Away on a Trip

 We are on a short (4 days/3 nights) trip to Christchurch in the South Island to mark our impending thirty seventh wedding anniversary. 

Immediately after landing at 8am, we picked up our rental car and headed south for Lake Tekapo. En route,  we passed through the small rural town of Geraldine,  and I noticed an interesting building. We carried on to our destination and took the obligatory pictures (these will follow in a later post) but on our return trip, I suggested to my dear wife that I might stop in Geraldine for a short visit 

British army WW2 Truck...I am sure lots of you can let me know in the comments exactly what model!

A 25lb field gun

Lloyd carrier 

Ex NZ Army Scorpion tank. The guy running the museum used to drive them, and he owns this one...which is still in working condition and is driven around on occasion.  He told me they once removed the governors on the engine and the tank did 109kmh on the Desert Road where the army has its Waiouru training area....our version of Salisbury Plain.

Two WW2 carriers Universal (Bren gun) to the left and Thorneycroft to the right

M113 armoured personnel carrier

A WW2 Russian Maxim MMG and a couple of helmets

US softskins

Vietnam era mortar in a "firebase" setting

Inside the rear of the M113

NZ soldier with a "Jimpy" = GPMG, General Purpose Machine Gun.

To give school kids a general idea of a WW1 trench

Some WW1 artifacts

A display by a local reenactment group...1 SS Leibstandarte....who would have thunk, in rural New Zealand?!

A WW1 Ambulance...looks like a Model T Ford to me...can anyone confirm,  or correct?

The sign says it all....with the odd wrong word here and there!

Probably the most modern vehicle in the collection 

The Scorpion from a different angle

WW1/Back of Beyond side arms.

WW1 French Nieuport aircraft, but don't ask me which model! I think it is a modern reproduction....a pilot flew it once...but said it was scarily unstable, and it's never been in the air again!

This is a Fokker D7.....pretty sure the guy said it was a 5/6 replica.

One last image of a US truck and  a Dingo scout car.

I have done this post entirely on my phone and a very slow and time consuming process it has been, so I am finishing up here. I will present some "Why not visit beautiful New Zealand for your next overseas holiday" propaganda in a subsequent post!

One Terrain Piece FINALLY Finished - I Think!

 Not a lot going on here at the moment, or, at least, there is a bit of construction work, but it's a slow grind and will take a while till I have anything more to report.

I have, however, finally managed to finish off the much-vaunted T34 chassis hanging from chains as it moves along the mass production line - inspired by images such as the below (dont look too closely though, as I notice I should have attached the chains to the upper portion of the vehicle, rather than  how I actually did it - call it poetic license!)

And here are multiple pictures, from every conceivable angle, of my version of this iconic scene!

I added a few figures to give an idea of scale....

The base had "rubble" paper applied first, then a layer of cork debris built up, which was dry brushed orange with the odd dash of grey

When this dried, it was all dry bushed again with white, to bring out detail and give an impression of plaster dust

Then, I added extra detailing, including card painted grey then sliced up into random shapes to represent broken roof tiles, as well as small parts of transparent hard plastic packaging to look like smashed glass.

A few of the mdf bits and pieces I bought recently were also added, then the whole lot had PVA dotted around and over the "rubble" and I dropped real brick dust and some grey concrete like dust over the whole thing, including a few spots on the green iron frame the tank is hanging from.

It took quite a while to get everything done but I am finally there I think and happy with the results although some of the errors are pretty obvious to me... but its representational and on that level, it's as good as I need it to be!

Over the long weekend just past, we did a couple of short, local walks, so here are a few images, particularly for you poor benighted northerners, heading into winter at a rapid rate!

The first walk was through the bush at Alexandra Redoubt (for more info on this piece of our local military history see here Bydand)

View over the local countryside at the start of the loop through the surrounding bush

The Waikato River flows from south to north west, towards the Tasman Sea - the Redoubt was constructed to control traffic on this, the largest and longest navigable river in New Zealand

We have had a fair bit of rain recently and parts of the track were still a bit damp!

Two views of the Tuakau Bridge over the Waikato just to the south of the redoubt

A local grave, including a military reference - oddly, I just heard that old 80's song "19" today - it obviously was not only in Vietnam that some soldiers were that age...

Walk number two was just a local "reserve" in Pukekohe - Rooseville Park.

Some really impressive bird song accompanied most of our walk - I was tempted to try "filming" to record it, but previous attempts at this have not really been particularly impressive, and often, as soon as I start recording, the birds shut up for a minute, so I didn't bother trying this time!

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope you have another 60 - 90 seconds to leave a brief comment - if you don't comment, your visit did not really happen, you realise!