Wellington NZ - Vale, Dean Gifford

Early last month, I posted about my partner's cousin Dean and his battle with a brain tumor.  We knew Dean didn't have long to live then, and he died early morning on August 23rd.

I haven't been able to post for a while because we were very sad and we had to go to Wellington, New Zealand for Dean's funeral.  There was an obituary for Dean in the Dominion Post.  He was only 42 and sadly left his wife and two children, aged 7 & 5.

Dean's funeral was huge.  It was at St Mary of the Angels Catholic cathedral in Wellington city.  There were 1400 people there, standing room only in the church, and a huge crowd outside.  They even had speakers so those outside could hear the service.  The whole street was closed.  There were 500 uniformed police officers in attendance. Police officers were pall bearers bringing Dean's coffin into the church, they wore white gloves and some of them were crying.  He had the NZ flag draped on his coffin, and his cap.  An officer followed the pall bearers with a pillow bearing a police medal.

As Dean's coffin came down the aisle of the cathedral, the police Kapa Haka group performed traditional Maori funeral procedures.  It was very moving, you could have heard a pin drop.  At the end, there was a police honour guard.  The whole of the street was lined by uniformed police on both sides, including members of the dog squad, and there was a final haka of farewell to Dean.

We had a wake for Dean that evening.

The next day we went to Scorching Bay for lunch.  The weather was beautiful - normally in Wellington at this time of year it isn't.  So we were lucky.

Scorching Bay

Scorching Bay

The Cafe

Wellington Bays

Across the way

We didn't feel much like taking photos, so there aren't many to post.  However, the next morning we took a walk to the Weta Cave, part of Peter Jackson's immense studio complex in Miramar.  We were staying with relatives just up the road.  There were a few Lord of the Rings things:

Life-size Gandalf...King Kong is on the wall at the back

Gandalf

Gandalf

Lurtz - over 7 feet tall, and actually a real guy, except the feet

Lurtz is large and scary

On the walk home to our family's house in Miramar, we saw there was a regular Tea Dance at the church:

That guy has a bottle of champagne - no Tea to be seen

Hervey Bay

We were going to Hervey Bay next week, but now we're not.  We just need to change our airline tickets for another time, but I do wish we were still going next week.

So anyway, here's my previous Hervey Bay story.....

A while back, some very close friends of ours moved from Sydney to Hervey Bay.  Damn.  I miss them a lot.  For those who don't know, it's 1200km away from Sydney (about 750 miles) in another state entirely. So obviously we have to go there.  Hervey Bay is in Queensland, right by Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world and World Heritage listed.  Although I'd been to Fraser Island before, I hadn't been to Hervey Bay.  We had breakfast at an outdoor cafe on the beach.

Morning, getting ready for action

My friends live at a place called Urangan, which has a famous pier that was used to transport sugar, timber and coal to cargo boats. The pier is over 850m long (about 930 yards).  Here it is from the water, it was low tide:

Urangan Pier, it's a long walk

Also at Urangan is the Vic Hislop Shark Show.  This place is all about sharks and how dangerous they are.  I don't think it has been updated in quite some time. We learned that sharks have very small brains with only one purpose. Eating. Anything. All the time. This sounds somewhat simplistic to me, but then I'd rather not find out first hand I guess.  Just about every shark fatality in Australia was documented (well, maybe not all of them, but a lot).  We saw a lot of photos of the sharks Vic has captured over the years.  His girlfriend liked to pose in their jaws wearing a bikini, smiling. Why?  Anyway, the weirdest exhibit was a big freezer thing with glass sides containing frozen dead sharks.  Below is the frozen great white in the foreground, a tiger shark in the background I think.

Great White and Tiger shark, frozen in time

It was all a bit fishy, and it smelled that way too.  I don't remember how long they'd been frozen but it was quite a number of years and you could tell because they were kind of, well, collapsing. And stinky.  Just for the benefit of fear, the Great White has been posed with open jaws. We ran screaming for the sunlight outside.

Crikey

Thank goodness for that.  Quick let's get to the pub.

The crew

Was that shark story an error of judgement?  Either way, we went to the pub and pondered the weirdness of the museum.

We took a whale watching cruise.  To get to where the whales hang out, you need to go to just about  the end of Fraser Island, which is nearly 120kms (75 miles) long.  The weather was a bit mixed up.

On the way

Fraser Island

Fraser Island with sunshine

Fraser Island

Bleak weather

Wilderness in the ocean

Beautiful

Once we got out there, we saw some cool humpbacks.  This one is a calf...

Humpback Calf

Humpback

About to dive

Pretty close to the boat

Wow

Whale Tail

We got back into the harbour eventually

Entrance to the harbour

The Marina

Fishing Boat

 We finally got home to Urangan

Long view of the pier

And saw the sunset from the terrace

Sunset

 Wish we'd be there next week, but it's not to be...

There's a dog in there

It really is quite pathetic, but Bruce is so spoiled I had to take these photos last night.  I stayed up till the wee hours watching the Olympics Women's Basketball - Australia v Canada, and USA vs China.  It was late.  The dog was asleep and before I finally went to bed around 3:00am, I covered him up with a doggie blanket before I turned off the heat.  Well, it was a cold night, and I want my doggie to be warm.  Crikey, he is so pampered, but he doesn't know it.  That's the big beefy brave Bruce dog under that ridiculous blanket. 

Tented up

 Life is so hard

Well I've been chasing balls and cats all day

Must be too warm now, time to stretch out

Phew, I need some air

Ok, well just leave me alone now, I'm sleeping

Crashed