while the farm gate stood slightly agape, as if quietly inviting you to stop and take in the slow, unhurried rhythm of backcountry winter.

#dailyat6am, #fromthefootpath, Auckland, Wild Horses

Auckland’s Queen & Customs Streets

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Daily Photo – Where Queen Street Meets Customs Street

The rain did little to improve the mood, although it did give Queen Street a certain atmosphere, with umbrellas moving along the footpaths and lights reflecting off the wet road. The old buildings still stood proudly among the newer towers, their ornate facades in contrast to the glass and steel that had grown up around them. The comparison was hard to miss. Here was the Auckland of another time, built when a city centre was somewhere people actually came to spend the day, now surrounded by the much taller, shinier version of itself.

Yet there were still signs of life. Vehicles crawled along the sections of Queen Street that were open, people hurried through the rain, and businesses, although open, continued to operate behind the old facades. It wasn’t exactly bustling, but neither was it completely dead. Perhaps this was simply what Auckland’s city centre had become: a place where the past was still standing, the future was already here, and everyone else had either found somewhere else to go or was waiting for a reason to return.

#dailyat6am, Auckland, Travel, Wild Horses

Queen Street In Auckland

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Daily Photo – Queen Street in Auckland

I thought Auckland’s Queen Street would be busy on a Wednesday, but it was the very opposite. The streets were virtually empty of tourists and shoppers, as if they’d abandoned the city centre; only the occasional group of well dressed people in business attire appeared, hurrying between buildings. Perhaps the persistent rain had persuaded people to find better things to do than pass their day by aimlessly wandering between shops, with an occasional coffee thrown in. It used to be a place that was teeming with people and a hub of activity.

How the world has changed. Now there wasn’t much more than a scattering of people, the majority seeming to be sitting in doorways asking for money or yelling at each other from across the street while the commercial focus seems to have shifted out into the suburbs, leaving very little reason for people to actually go into the city center in the first place. Yet, despite all that, there were still glimpses of the old Auckland: the grand old buildings, the odd busy café, and the occasional burst of life that reminded me the city hadn’t completely given up on itself. Perhaps it was simply waiting for the rain to stop.

#dailyat6am, #fromthefootpath, Auckland, Wild Horses

How Many Big Macs Are Sold In NZ Every Day?

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Daily Photo – McDonalds on Queen Street

While in Auckland, as I was wandering around the CBD, I called into McDonald’s. Not because I thought I’d get a nutritious, well-rounded meal, but because it was quick, convenient, and I wouldn’t have to think about it. It was while I was chopping my way through a Big Mac that I happened to notice a small sign saying that its New Zealand beef supplier produces nearly 500,000 beef patties per day for McDonald’s restaurants.

Thinking about this, I decided we could do a little maths to work out how many Big Macs are sold throughout New Zealand every day. Since McDonald’s produces a range of burgers that include Big Macs, Cheeseburgers, Quarter Pounders and Hamburgers, to name but a few, let’s assume 10% of those 500,000 beef patties end up in Big Macs. That would give us 50,000 patties going into Big Macs every day. Since a Big Mac uses two patties, that gives us 25,000 Big Macs being sold throughout New Zealand on a daily basis.

Doing a few quick calculations, that works out at about 9.1 million Big Macs being sold throughout New Zealand every year, or roughly 174,000 per week. That’s just over 1,000 every hour, or about 16 every minute.

So, by the time you finish reading this post, and spend another minute or so admiring a few photos, another 30 to 40 Big Macs have probably left a McDonald’s kitchen somewhere in New Zealand.

And suddenly, for reasons I’m not entirely sure I can justify, I feel like I’ve contributed something useful to society.

#dailyat6am, North Otago, Oamaru, Wild Horses

Refrigeration & The Totara Estate

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Daily Photo – The stables at the Totara Estate

In the afternoon of 15 February 1882, a remarkably ambitious and faintly mind-boggling event took place. The sailing ship Dunedin left Port Chalmers on a three-month voyage that would end in London. On board were nearly 4,500 frozen sheep carcasses and 500 frozen lambs from the Totara estate near Oamaru.

After 98 days at sea, the ship reached the London Docks with the meat still in near-perfect condition. From there, it made its way to Smithfield Market, where London butchers got their first proper look at what New Zealand meat that had been quietly freezing in a ship’s hold for three months.

This extraordinary event was all thanks to refrigeration, and it was something of a revelation. New Zealand had suddenly discovered that it could send dead sheep halfway around the world and have them arrive still edible. The implications were enormous. New Zealand now had a major new export industry to add to wool and grain, and it grew with astonishing speed. By 1890, frozen meat was worth around £1 million a year, and by 1910, that figure had risen to £3.8 million, nearly half the value of wool.

From there the whole industry went completely bonkers, Farming changed drastically, large-scale freezing works were developed, and small ports such as Bluff, Oamaru, Timaru, Gisborne and Napier suddenly found themselves shipping vast quantities of frozen sheep all over the place

#dailyat6am, North Otago, Oamaru, South Island, Wild Horses

Strolling In Oamaru

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Daily Photo – The Victorian Heritage Precinct

In Oamaru I stopped at a place called Scott’s Brewery. On the drive I had drunk one bottle of water too many and by the time I arrived my bladder was about to explode. Several minutes later having solved what was a pressing issue, I was able to walk freely once more and I emerged from the brewery into bright sunshine. Scott’s Brewery started life in 2007 and has been going strong ever since. Out front people were gathered around tables neatly arranged on the lush green grass enjoying a spot of lunch in the warm sunshine. It all looked very lovely and for a second I was tempted to join them. Instead, I crossed over the street and went for a walk around the well known Victorian Heritage Precinct. A district made up of 19th-century Victorian architecture crafted from local white limestone and is filled with boutique shops, artisan workshops, art galleries and is home to the famed Steampunk HQ.

#dailyat6am, Central Otago, Maniototo, Mount Ida, Naseby, Wild Horses

Mount Ida And The Snow of 1863

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Daily Photo – The Ida Range

The gold discovery in the Naseby area was made in 1863, and the rush was spectacular. The original prospectors discovered gold around the Hogburn, and within only a few days, more than 1,000 miners had arrived. By the end of July, there were over 2,000 men working around Naseby and the wider Mount Ida field. The rush happened so quickly in the essentially empty Maniototo countryside that towns popped up almost overnight, and Naseby was one of them.

Of course, getting several thousand gold-hungry men to the goldfields was one thing. Getting them back out again was another. In September 1863, Sergeant Ryan, stationed at Mount Ida, sent Constable Garvey and another policeman to investigate the new rush at Clarke’s, in the Mount Burster area. On the return journey, an over-confident Constable Garvey walked ahead of the others into a snowstorm. The constable and his companion, fearing they had become lost, took shelter beneath a rock while the weather closed in around them. When the storm had passed, the two men eventually staggered back to Mount Ida, badly frostbitten. Garvey didn’t make it. His body was later found, ravaged by the storm. It was a sobering reminder that beneath all the excitement of the gold rush, this was still a wild and unforgiving corner of the country, where a man could leave town in search of a few nuggets and simply disappear.

#dailyat6am, Central Otago, Naseby, Travel, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

The Town of Naseby

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Daily Photo – I.N.P Hjorring Draper & Clothing

My final stop for the day was Naseby, another town that started life in the gold rush and has managed to survive thanks to holidaymakers looking for somewhere a little quieter, and considerably less expensive, than the tourist hotspots of Arrowtown, Frankton and Queenstown. I found the town covered in bathed in bright daylight and a chilly 2 degrees. The main road into town led me past row after row of cottages and the local reserve, which was filled with kids building snowmen, Dads throwing snowballs, and mothers wondering how on earth they were going to get everything dry! A few blocks further along, the streets were filled with cars parked on snow-covered sidewalks as people strolled around enjoying the wintry snow. People happily sat in the sun out front of the local hotel as pockets of snow slid off the roof and water from the melting snow trickled down the footpath.

At its peak, the population of the town had grown to around 4,000 miners, with the town featuring up to 14 hotels, two butchers, multiple bakeries, billiard rooms and banks, a courthouse, a warden’s court, a post and telegraph office, a police station and jail, a blacksmith and wheelwright shop, a hospital, a school, and numerous churches. All of this was there to service the miners who had swelled into the town. I strolled for a few blocks, looking at nothing in particular, before returning to my car and leaving the town of Naseby behind.

#dailyat6am, Central Otago, Ida Valley, Wild Horses, Winter

The Idaburn On Agnew Road

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Daily Photo – The Idaburn on Agnew Road

The road from Ophir in the Manuherikia Valley headed up over the Raggedy Range before dropping down into the Ida Valley, and that’s where the weather really changed and the scenery shifted dramatically. The sharp blue sky vanished, and a ghostly white, low-lying mist and fog took hold, slowly dissolving the landscape into it.

I drove on and on into the mucky white gloom, the temperature slowly dropping into negative numbers before settling at a freezing −5°C. The heavy hoar frost drained every trace of colour and sound, leaving only absolute silence. By the time the side roads crossed the Idaburn, trees and bridges were merely shapes in the haze, sitting on the edge of the world.

#dailyat6am, Central Otago, Ophir, Travel, Wild Horses

The Town Of Ophir

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Daily Photo – The town of Ophir

I walked up and down the main street, Swindon Street. At one end was the Pitches Store and Butcher, an old-fashioned stone building that started life as a family-run general store and butchery in the 1880s and now advertises itself as contemporary luxury accommodation and a restaurant for those wanting a quiet retreat in slow-paced surroundings. Further on is the rather small but grand Post and Telegraph Office, which proudly lays claim to being the longest-running Post Office in the country. It’s open for three hours every weekday morning, where you can admire the memorabilia display or buy a postcard and get it marked with the town’s unique pick-and-shovel gold-mining postmark. Next door is the town’s Peace Memorial Hall, which still holds a function or two, judging by the nearby faded posters, and is reputed to have great acoustics and an outstanding dancing floor, although I can safely guarantee that is something I will never be able to confirm in person! 

I’d parked at the opposite end of the town at the pub, otherwise known as Blacks Hotel, and on the way back I passed buildings that had been stables, churches, bakeries and other such places you might find in a small Central Otago gold-mining town.

And that pretty much exhausted the town of Ophir. All that was left to do was drive across the popular local landmark, the suspension bridge, and head into the Ida Valley, a place I’d been looking forward to seeing once again.

#dailyat6am, #fromtheroad, Central Otago, St Bathans, Wild Horses, Winter

Cottage In Snow At St Bathans

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Daily Photo – Cottage in snow at St Bathans

I rounded a corner, and the quiet settlement of St Bathans came into view. I rolled down the hill into town, following its single street that runs through the middle of the settlement for no more than 500 metres before disappearing around a bend and continuing out into the countryside. It’s a tiny place, yet for all its smallness, St Bathans somehow manages to contain multitudes of soul.

When I finally arrived, I parked beside the old stables, swapped my shoes for gumboots, walked past a few historic cottages and the famous Vulcan Hotel, and set off through the snow towards the Blue Lake for a look around. As far as I could see, there was little more than snow, hills and the occasional fence post poking through the white snow. Below me, the lake was a deep, tranquil blue, reflecting the rugged, snow-covered hills beneath a perfectly clear sky. A touch of mist lingered around the far shore, while the still water reflected everything back with such clarity that the whole place seemed almost unnaturally quiet. It was one of those winter scenes where the cold gets into everything, but you don’t particularly care because the view is worth freezing for.

#fromtheroad, Central Otago, St Bathans, Wild Horses, Winter

Winter At Hawkdun Station

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Daily Photo – Hawkdun Station

I drove to St Bathans from Ranfurly on icy roads, with snow banked on either side and my tyres crunching over the frozen surface to the steady flapping of the windscreen wipers. Heavy snow drifted through the air, and I became increasingly convinced that I was going to hit a patch of black ice on some lonely back road, spin off over a bank, and eventually be buried beneath the snow, only to be found several months later in the thaw, with the story of my strange disappearance left to be told on some random podcast years later.

Just then, the clouds parted, the sun broke through, and a vast, pristine winter landscape stretched beneath a clear blue sky. Mounded, pillow-like formations of snow blanketed the uneven ground, occasionally broken by frozen streams. In the distance, the Hawkduns showed themselves as a majestic range of snow-covered mountains at the edge of the serene, snowy expanse. I rounded a corner, and the quiet settlement of St Bathans came into view.

#dailyat6am, #fromtheroad, Travel, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

The Case Of Fraud At The Ranfurly Hotel

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Daily Photo – The Ranfurly Hotel

I awoke the next morning to discover that Central Otago had turned the cold up a few notches. A sharp frost had covered almost everything, while a low-lying mist hung over the countryside. The temperature gauge was hovering around -7°C, which is the sort of temperature that makes you question the thickness of the socks you’ve just put on. With my fingers numb and the chilly morning air slapping me hard across the face, I went in search of some life-infusing coffee.

Ten minutes later, I rolled into the town of Ranfurly, which seemed partially hidden in a sea of mist, fog and ice. I found a cafe, purchased a coffee and went for a poke around the town, which is where I found the Ranfurly Hotel, looking quiet and lonely in the morning air.

Thanks to a very helpful information board, I discovered that the current version of the hotel sprang to life in 1934, after a major fire in 1933 destroyed the previous hotel that stood on the site. Where things get a little cagey is the fact that the 1933 fire soon became the subject of a fraud investigation.

At the time of the fire, the hotel was being run by Alexander Spence and his wife, Margaret. Following the fire, they made an insurance claim for goods and property that had been destroyed in the blaze, including furniture, mattresses, carpets, chairs and other items you might expect to find in a busy rural hotel. The thing was, after a police investigation, many of the items being claimed for suspiciously turned up at the Spences’ farm, all in perfect condition. The case went to court and, in April 1934, Alexander and Margaret Spence were found guilty of fraud. They were fined £10, with six months’ imprisonment in default of payment.

#dailyat6am, Maniototo, Wild Horses, Winter

Travelling Through The Maniototo

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Daily Photo – Travelling through the Maniototo

It was one of those winter days when the landscape seemed to stretch on forever, with the snow turning the paddocks into one enormous white sheet. The fences were about the only thing breaking up the view, leading off towards the distant ranges and giving the eye something to follow across all that white.

I was travelling through the Maniototo and into Central Otago in June, and this was the sort of winter scene I’d been hoping to find. There’s something about the Maniototo in the colder months that makes the place feel even bigger than it already is. The wide-open paddocks, the bare hills and the distant mountains all seem to have been turned up a notch.

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#dailyat6am, #fromtheroad, Travel, Wild Horses

Hop Into Waimate

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Daily Photo – Hop into waimate

There’s a wonderful sense of irony with Waimate’s famous yellow barn. That being the fact that they’re using an introduced, invasive pest that happily nibbles its way across the country to advertise the town. It’s a man named Michael Studholme who can take a bow for introducing this unwanted species into New Zealand. During the 1870s, he decided it would be a good idea to release wallabies on his property as a novelty, a decision everyone has regretted ever since.

#dailyat6am, #fromthefootpath, Travel, Wild Horses

A Spring Morning In Dunedin

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Daily Photo – A spring morning in Dunedin

How I like fine and warm spring mornings, they have such a positive feel about them. Especially on a Saturday, when the city seems to take its time waking up. I was wandering through the centre of Dunedin on a Saturday morning when I found the streets around the Octagon looking surprisingly deserted. The sun was already high enough to catch the tops of the buildings, while the bare branches of the trees were beginning to hint that winter was finally on its way out.

There was hardly anyone about. A few cars, a couple of early shoppers and the odd person going about their business, but otherwise it felt strangely quiet for a Saturday morning. I assumed most of Dunedin had migrated towards the Farmers’ Market, leaving this part of town to the cafe owners and the pigeons.

For a moment, though, I quite liked having the city almost to myself. It made the familiar buildings, shopfronts and old street lamps seem somehow different, as if Dunedin had paused for a coffee before getting on with the weekend.

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#dailyat6am, #fromthefootpath, #fromtheroad, Dunedin, Wild Horses

Dunedin On A Quiet Sunday Afternoon

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Daily Photo – Dunedin on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

I was exploring Dunedin on one of those quiet Sunday afternoons when the weather slowly seemed to engulf everything in its path. The hills of the Otago Peninsula were still visible, but only just, gradually disappearing behind a curtain of mist and low rain clouds.

From where I was standing, the spire of First Church rose above the city, its stonework looking particularly impressive against the slate-grey sky. It’s one of those buildings that seems to turn up in almost every view of central Dunedin, and for good reason. It is difficult to miss. What caught my attention, though, was the way the weather had changed the whole character of the city. The modern glass buildings reflected what little light there was, while the older Victorian buildings below seemed to retreat into the gloom.

There wasn’t much happening. It was Sunday, after all. The streets were quiet, the harbour was almost still, and the rain was slowly swallowing the hills.

#dailyat6am, Australia, Melbourne, Travel, Victoria, Wild Horses

The La Trobe Reading Room

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Daily Photo – The La Trobe Reading Room

Today I take you inside the State Library of Victoria and, more specifically, into the rather impressive La Trobe Reading Room.

It really is quite something.

The moment you walk in, your eyes are drawn upwards. There’s the enormous octagonal dome, balconies disappearing off in every direction and, far below, row upon row of desks where people sit quietly getting on with whatever important things people do in libraries. Of course, being there as a photographer, I had other concerns. Mainly, how on earth was I going to fit the whole thing into one photograph?

The skylight high above pours daylight into the room, while down below the old wooden desks sit in much deeper shadow. Cameras, unlike eyes, tend to get a little upset by this sort of thing, so there was a fair bit of stopping, starting and fiddling about with the exposure. Then there was the geometry. The room is full of lines, circles, balconies and angles, all of which seem determined to go slightly crooked the moment you point an ultra-wide lens at them. Finally, there’s the people, they’re truly everywhere. Most of them are just like me, trying to get a photo from an upper floor balcony. Still, after a bit of patience and a considerable amount of lining things up, I got there in the end.

And really, with a room like this, it would have been rude not to try.

#dailyat6am, Australia, Melbourne, Travel, Victoria, Wild Horses

Victoria State Library

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Daily Photo – Victoria State Library

On my way through Melbourne on one of my trips, I’d been in the Central Place mall, I think it was called, photographing an old brick building tucked inside the mall itself and sitting beneath a dome. It was only as I was leaving that I remembered I’d wanted to check out the Victoria State Library.

I’d read that it was one of those grand old Roman-style buildings and figured it might be worth a look. As it turned out, it was.

Leading up to the library is this great set of broad steps, which added another dimension to the photograph and gave me something interesting to work with. The only problem was that the steps were absolutely packed with people. There was no shortage of subjects, just rather too many of them. So I waited. Eventually, a gap appeared, the crowd thinned just enough, and I managed to get the shot I was after.

Akaroa, Banks Peninusla, Travel, Wild Horses

Langlois-Éteveneaux House in Akaroa

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Daily Photo – Langlois-Éteveneaux House

In the afternoon of my second day in Akaroa, I paid a visit to the local museum, where I was particularly interested to see inside the heritage cottage sitting towards the end of the main line of shops. I’d walked past it a number of times, so was pleased to finally get the opportunity to have a peek inside.

Still sitting in its original location, the two-room Langlois-Éteveneaux House is something of a survivor. It is the only remaining house known to have been constructed by French colonists in Akaroa during the 1840s, which gives the little building rather more significance than its modest appearance might suggest.

After a quiet poke around, I learned, among other things, that the house was commissioned by one Aimable Langlois, who ran the neighbouring French store. The building that followed was distinctly French in character, with the small, rectangular and symmetrical proportions typical of the colonial style, along with a steeply pitched roof and shuttered casement windows.

It’s a wonderfully simple little house, but it offers a rather tangible glimpse of the brief moment when Akaroa and the rest of New Zealand might have become French! Now there’s a scary thought! 

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#dailyat6am, #fromtheroad, Temuka, Travel, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

The Corner for Value in Temuka

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Daily Photo – The Corner for Value in Temuka

This was a fun image to create. I came across the building while wandering through the South Island town of Temuka. The faded words “The Corner for Value” are still clinging to the façade, like a shopkeeper who has decided retirement is somewhat overrated.

The name belonged to A. Gabites, a drapery business established by Arthur Gabites. Arthur died suddenly in 1898, aged just 55, leaving Margaret with twelve children, the youngest only ten months old. Somehow, the family kept the business going, eventually expanding into building this shop in 1905–06. By then, Arthur had been gone for several years, but his name remained above the door.

The family had already made their mark in Timaru, where their Stafford Street premises became known as Gabites Corner. So when this shop appeared in Temuka, locals suddenly found themselves with two Gabites Corners barely fifteen minutes apart.

A century later, only one thing seems to have changed. The customers have gone. The corner remains.

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Dawn on Lower Stuart Street

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Daily Photo – Dawn on Lower Stuart Street

I took this photo of Lower Stuart Street early one morning, and just like much of Dunedin, it’s early surveyor Charles Kettle we can thank for it. In 1846 when Kettle arrived in Otago with the rather daunting task of turning what was largely wilderness into a new town. Working with his assistants, he surveyed the head of the harbour and began laying out the streets, sections and reserves that would become Dunedin. Kettle had studied Edinburgh before leaving Britain, and deliberately borrowed elements of its layout, including the broad streets, squares and central Octagon. The terrain, however, had other ideas. Hills, gullies, swamps and Bell Hill all got in the way, but Kettle pressed on. By the time the first settlers arrived in 1848, the basic town plan was largely complete.

The small wrinkle in the story starts with what we now know as Stuart Street. When Charles Kettle laid out Dunedin in his original survey, the street we call Stuart Street was actually called Albert Street. At some point the name was changed to Stuart Street, adding another Scottish connection to a town already filled with reminders of Edinburgh as Princes Street, George Street and Hanover Street had all been borrowed from the Scottish capital. Stuart Street followed the same pattern.

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The Year of the Fire Horse

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Daily Photo – Dunedin’s Traditional Chinese Garden

So this year is the Year of the Fire Horse, which, I’m led to believe, is supposed to be a year of optimism, opportunity and getting things moving. The Fire Horse is said to be energetic and dynamic, which sounds promising, although I’m beginning to think what the world really needs is a quiet afternoon and a cup of green tea.

Those born under the Horse are apparently hardworking, warm-hearted and fiercely independent, while the horse itself has long been associated with success, freedom and good fortune. So perhaps there’s something to look forward to. At the very least, it seems like a good year to saddle up, hold on tight and see where the road takes us.

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The Town Of Winton

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Daily Photo – Evening at the Railway Hotel in Winton

There are towns you can imagine being named after politicians, explorers or some long-forgotten gentleman with a suitably impressive beard. Then there is Winton.

The story begins in the late 1850s, when stockman Thomas Winton was moving through Southland in search of strayed cattle. At some point, he stopped beside a small stream and made camp. It was hardly the sort of event you would expect to leave much of a mark on history, but the stream became known as Winton Creek.

And then, as these things sometimes do, the name stuck.

When the Southland settlement was formally established in 1861 and the township surveyed in 1863, the fledgling town inherited the name of the stockman who had once camped beside its creek.

These days Winton sits about 30 kilometres north of Invercargill, a quiet Southland town surrounded by some of the country’s best grazing country. But long before there was a main street, a railway or a town clock, there was Thomas Winton, a drover, some wandering stock and a night spent beside a little stream.

Not a bad legacy for simply stopping for the night.

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Where’s Damian?

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Daily Photo – Dusk In Northern Victoria

If you step off the track, it’s not hard to see why you might easily get disorientated and lost. There are many stories of people wandering off into the bush never to be seen again. One of the more famous is that of 10 year old Damian McKenzie. The story goes that in September of 1974, 10 year old Damian was attending a popular youth camp near Marysville in the State of Victoria where one of the activities was a walk to the popular Steavenson Falls, one of the state’s highest waterfalls, with a drop of at least 84 metres. The group, which included Damian, set off around 11:30am on Wednesday 4th September. Damian, a good natured and responsible young lad was said to have excitedly run ahead of the group up a track that eventually lead to the top of the falls. However, shortly after it was discovered that Damian was missing, two boys and an adult chaperone went to search for him. When there was no sign of him, the police were contacted. Over the preceding hours and days, the search party expanded to include the State Police, a trained Rescue squad, the Federation of Bush Walkers, Civil Defence, Australian Red Cross, Volunteers, 4wd and Helicopter patrols. In total upwards of  310 people were involved in the search across the landscape and into the rivers. All possibilities were considered: lost in the bush, drowned in the river, abducted, taken by natural predators, the possibility that he might have fallen down an old mineshaft was considered – even though they had mostly been filled in long ago. The search continued day after day with volunteers staying in the area for ten days after he went missing, yet no trace of Damian was found.

Fifty-one years later as the mystery had been labeled a ‘cold case’ and due to the fact that a coronial inquest was never conducted The Victorian Coroner re-examined the case in May 2026. On June 1, 2026 it was announced that the formal finding was that the definitive cause of death was exposure – legally ruling out any other long-standing theories. Among the evidence looked at was the fact that Damian went missing in an area surrounding Steavenson Falls consisting of incredibly dense, near-impenetrable scrub, steep slopes, and rugged bushland, wearing only jumper, jeans, and school shoes. Soon after the search commenced, the conditions turned nasty with freezing weather hitting the region including heavy mountain snow which heavily obscured tracks and disrupted search efforts. With no physical remains or items of clothing belonging to Damaian ever being recovered, he remains a missing person. 

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