On Saturday, we caught an Air New Zealand flight over to Sydney to meet Dan and Nat (on holiday) and Neil and Lisa (who still live there). After a quick stop at our hotel we met everyone at the revolving Summit Bar on the 47th Floor of the Australia Square building, for cocktails (and beer) with some amazing view over the city. After drinks we walked across the city past the "Domain" where the 'Homebake' Festival was taking place. This was, predictably, being headlined by Crowded House, which we knew about, but tickets had sold out so fast a couple of [View Full Entry]

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Last week was Canterbury Show and Cup week and accordingly we got a provincial public holiday on the Friday for "Show day". The Royal New Zealand A&P Show took place over three days and was visited by Princess Anne. There was also a whole raft of events including big horse racing events including a harness racing day (which is very popular down under). Actually, we didn't take part in any of it, because Def Leppard were playing in Auckland - so we'd booked flights and hotel and got out of town as soon as we could. One has to get one's [View Full Entry]

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Here are just a few photos from a couple of weekend days out - Halswell Quarry Park, the Port Hills and Taylor's Mistake (Sun 2nd Nov) and then our return trip to Willowbank (Sat 8th Nov) - this time with fully charged camera as promised. Halswell Quarry Park is an old quarry that is now...a park! Taylor's mistake is a great surfing beach near Christchurch - and our mistake was not discovering this place sooner! Willowbank wildlife reserve is great and indeed has riverbanks and willow trees. [View Full Entry]

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We took off for our second weekend camping jaunt - this time to Hanmer Springs for the Labour Day long weekend. We arrived at the 'Top Ten' camp-site on the Saturday afternoon and the weather was fantastic - the sun was shining and we needed to set up our new 'beach shelter' in order to escape the heat. We anticipated having to sleep outside that night due to the tropical conditions... After a quick jaunt into town for lunch and to pick up some supplies we headed back to finish setting up camp just as the rain started. Someone had joked [View Full Entry]

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We finally bought a car and as a result we also bought a whole load of camping equipment and headed north to Waipara for the weekend of Tim's birthday. Waipara is the nearest wine region to Christchurch, and at less than an hour's drive is an amazing place to have on one's doorstep! We set up camp on Saturday lunchtime at 'Waipara Sleepers' a BBH backpackers where you can sleep in old railway carriages, right in the heart of wine country. After the tent was up and all our other kit was verified as working and being complete we set off [View Full Entry]

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[Finally managed to use the panorama feature, so the picture above is of Mount Cook and stunningly blue Lake Pukaki]. We hired a good car and headed down the south coast for the weekend to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary. On Friday night we stayed over in the quiet town of Geraldine, which was a few hours out of Christchurch and had a good meal in the local pub and a walk around the town in the dark. Starting out on Friday night gave us the headstart for Saturday's drive down to Oamaru. We had hoped to stop a few times [View Full Entry]

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I took my mate, Bobby Dave the Kiwi Pukeko on a weekend's adventure to a very sunny Sydney, Australia, which after all is where I was born, but I live in New Zealand now (having spent many confusing years upside down in England). We didn't meet any other Wombats or Pukekos, but we met some Minah birds who were quite chatty and we saw a big snail and were nearly sick on the spinny rides at Luna Park... Bobby Dave was a bit scared at first as there are more humans in Sydney than the whole of New Zealand but quickly [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend, in order to celebrate our anniversary (we met 14 years ago!) we took the spectacular 5 hour Tranz Scenic Alpine train trip from Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass to Greymouth on the 'wild' West Coast. From Greymouth, we picked up a rental car and drove 3 hours up the coast, literally to the end of the road at Karamea. We managed an estuary walk before it became completely dark, stayed overnight in a typical Kiwi hotel ('The Karamea Hotel') and then did the whole thing in reverse on the Sunday...well, we had to get back to work for monday morning! [View Full Entry]

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If you were reading this blog in 2005, you may remember our efforts to see the highest mountain in the Southern Alps (and indeed Australasia) and our repeated thwartings by cloud, rain and weather. Back then, we were beginning to think that anywhere marked on the map as "Aoraki/Mount Cook View" was either part of an elaborate conspiracy or the perpetuation of a cruel joke. Well, on Sunday the weather was incredible, and we headed out via the Mackenzie country, through Geraldine and Fairlie, first to Lake Tekapo and then the brilliant blue Lake Pukaki...an [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend, we had our first visitors, Ann and Tom, from England. We had a night out in Christchurch (after going to see Lenny Henry at the Town Hall) and then on Saturday drove up to Akaroa for the weekend. We managed to get a good walk in before Sunday, when it started raining and didn't really stop all week. New Zealand has been hit with some pretty bad storms and there have been states of emergency declared in several areas. This weekend, we weren't really expecting the rain to stop, but it did and the sun came out, so we [View Full Entry]

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