Friday 30th October

We appear to have bought a house! Not only that, as within 6 hours of buying it we seem to have found a tenant to take over the last 4 months of the lease we had on our rented house. This means that from Sunday for about 10 days we'll be camping out (with friend's camping gear) in our 'own' house until our container arrived on 11/11. Exciting times - photos and more blog to follow.....

Bank Holiday Weekend

Our last free weekend before we take possession of the house on Friday. After that it will be painting and decorating, mowing lawns and all those 1001 little jobs that we’ve escaped since being here. This renting lark has a lot to be said for it! We’re all very excited about it though, can’t wait till our furniture finally arrives in November - apparently the container is in Sydney at the moment!

We decided not to take the opportunity to go away for a couple of nights, but planned some day trips out from here. After all, when you all come and visit we’ll need to know where to take you! The 'wobbly' bridge over the Waikato was not for the feight hearted... and the 'beware of the bogsleigh' sign was slightly confusing...

I managed to injure my back at the stables on Saturday morning, so our planned kayaking trip was possibly not the best option. What else….? Aaah, obviously, the hot spa pools at Te Arahoa. Bliss!

The hot water also forms the “world’s only soda geyser, rising some three metres form the ground.” So we waited, (Lana tasted the water) and waited and waited for this amazing sight. Was it worth it? You be the judge!!!

The waterfall and stream in the Kaimai Hills was pretty spectacular though.

Great news, Miranda has started laying again – in fact she’s getting very possessive over her eggs and has to be coaxed off them with some tasty titbits! One of the little white bantams kept going missing, or so we thought, but we’ve now discovered her secret nest under the hen house.

Oops, I managed to get a speeding fine – but it was definitely Richard’s fault as I was going to pick him up from work when it was raining too hard for him to cycle back. If he wasn’t such a fair weather cyclist, I’d be $230 better off! I’d better keep a closer eye on the speed limit zones in future though– I could have sworn I was in a 70kph zone, not a 50. OK, so I was clocked at 77kph, but 10% over isn’t too bad. I’m not going to work out the real percentage!

We haven’t written much on the blog recently, but the day-to-day stuff of going to the supermarket, taking the kids to school is the same wherever you are. I still haven’t managed to get a photo of the girls in their summer uniforms, but if I wait a little longer, maybe they won’t be expecting it and I'll get one!

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.....

So, we woke up to…anyone like to guess…
More rain! Mum has a theory that it never stops! However soon it was nice and sunny (yay) and we all trotted off to the Tamahere market. We were astonished to find that a chicken coop and two chickens were worth $49…then we realised it was $490…slight hiccup there! Anyway we carried on through the endless stalls of glass plates, knitting, plants and dairy products until we miraculously found that we had ended up at the fudge stall! Always a good thing! After tasting as many tasters as possible, we bought some rocky road fudge, caramel and…BAILEYS! Yumm! (My favourite). After that we went to an antiques fair, as it would have never been forgotten if we did not go as Kirsten would continuously go on about china horses that she may have been able to get there. There were none! (Hah)

In the evening we had a lovely barbieQ with our friends Dean, Nola, Mark and Dani. Charades wasn’t the best game to play after a big barbeque!

Sooo that was Saturday.

The lovely morning sun (!) came through my window this morning! About time! However you can guess what that lovely sun turned into… rain. :-(

Kirsten and her friend had Alice In Wonderland rehearsals at school this morning and me and mum met up with a lady who needs a horse looked after for her! :-) (In the rain)
The pony is called Holly and I am now in charge of here at school for a while! This means going to make sure she’s okay everyday and also this involves some riding! :-) Yay

I had an interesting ride today; you can tell she’s a mare because she’s always changing her mind! One minute we’re going fine, next minute we’re trying to go the other way, next minute were going backwards, then she decides to have a little bit of a bucking fit! So… she’ll need some work but hopefully soon we’ll be able to get her going good!

Lana

Chicken update – and another busy weekend.

Miranda’s days might be numbered. What’s the point of a chicken that won’t lay any more eggs – however cute she might be? Meanwhile her two little white friends managed 3 eggs between them today so they obviously don’t want to lose her and hope we might not notice the difference between Miranda’s whoppers and their little offerings. No chance!

We drove up to Auckland on Saturday to see an old friend from Botswana, Gayle and her family. They’ve been a great source of help and advice since we got here, but this was the first time we’ve actually seen each other. Even more exciting, our best friend from Botswana, DarylAnne, was visiting from Australia. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other for nearly 10 years, the years rolled away in minutes, and we had such a lovely time together, shopping, eating, reminiscing – all in the rain of course!


Whilst Chris pottered around with the ladies Richard and the girls explored some of Auckland's beaches, collecting shells and generally chilling out.

While we were enjoying ourselves, so was Gimmick, the ginger cat. He’d clearly been out hunting in our absence and decided to welcome us home with the gift of a baby rabbit. Unfortunately it was both dead and in the shower – but I’m sure the thought was nice! Richard, never a cat lover at the best of times, now refers to him as the Bunny Murderer.

We had a lovely potter round Hamilton Gardens this afternoon, between the showers – a huge complex of beautifully laid out lakes and gardens. It will take many more weekends to visit them all and we haven’t sampled the tea rooms yet, so we’re definitely due another visit. Of particular interest was the 'Grasses of New Zealand' area where about 12 different types are laid out - just what I'll need to practice on with my sit-on lawn mower....

So, back to school for the girls tomorrow. It being the summer term, that means in regulation stripy shorts and red sandals. If the sun doesn’t come out they’re gonna freeeeeze! Oh well!! I think they’re looking forwards to spending time with people their own age and making more new friends – and I’m looking forwards to a quiet house. I’m hoping to sneak a photo of them, but think I’ve got even less chance than last term in their kilts!

Lamb update - not only have the neighbours sheep been shorn but we think that the lambs have been separated from the ewes today as there is an inordinate amount of 'baa-ing' coming from the garden next door........

She'll be coming round the mountain.....

With a week of the school holidays complete it was time to head off to explore more of New Zealand. The plan was to head off at first light Saturday and drive down to the snowfields on the slopes of the Mount Ruapehu. Unfortunately the rain hadn’t stopped all night and had woken us up several times, by 5am we were peering over the weather and skiing forecast web sites to see if we should just go back to bed and give up on the idea. By 5.30am we decided that even if it was going to continue to rain we might as well set off, so we got the girls up and by the time it got light at 6:15am we were driving down Highway 3 towards Te Awamutu. Miraculously the rain had stopped and as we headed south passed some dramatic and lush hills we could even see the occasional patch of blue sky.

Two and a half hours in we passed the turn-off to a spiral loop on the main railway which allows the trains to climb up onto NZ’s central plateau. As we arrived at National Park (which is a place name) as well as the entry point to the Tongariro National Park we could see the sun shining on the snow on Mount Ruapehu. The Photo shows what the resort was called - 'Wh' in Maori is pronounced 'F'....

He white fuel guzzling Nissan (which is now averaging 20 mpg and rattles at 90kph!) slowly got us up to the ski area and we donned the warm clothes that our good (and only) friends Nola and Dean had lent us. Not being skiers we signed up for a beginners class and togged up with skis, boots, sticks (except Lana), sun glasses and hats we descended the chair lift into the Happy Valley nursery slope. The slope is in a gully on the side of the mountain, there were sobering warnings posted just above the urinals informing the any gung-ho skiers that these gullys were channels for the mud and lava flows should the mountain decide to erupt whist we were skiing- Mount Ruapehu being an active volcano which seems to do something every 10-20 years. The advice was to get out of the gully if you heard the Eruption Detection sirens – there was also a disclaimer saying the Eruption Detection system was not 100% reliable – enough to distract you from the purpose of your visit (see above to remind yourself of where the poster was displayed).

Anyway, we lined up with our instructor Georgia who in two hours soon had us sliding, snowploughing, falling over, bunny hopping and taking part in a slow-motion slalom. Lana was the star pupil having skied for an hour at the Milton Keynes Snowdome – anyway we were let loose on the gentle Happy Valley slope and for the next three hours we made our way down the hill (I fell over on every descent) and more scarily (especially for Kirsten) we zipped back to the top on the chair lift. It was rather like running round to have another go of the slide at the children’s playground in Warwick! Not only did I fall down on the way down but I also fell over every time I tried to ski off the top of the chair lift – much to Lana’s amusement.

Despite the horrendous weather forecast we had bright sunshine until we packed away at 3pm – no broken bones, but sunburnt noses and a warm glow that we had all managed to ski for a bit without making complete fools of ourselves.

As we drove away we got the first proper sight of nearby Mount Ngauruhoe which I’d seen from the air a couple of week before. It is a truly awe inspiring view and apparently has one of NZ’s best one day walks across it, there is also a 42km mountain bike trail nearby – one for me to go back to I think.

Driving back we stopped at the Huku Falls at the outlet of Lake Taupo. The long channel made for the world’s fastest game of Pooh Sticks (less than 1 second) with the whole Waikato river leaving the raging ravine and dropping into a broad river to head north past Hamilton and off to the Tasman Sea. The Lake was formed when 750km3 of volcano (culdera actually) blew its top 26,500 years ago – If my A Level maths serve me right that is enough ash to put a 5mm layer over the whole planet – I think it is one of the largest eruptions ever recorded.

We had thought of staying over a night and skiing again on Sunday but I think we made a good choice returning on Saturday as there was a dump of 50cm of snow on the Sunday and many of the roads were closed and over 100 cars were abandoned on one of the roads out of Taupo.

Sunday rained (surprise surprise) so whilst Lana and Chris went to the Waikato Home & Garden Show Kirsty and I ventured back to Mitre10 DIY Heaven to check out the sit on mowers. Apparently the 22HP 42” Whyte model comes with a free trailer and a mulching plug as well as a hose attachment to automatically wash the three sets of blades…….. Sounds just the job. Added to this its cutting deck is linked to the cast iron front axle so it lifts over uneven ground. It was a good job Kirsty was taking all this info in as I was flummoxed……

So there we have another weekend down under........ house buying still progressing scarily well.

Richard