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The Tail End of the Donkey: A Kiwi Summer Memory

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A whimsical storybook illustration of three girls riding a donkey on a New Zealand farm at sunset. The youngest girl is sitting on the back facing the wrong way and holding the donkey's tail.
NZ Farm Nostalgia — Girls Riding a Donkey

At first glance, this illustration looks like a charming storybook scene — three girls on a donkey ride at sunset, golden light on the hills, native New Zealand cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) standing tall. But for me, it's a direct window into my mother's childhood.

A True Story from Grandad's Farm

Mum and her older sister used to spend their summer Christmas holidays at their grandfather's farm in rural New Zealand. It was the classic Kiwi upbringing — long days outside, freedom to roam, and warm summer evenings.

A neighbor's girl down the road owned a donkey, and naturally, Mum and her sister wanted to ride it. They would pile onto its back for trips down the farm tracks. But there was a distinct pecking order — and my mother, being the youngest of the trio, was always allocated the "tail end."

As the image captures, while the older girls got to face forward and steer, Mum was made to sit right on the donkey's rump, facing entirely the wrong direction. Her job was simply to hold on tight and not slide off as they trotted along.

Holding On Tight

That look of concentration and slight apprehension on the face of the littlest girl at the back? That's Mum just trying to stay on. And in a way, it feels like a small metaphor for how she lived — facing whatever direction life put her in, holding on tight, and getting through.

I hope you enjoy how NZ Farm Nostalgia captures the specific geography of a New Zealand farm at sunset, but even more, how it preserves a funny, very human family story that might otherwise be forgotten — a tribute to those endless summer days at Grandad's.

Available at Redbubble

The image is available in my Redbubble shop in both vertical and horizontal formats to suit different products. If you're looking for something that would make a great companion for a lazy New Zealand summer holiday, this would be the perfect NZ farm life jigsaw puzzle.

👉 NZ Farm Nostalgia Jigsaw Puzzle

View all my work on Redbubble by searching @kornkobart.

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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