SCW Reinforcements and More Scenery!

 Along with the five Vallejos paints, I also ordered two packs of 1/72 HaT kit - which, after recent experiences with the same supplier, some might see as foolhardy! Confirmed yesterday, the order arrived today - pretty good service - how I wish we had access to a few ranges of metal figures locally!

Pictures are below - a pack of two FT17 tanks and 4 British WWI field guns - which with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I have unilaterally decided will be appropriate for the 20mm SCW collection! (That's the artillery - there is plenty of supporting evidence for the tanks!)

I am currently on the hunt for economical PzKfw I and T26 tanks - S-Model in China do a two pack but they are proving slightly problematic to source, so I may end up just getting the plastic kits from Minairons.

On opening up the HaT boxes, I found the kits are genuine solid hard plastic a la Airfix etc - which begs the question - why cant they produce their figures in the same material?!

Now I have the paint, hopefully I get some motivation to get on with the new figures - I have had a distinct lack of motivation this week - work has been a pain and working from home makes it worse - I finish and walk out of the spare bedroom and I am "home" - I think I need the hour long car trip home to decompress from the working environment to the home one! All I have done this week is watch 12 episodes of a Russian TV Series called "Under Military Law" on YouTube. Regular visitors to this blog will understand why this series piqued my interest!

Day Three in Queenstown and we headed north along the stunning road to Glenorchy at the head of the lake, where we had a coffee before heading up to the Mt Aspiring National Park, approximately where Mount Earnslaw is marked on the above map

The first half dozen images are various points along the road between Queenstown and Glenorchy

A very famous old shed at the wharf at Glenorchy - it has featured on the main TVNZ news bulletin for several years

View of Lake Whakatipu from Glenorchy

We carried on northwards, primarily because our friend Casey wanted to visit the scene of a local TV drama - see below

One Lane Bridge is a New Zealand  crime drama television series, premiering on TVNZ 1 in 2020. The series stars Dominic Ona-Arika as Ariki Davis, a newcomer detective, Joel Tobeck as Stephen Tremaine, his superior, and Alison Bruce as Tremaine's wife, Lois. The show follows events around the latest in a mysterious chain of deaths which have occurred on a one-lane bridge near the town of Queenstown The series is also notable for its inclusion of aspects of Maori spirituality as a core part of the plot, such as the notion of matakite, roughly equivalent to divination

The series was filmed primarily in Queenstown and its surrounding area, with the eponymous bridge located over the Dart River / Te Awa Whakatipu near the township of Glenorchy, approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) northwest of Queenstown. Other filming locations include the Queenstown waterfront and areas around the nearby town of Arrowtown.

While taking snaps of the bridge, we noticed a group of large vehicles clustered around the road on the far side and decided to investigate. As suspected these turned out to be a film crew, on location making season two (or possibly three) of the series. As we drove on, we saw a road sign saying we were only 6km from Mt Aspiring National Park and the start of the Routeburn Track, so we decided to carry on, just to say we had been there!

It transpired there was a 30 min nature walk, so off we went. Brett and Casey are not particular fans of walking per se, but I just headed across the bridge and then carried on, so they didnt have a lot of choice, and once the other three caught up with me after about 500m, they were happy to carry on with the short walk.

The bush here was quite different from what we normally see in the North Island

Some stunning views of the surrounding mountains - as you can see, I found it hard to decide which ones to leave out!

This bridge was the turning point for the nature walk loop, and we headed back to the car, happy in the knowledge we can now legally claim to have walked a part of the famous Routeburn Track!

A couple of the information boards that adorned the walls of the visitor centre. I think the whole time we were in the area, around an hour in total, we saw about 6 other people - fantastic!

That evening, we went out for dinner at a locally acclaimed Asian Fusion restaurant, Madame Woo. 

Both the food and decor were wonderful

Well that was day three. A week ago today, day four, we spent primarily visiting and sampling the products of some of the many vineyards located in the Gibbston Valley to the east of Queenstown - but thats my next post!