Turns out the trees at the back of our place weren't inside our property line after all (although one was on the line, and shouldn't have been touched). Our normal dawn chorus of birdsong has been replaced this week by chainsaws. I liked having the trees there. By ring counting I reckon the oldest were at least thirty years old. However, I am looking on the bright side. The backyard is now dramatically improved for stargazing purposes, and our view to the south has been widened.
Even though they were non native firs, and thus ideologically unsound, I don't like seeing trees fall. I would like to plant a garden of native podocarps to fill the gap.
What defines the Hutt Spirit
(Lower Hutt colours: green and gold)
This is the first of the suggested topics I'll have a go at. I have been actively pondering it since it was suggested. I think I am too close to the subject to be objective though.
I have lived in Lower Hutt for 25 of my 30 years. Wellington is my city, but Lower Hutt is my hometown. I'm not sure I can identify a particular archetype that can't be associated also with the rest of New Zealand.
The first European settlers lasted only a few months on the Petone foreshore before upping sticks and relocating to Thorndon on the other side of the harbour. Lower Hutt I think exists perpetually in the shadow of Wellington, although it could be argued that Wellington could not have prospered without the Hutt Valley to provide space for workers and industry, as well as food production.
The Hutt Valley appears to have something of a poor reputation nationally, promulgated mostly in my experience by those who have never lived there. It is said to be a tough neighbourhood, full of criminality and promiscuity, of hard men and harder women, a place of low class and white trash. Some areas may be like that it is true, but most of it isn't, which pretty much goes for any decent sized urban area in the country.
Where this comes from I have never figured out (although the Juvenile Delinquency/Milkbar cowboys scandals of the 1950's may have something to do with it), and it riles me a little. If ignorant people think I am harder and tougher than I am simply because of where I grew up, thats OK. When my hometown becomes the butt of jokes for no reason I can see it gets annoying. The Hutt Valley of joke emails and stand-up comedy is not the one I know.
I disagree entirely with the assessment of the Hutt spirit as being essentially bogan. The Hutt is no more bogan than any other urbanised area of New Zealand, no more than Levin is full of market gardening Chinese, or Seattle full of flannel wearing, coffee drinking alternative muso's. It has its fair share of slappers and mullets, but no more than many, and a good deal less than some other places in NZ. We don't have a speedway track in the suburbs like Palmy or Auckland.
The Hutt is a fairly unsophisticated place admittedly, although I think having the capital city only ten miles away doesn't help this. Wellington will always be the dominant partner in the relationship. While it is unsophisticated, at the same time it is not backward.
I think any Hutt attitude will be influenced by the topography. In my teens I often looked at the hills in the same way I would regard a prison fence; a boundary set too close, ever present and visible, and needing to be overcome. It is fairly rugged terrain in which we live.
An important part of the Hutt spirit is a willingness to travel when required. A lot of people who live in the valley don't work there. Hutt people seldom think about making a car or train journey of half an hour or more to get to say, Wellington. A lot of resident Wellingtonians (not all mind) display a marked reluctance to move beyond the city.
I still haven't done much defining. Any features of a particular Hutt attitude (hardnosed, willing to speak up, insular and outward looking at the same time, wary of change but embracing of good ideas) could be assigned to New Zealanders as a whole. I don't think New Zealand is old enough or big enough for properly discernable regional attitudes and identities to have formed, but I'm not a sociologist, so I don't quote me on that.
So in answer to the question, I don't rightly know.
Judge+Jury generously loaned me the Starfury I built him as a birthday present.
Also in a fine example of geek humour, this was spotted in a line up of tanks.
The above is a mental conversation I often have when driving to work in the morning. The road north is very tempting sometimes.
Not as dangerous as it looks. But it looks cool. 
Symbolically farewelling summer.
Typical East of the Alps driving scenery. The contrast between the wet west and the dry east is almost immediate, and quite impressive to witness. The scenery changes dramatically in the space of a few minutes, from lush forest and bush to grass, tussock and barren scree slopes.
The Pacific Ocean from New Brighton Pier, Christchurch, seeing the sea from both sides of the South Island in the space of a few hours. I have seen them both at the same time before, but I was 15,000 feet over the Southern Alps at the time, which is kinda cheating.
