Lights out on the Mainland
This time last year, I was living in Sydney and run off my feet. I vowed to myself I’d never have another years’ end like that and I haven’t. Why? Because sometimes the only person who’s going to tell you what’s what is the one staring back at you in the mirror. I was exhausted and as I found out later, quite unwell.
It’s true what they say, a mirror has two faces. Usually, there’s the one you’ve conjured up in your mind and the other that is more truthful! In my experience, you don’t want to ignore the one that’s staring back at you from the mirror because it can be a really bad look. A bad hair day has nothing on it!
My cousin Isabella, Bella or Izzy (she answers to them all) made me smile today. We were visiting with each other and she wanted to know where all the lights and people were. I smiled knowingly. She’s fresh off a flight from Australia’s Gold Coast and just six years old. It was an astute observation. You see the nights here in Hawke’s Bay are darker than pitch, in fact if you held your hand a mere two inches from your face and you didn’t know that’s where it was there’s a good chance you’d run into it like one of those salon doors in a spaghetti western on the back-swing.
Bellbird and Swallows Cottages
It’s the same as Bellbird Cottage and Swallows Cottage in Mill Valley on the Central Coast of NSW. The nights are black-as there and it can feel like you’re a thousand miles from anywhere. My friend Susie White-Hall Pope owns both these great B&B’s where I used to find myself gravitating to whenever I needed both head and physical space.
There are no phones. It does have television and CD facilities but really and truly you rarely touched them. Both of the houses are decked out with books in almost every room and of course that was one of the biggest drawcards for me. That and them being located 10 mins drive from the centre of the Hunter Valley. Read, wine country.
Here on a clear night “the constellation of stars that stands out is Orion (pronounced /ɒˈraɪən; often referred to as The Hunter) one of the largest, perhaps best-known and most conspicuous constellation in the sky. Its brilliant stars are found on the celestial equator and are visible throughout the world. Its three prominent “belt” stars of medium brightness in the mid-section of this constellation make this constellation easy to spot and globally recognised. From mid-northern latitudes, Orion is visible in the evening from October to early January and in the morning from late July to November.
Orion (Greek Ωρίων or Ὠαρίων, Latin Orion) was a giant huntsman of Greek mythology whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion. In Greek literature he first appears as a great hunter in Homer’s epic the Odyssey, where Odysseus sees his shade in the underworld. In Homer’s Iliad Orion is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals; he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn.
Orion
The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, according to this version, Orion was the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus, the lame smith-god had his forge.
Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him; Orion carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion’s wrath. Orion’s next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero’s death, added the Scorpion to the heavens as well.
Tautoru
In New Zealand, among some Maori, this constellation is known as Tautoru who was a renowned bird hunter. The stars are in the shape of one of his tools, a mutu kaka or bird snare perch. These perches were one of the tools that Maori used for catching birds. The perch was rigged with a noose made from string. The string went down to the ground where the hunter waited out of site. When a bird landed on the perch the hunter pulled the string that tightened the noose around the bird’s feet. The perch was fastened to a vertical shaft that was then tied to a tree. The tip of the perch was then baited with a flower. The star Puanga was the bait.”
All of this may have been quite beyond Bella but when a child asks you where the light has gone it certainly pays for you to have something up your sleeve. Me, I had a light show story about a hunter, what would you have told her?
