Sign In
David Blewitt
David is a former lecturer in Electronic Engineering who decided to take early retirement and escape the madness of working in a Further Education College. Valda is his wife, who also recently retired. Both of us decided to try out something a bit more adventurous than taking a package holiday, and set out to see a bit of the world "down under" before popping our clogs. Family living there say it is great, so we are off to see if anything there could replace Whitley Bay as the Centre of the Universe. (Not really possible, but we should look).WhitleyBayDownUnder
Travel Blog Posts
June 9th 2012
Exhausted from our previous day, we had a “chill out” day, packing our bags and getting ready for our 51 hours of continuous travel which were due to start that evening at 7.40pm. We noticed the weather had dramatically changed in Christchurch where we were only a week ago. There was 30cm of snow, cancelled flights and broken power lines in Christchurch. We were pleased that we had not planned to finish our holiday in the South Island a week later; else we would have been caught up in the bad weather.I took this as being an omen that it was time to go home, back to Whitley Bay. Our flights were booked from Auckland to Newcastle, so we had two choices, change the flights or get from Wellington to Auckland by some other method. The ... read more
June 9th 2012
Up at the crack of dawn and into Wellington with my brother-in-law before 7.30 – desirable to “beat the traffic”. David went to work, leaving Valda and I to explore and to buy our final gifts for family etc. We started off by walking around the harbour area, taking in the atmosphere of the buildings etc. Wellington has done a good job in making the harbour an interesting place to walk around. During the day we explored the shops looking for tourist gifts to take back home and found two extremes - cheap tacky souvenirs and very expensive gift shops, but found nothing in the middle. It was our fault of course for leaving things to the last minute to get our presents. We took the cable car up the hill to the Botanic Garden – ... read more
June 7th 2012
New Plymouth. Our family kindly took us up the west coast to New Plymouth, a mere 4-5 hour drive, for an overnight stay in a proper hotel – luxury compared to our rented campervan! The countryside along the east coast is generally flattish, akin to what you might find in many parts of England, so it was a bit of home from home. On the main roads of the North Island there were many more cars on the road copard to the South Island, especially as today turned out to par of a bank holiday weekend. Stopping on the way up at Wanganui we had a light lunch in a local cafe while observing a procession of old cars passing along the high street, going to some sort of rally. In general I noticed that there ... read more
June 6th 2012
WELLINGTON AND ITS SURROUNDS The last leg of our journey, staying a week with family in Wellington –David, Moana, and daughter Katrina. Day 1 was chill out day, time to reflect on what it would be like to live in New Zealand. Living costs in New Zealand. Housing -The definite plus side is that you generally get a lot more house for your money here compared to the UK. As the population is just over 4 Million and the land area is greater than the UK, you tend to get a bigger plot of land for your house. It is common, instead of buying a ready built house, to buy a plot of land in a location you want, and get the house of your choice built on it. Builders will either build a ... read more
June 2nd 2012
CHRISTCHURCH TO WELLINGTON Up earlier than the crack of dawn and a 10 minute walk took us to the temporary bus “terminus” – the permanent terminus being closed off in the “Red Zone”. At 7.00 the bus got underway. The dodgy bus heater on this cold and frosty morning meant we had to wait until sunrise to get properly warm! Even so, it was a good choice to go on the bus rather than fly, as the driver, John, gave a running commentary about the area and local history as we progressed up the island. We drove through a hilly, sheep rearing range of hills called the Cheviot Hills, which reminded me of home as we live only about 60km away from the Cheviot Hills in England. We stopped for a 30 minute break at ... read more
June 1st 2012
CHRISTCHURCH We finally returned to Christchurch, spending our last campervan night on a local campsite. Interestingly there were quite a few people using it at their permanent accommodation. I didn’t like to ask whether this was as a result of being displaced by the earthquake, or whether it was their normal home, but apparently there are many people still displaced from their homes. After packing our bags and cleaning the Campervan, we dropped our bags at Dorset House and returned the campervan to the depot. The campervan was with Apollo/Cheapa Campers, and I expected to get an instant refund of my $2700 security deposit, but it was explained that the refund was processed at their head office in OZ and may take up to 10 days to do that. Shocking that they hang on to your ... read more
May 31st 2012
AKAROA This is a town on a peninsula to the south east of Christchurch, so we had to bypass our final destination (Christchurch) to get to it, but It was worth the drive. The village of Akarua at the end of the road was the only French settlement on New Zealand in the 1800s, but the Brits negotiated a treaty with the Maori people and in the future Brits dominated the settlements. Akaroa still has French named streets and one hotelier who flew a French flag to give authenticity, but otherwise it did not seem particularly French (not that I am an expert) It was very very nice though. The Akaro peninsula was formed by three volcanoes, and two of the towns, Akaroa included, are located in the respective craters. Scenery was as close to ... read more
May 31st 2012
Westport to Akaroa Since we were making good progress, we decided to have an easy day and not clock up too many miles. We were actually quite exhausted from our travels so far and we didn't take many photos - never mind. First stop along the way was an old mining town called Reefton whose claim to fame is that it was the first town in the southern hemisphere to have streetlights lit with electricity from a hydroelectric supply. It still had a couple of historic buildings, and a steam winding engine from an old mine on display, also a railway engine. More to my heart they had a local pie shop, which sold steak and cheese pies, a combination that I have never had before so had to try. Very nice. While walking along ... read more
May 31st 2012
GLACIERLAND TO WESTPORT We decided to slow our pace of travel, and moved on north, stopping at a town called ROSS. There were big gold strikes here in the mid 1800s, and we went around a one hour heritage walk around the old mining area. The visitors centre will show you how to pan for gold, and you can buy pans and try out your gold prospecting for real in the local creeks. You might say all the gold will have gone, but there is a commercial mining company on the edge of town still mining for gold – AND, it it believed that there is $700 million worth of gold in the gravel under the town. The mining company wish to relocate the whole town to get access to it, but have been turned down ... read more
May 28th 2012
Next day, on to the Glaciers. We started off at Fox Glacier and walked to the base of it - quite impressive. We had been advised to drive in the opposite direction to visit Lake Matheson which turned out to be very good advice. A 90 minute walk around the lake gave us views of the mountains but with excellent reflections on the still waters of the lake - a must for visitors. A drive further out again, about 4km (note the local free tourist map is not to scale) gave a grand distant view of the upper reaches of Fox Glacier. Again, very impressive. Next we went further north to Franz Joseph Glacier. This is an even more impressive sight than the Fox, especially from a distance. There is a viewpoint about 10 minutes from ... read more
Tot: 0.177s; Tpl: 0.007s; cc: 11; qc: 76; dbt: 0.0774s; 1; s:apollo w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 2; ; mem: 6.5mb
© 2013 TravelBlog.org & Bloggers