Back in Invercargill

tony
August 28, 2016
Black&White / New Zealand / Street / Subantarctic / travel

Sunrise at the end of our journey. Stewart Island and Foveaux Strait in the background

We woke to a smooth sea and pastel palette punctuated only by the orange of Edin’s orange beanie and the life-rings on the rails. The end of an expedition is always a time of quiet reflection tinged with sadness. Final moments on the ship that we have become attached to as a familiar home and facilitator of amazing experiences and final moments with fellow travellers that have shared the life-changing experience and that we may never see again.

Reflecting on a shared adventure. Edin's second return from the Subantarctics. Her experience from her first trip really helped me make the most of my visit — Reflecting on a shared adventure. Edin’s second return from the Subantarctics. Her experience from her first trip really helped me make the most of my visit

Passing the large anchor chain sculpture that mirrors one on Stewart Island symbolically linking the South Island to Stewart Island, we turn into Bluff Harbour and are soon offloading to a waiting bus after a photo and farewells.

Entering Bluff Harbour. Anchor Chain sculpture on the left

Back at our starting point in Bluff Harbour. Alumnium ingots from the Tiwai Point smelter.

A short trip unblurred by motion sickness medication but obtunded by the sadness of an ending has us back into Invercargill and disembarking at our starting point, the Kelvin Hotel. Due to flight scheduling and costs, Edin and I spend the day in Invercargill before heading back to Rotorua via Christchurch in the morning.

An ocean of roofs. Not an Albatross in sight.

Invercargill is like a time warp, just with better coffee. I had first visited 25 years ago and hadn’t been back since. Nothing seemed much different except for the occasional cafe with good coffee where in the past a lunch bar with filter coffee was the norm. Despite this old world quietness and slow pace the sensory overload of bright colours and busyness was a bit of a punch to the senses after 2 weeks of a muted natural palette of blues, greens and tussock yellow. The purple eye-rings of Auckland Island Shags, red/orange Snare’s and Rockhopper Penguin bills and the yellow highlights on a Buller’s Albatross bill felt like the brightest things we had seen.

Zookeepers had good coffee but the colour overload felt like a punch to the senses after the muted tones of the Subantarctics.

Anticipating the feeling of dislocation I had planned to look forward to some Southland street photography so we walked some good miles exploring the wide streets and grand architecture of Invercargill.

St. Mary's Basilica — St. Mary’s Basilica

St. Mary's Basilica detail — St. Mary’s Basilica detail

South African War Memorial, Invercargill

Photos with Fuji X100s.

Monochrome images processed with Macphun Tonality. I have recently started to use this as an option along with Nik SilverEfex Pro2 and am really enjoying the interface, preset options which are easy to customise, and especially, the option of layering and masking different conversions, a process that has previously required repeated roundtripping through SilverEfex and layers with masking in Photoshop. Nik has the advantage of being free but this means it is unlikely to be updated and Macphun is doing some really good things with their plugins which I am happy to support. Unfortunately they are currently Mac only but they will be porting their HDR plugin, Aurora, to Windows so may release Windows versions of their other plugins in time too.