The town dentist scoots by on his little motorbike. on a typical relaxed business day in the main street of Cromwell, beside Neville Hucklebridge's Four Square store, in 1978. Most of this street is now underneath Lake Dunstan, which was formed by the Clyde Dam on the Clutha River. The shops were demolished before the lake was formed.

Although I had no intention of staying the course with blogging and only wanted to get broadly acquainted with the WordPress system on behalf of someone else, I’m still playing with it! If I were to carry on with a blog of my own, what would it be about? My interests are pretty diverse and few people would be interested in everything I do or have opinions on. So I guess specialisation is the thing. But which speciality – that’s the thing.

Today I had fun going over old haunts in Cromwell, Central Otago, using Google Maps’ Street View, which has just launched in New Zealand. We lived in Cromwell in the late 1970s.

While we were living there I produced a two-projector dissolving image slide show (moderately advanced at the time), for the Cromwell Information Centre. Goldmining featured in the programme, but the production studios in Christchurch had no suitable background music for the slide sequence. So I had to compose some hostelry drinking-type music on the spot and play it on the studio’s bad upright piano. Click on the player below to hear the result.

During my years in Cromwell I started to take an interest in photography and here are a few of my images of local scenes. Most can be enlarged with a click.

Hoarfrost on a weeping willow in Cromwell, winter 1978.