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Post by corsair5517 on Feb 3, 2013 0:38:24 GMT 12
A proper, tree ripened Coxs Orange Pippin trumps all other apples as far as I'm concerned, even if they look a little scabby and odd!! Central Otago used to be the Mecca for fresh fruit with the family "doing" a run through there in late January for stonefruit, apples, berryfruit and a little fishing! Of course, all of those beautiful old trees have now been offered up to Lake Dunstan....
The dairy industry in NZ must have some powerful friends as I saw huge super farms being laid out in the Mackenzie basin with all of the attendant irrigation required; there will not be clean water anywhere there in the not too distant future! I lived alongside the Waitaki River for a year and saw a little stream called the Welcome Stream which runs alongside the Waitaki turn from a crystal clear little brook to an algae filled swamp in a year when a dairy conversion was put in upstream....
Clean and green? I don't think so!
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Post by corsair5517 on Feb 2, 2013 1:14:12 GMT 12
New Zealand milk is pretty bloody good.......... I'll bet it's not as good as the milk sold up here which is bottled on the farm where it's made; it's like the milk I remember inn NZ as a kid and I was most pleased to find it!! If tomatoes and apples are all you blokes can come up with, then I think you're in trouble!! ;D Dick Smith seems, at my remove, to be passionate about keeping jobs in Australia and is putting his money where his mouth is; good on him! It's nice to see the kiwi knocking machine is still alive and functioning....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 26, 2013 21:20:20 GMT 12
I claim some fame as have never having seen it; it simply didn't appeal and even then, I couldn't look at Cruise without wanting to spew!!! And now he's my favourite fictional character, Jack Reacher..... Hells bells and buckets of blood!!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 26, 2013 10:33:14 GMT 12
I really don't know what people expected of The Pacific, I think it is a superb piece of film making. It has finally shown that awful conflict as it really was, and not the romantic tropical paradise crap that so many films have portrayed it as before. Absolutely right!! Dad has the greatest respect for the US Marines, and the Aussie infantry, because he saw and experienced a little of what they had to contend with....
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Jetman
Jan 26, 2013 2:15:00 GMT 12
Post by corsair5517 on Jan 26, 2013 2:15:00 GMT 12
I saw him in Jersey and thought it was pretty cool, but then I saw the Lancaster..... And the Vulcan...and the F-16.....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 25, 2013 18:04:35 GMT 12
No, he's only half right; it's not only cats but, as you point out, rats, dogs, weasels and everything else brought here by humans, who are also wholly responsible for the habitat loss!
I do feel he's right about sterilisation, though, but good luck with that! If that's ever legislated for, and user pays being what it is, then there'll be many more cats dumped in the backblocks....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 25, 2013 10:24:52 GMT 12
It's absolutely bucketing down here now; fire danger not so relevant anymore but flooding perhaps an issue! It certainly is in northern Queensland!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 24, 2013 14:37:56 GMT 12
Actually, there was a Skyhawk picture that took my fancy; it was in the offices at Wigram in the museum and was of 2 (I think) American A-4s low down and flat out somewhere in the American deserts. It was a big painting/print and though I mentioned I'd like a copy/photograph of it, I was lost in the shuffle somewhere....
I'd still quite like it, to be honest!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 24, 2013 9:05:56 GMT 12
The inland islands do a great job, no question and a visit to the likes of the island in the park in Auckland and Orokanui in Dunedin is an education , I can assure you, but that doesn't address the issue!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 24, 2013 0:51:52 GMT 12
Was U-571 the one with Jon Bon Jovi in it? I've not seen it, I'm afraid....
Wouldn't it be nice to see a war film with a NZ theme to it.... Something along the lines of "The odd angry shot" or "Beneath Hill 60"??
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 24, 2013 0:41:03 GMT 12
It'd give you something to boot when you look at the pictures of Skyhawks on your wall. Wouldn't that make you feel better? BTW, anyone here that does not have pics of Skyhawks on their wall will have to come up with something better but I'd doubt that many would be without said pictures. Nope; not keen on the kero burners; I have the notes Dad took when learning to fly the Corsair hanging on my wall - he did them in script and theyre quite impressive! - as well as a copy of the Conly picture of Corsairs taking off under Mt Bagana.... Gee... talk about shivers up the spine; say Clark's name VERY VERY quietly lest she hear and come back!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 23, 2013 22:13:08 GMT 12
Really?! You fellas don't get a little tired of the whole "How we won the war all on our own" ethos that pervades these things? If you're only watching these programmes for the SPFX, then get the "Dogfights" DVDs that my boy watches; as much CGI WWII airplanery as you could wish for!! :-)
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 23, 2013 18:56:18 GMT 12
Cool... I had a look around the NASA C141A in Christchurch in about 1988; nice to see some sort of airborne telescope still flying!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 23, 2013 14:10:57 GMT 12
I'm afraid the cat lovers are being a little precious about their pets, but the fact remains that they are an almost perfect mammalian predator in a land where there are no naturally occurring controls for the ferals, and only piecemeal controls on the domestics. I, too, have shot many ferals when hunting, some very large animals indeed, and for my money are very much harder to track and kill than anything else in NZ apart from the mustelids!
However, the biggest threat to natives is still habitat and ecosystem loss, and it would be possums that are eating their food and humans using their habitat to either live or to grow exotic trees/grains/livestock that I would suggest need more than a little attention.
Morgan is just a troll looking for a reaction, but having seen what cats can do to a bird population when they get established, there is more than a grain of truth in what he says. However, we can never go back to the way NZ was; we need to learn to manage what we've got left and that includes all pet owners - dogs and cats!! - taking ownership of their pets behaviour; they are predators and we should never forget that.
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 23, 2013 10:14:52 GMT 12
Being a lover of NZs birds, and having stayed on Tiritiri Matangi and seen and heard kokako, hihi and takahe, I kinda agree with the sentiment, but once the cats are gone, there's the mustelids, pigs, deer, rats, mice and possums to look at!
Man's just aiming at the easy target!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 22, 2013 15:19:59 GMT 12
Recovery in 88 or 89.
No, I don't think it was a fatal; it was very low and very slow and just sort-of fell into a tree from what I was told!! The pilots I believe were Army blokes on a photo exercise and they both got out OK. I'm also sure that the engine and one or two other bits were salvaged at the time.
Once again, I'm dredging my memory here and the info I'm remembering may well be apocryphal!! Besides, that particular organ is prone to failure nowadays and probably needs re-booting!!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 22, 2013 15:14:18 GMT 12
An easy way I've found of resizing is to run the photos through your email program and choose from "Small, medium, Large or original Size". This works on a mac when running iPhoto; unsure or the protocols for a PC.
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 22, 2013 10:02:49 GMT 12
What I was told all those years ago was that it was parked in a tree in the late 50s/early 60s on an Army co-op exercise - I shall check with a colleague - and yes; the wreckage went to Wigram, though I took a small piece of wing leading edge as a souvenir!
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 20, 2013 11:23:45 GMT 12
Oh, my word.....
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Post by corsair5517 on Jan 19, 2013 10:58:16 GMT 12
I've been out of NZ since 2009 so don't know the ins and outs of what's going on there; in fact I never did, but I wondered at the time how on earth they were going to get these a/c up to any sort of display standard as apparently all the volunteers were in that day, and I think I saw 5 people all told! However, the a/c are under cover and, okay, they may be in a parlous state, but what's the alternative? Would you willingly give up your history if it meant the airframe was to go away and never come back? I thought not!
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