Pick n Mix

 Tonight its back to present day figures as I think I have exhausted my pool of forty year old lead. 

First up is a rather nice donation to the 20mm WWII cause from Andrew, in the shape of a ready made and pre coloured 1/72 model of a Wespe self propelled gun, or to give it its correct Wehrmacht title: the le.F.H.18/2 auf. Fgst.Pz.Kpfw.II (Sf) (Sd.Kfz.124)....a bit of a mouthful, I am sure you will agree - I will continue to call it a Wespe I think!

Next, I finally got around to finishing of the 3D printed 28mm WWII figures I bought a few months back

Hopefully nobody is offended or upset by their nationality

Tank crew member with LMG

NCO with field glasses - I received two versions of this figure - I think because one of them was less than perfect (but perfectly useable for wargaming purposes

Two views of a prone sniper

Unarmed but marching confidently forwards

Kneeling with Mosin - Nagant rifle

Kneeling officer with field glasses

Female casualty being evacuated by a male colleague

Following are the last of my holiday snaps from our trip a fortnight ago now. We only had two or three hours on the Friday morning before the four hour drive home, so headed to the local city park, Pukekura.

First sight on entering from where we parked was this artificially created waterfall

A bit further on, we came across this old waterwheel that is still in operation

I pressed a button to activate the fountain - but its on a fifty MINUTE cycle! We hung around for a few minutes but nothing very dramatic had occurred

Views up and down the central lake

Overall, Pukekura Park covers 52ha (128 acres) right in the heart of the city and is one of New Zealand's premier botanical gardens.

After about an hour we repaired to a local cafe, had a cooked breakfast and a coffee and then headed to the last stop before hitting the road - a return visit to Te Henui cemetery

Without much effort, I managed to locate the "military" section of the cemetery, and wondered around taking a few shots as my wife perused random gravestones of the former residents of New Plymouth

Once again, more evidence of the service performed here by regiments of the British Army during the Victorian period of colonisation and European settlement

The following regiments served in New Zealand during the period;

12 East Suffolk 1860 - 67

14 Buckinghamshire 1860 - 66

18 Royal Irish 1863 - 70

40 2nd Somersetshire 1860 - 66

43 Momouthshire Light Infantry 1863 - 66

50 Queens Own 1863 - 67

57 West Middlesex 1861 - 67

58 Rutlandshire 1845 - 1858

65 Yorkshire West Riding 1846 - 1865

68 Durham Light Infantry 1864 - 66

70 Surrey 1861-66

80 South Staffordshire 1840-45

96 Foot 1841-45

99 Lanarkshire 1844 - 47

Royal Artillery 1845 - 70

Royal Navy 1845 - 70

Royal Marines 1845 - 70

The cemetery is very well laid out, like a Commonwealth War Graves site, but on a smaller scale. Most graves are of ex servicemen ie they served in WWI but died in 1962 aged 80 etc

But not all the stones are of men who lived their full span of years

That's our lot and the last of the New Plymouth pics. The good news is that we are off to Queenstown, the self proclaimed jewel in New Zealand's tourist crown, a very picturesque town in the S Island, at the beginning of May - so only about six weeks and I will have another five days worth of images to share with you, you lucky people!