When I was eight and we lived in Malaysia, my parents had a coffee table book called The Beauty of New Zealand. My favourite photo in it was the one that showed the mudpools in Rotorua. They looked like lovely big puddings to me, and so perfectly round. When we moved here in 1991, there were no mudpools in immediate sight but I remember being completely astonished that the landscape was exactly as beautiful as the book's other pictures had shown: clean bright skies and hills that really did roll as if there was something bulging all over underneath that neat green carpet of grass.
I think I began to take all this beauty for granted because it was so accessible. Coming home on the train today, I pretended I was a tourist. These two photos weren't taken on the best camera and they were snapped through a gungy window from a moving train. But it was fun and I really enjoyed myself seeing things anew.
