To Waireka Road

It was such a lovely morning that I had the idea of going down the Selwyn River to a bridge well out on the Canterbury Plains. There I would take a photo of the mountains with the river in the foreground. Silly me! The Selwyn has been so depleted by the irrigators transforming sheep farms to dairy that even in the middle of winter it is just a dry riverbed when there hasn't been recent rain.

There were plenty of lovely views on the way home and I stopped often. I like this one showing an isolated signpost on the Coaltrack Road. Best seen large Taken at 1 pm. The sun is now high over the mountains. A month ago they would have been entirely in shadow.


There was a lot of smoke in the air. It increased the closer I got to home. I took a detour down to the Waimakariri Gorge to see if it was coming from there. Last week, down river from here, a young pine plantation was set alight, believed to be arson. It took two or three days to quell. Today's smoke came from upstream, well up towards the mountains. It smelt of sweet pine.