Xmas in Arrowtown/Queenstown

We have had a great time so far in the Arrowtown / Queenstown area. We have been able to spend some good time with Pauline and Rob and their families and we have also managed to get out and enjoy this blissfully perfect weather. Too hot for some but a very pleasant summer for us.
We were thrilled to be given a helicopter flight br Rob and Tetli as a thank you to Warren for the help he gave them building their house. We flew up onto the snowy mountain where we stopped off for a little while. We flew back to Queenstown over Lake Moke which is in one of the photo's above.
In the few days here we have paddled on Lake Hayes, walked around Lake Hayes, cycled along Arrowtown river and up towards Macetown and also cycled around Moke Lake. It feels like a glorious summer holiday.
On Xmas day we managed to talk to family who were not here with us and that was also great.
I have also just had confirmation that the position I applied for in Tauranga is going to go ahead so at the end of January we will be back behind the wheel of DREEEM (now complete with a peice of wood on the accelerator for short legs) and heading back north. The new position (Project Manager)starts mid February and is a one year contract so we will enjoy the Bay of Plenty for a year and being located near the Tauranga family.
The only drama of note in the last few days was loosing all our air in DREEEM on our way into Queenstown on the Friday afternoon before Xmas. We were lucky that it happened once we had reached Frankton and not on the Devils staircase around the lake edge and we were also lucky that there was a sober diesel mechanic who was able to reconnect a dislodged airline on the side of the road.  We are planning to head down to Niagara Falls for New Year so will be back in touch after that.

Merry Xmas

Merry Xmas everyone. Let's hope it's a safe and enjoyable one for all. We are spending this Christmas with Pauline and Rob and their families in Arrowtown and then plan to move off to explore a bit more of the Central Otago region.
DREEEM has a block of wood on the accelerator now to allow me a more comfortable sitting position. I was given short leg genes I think.
We plan to be away from this Friday til after New Year and should be back in touch then.
Roll on January and a visit from Tony and Claire!

First Rally

Thanks Southland division of the NZ Motor Caravan Association for making our first rally outing a great one.  

We have just returned “home” from a weekend away at the NZMCA Park over property (POP) at Niagara. It’s been a good weather weekend and the rally was our first since we have been down here. Yes, we’ve been here nearly a year but to be fair we were unable to move from our winter pad due to the ground being too wet and soft, then of course it took a few weeks to get our COF. Never mind, they say better to start late than not to start at all.

There were over 20 motor homes attending the 3 day rally and it was a good chance for us to meet other motorhomers from down here in the south. As with all people we have met and interacted with here they were very welcoming and friendly.   We spent much of the weekend meeting and talking to new friends. Morning teas, raffles and happy hours took up the day time and in the evenings we sat around an outdoor fire built in a converted diesel tank.

Only 2 weeks til Xmas break which will see us heading up to Queenstown and thereabouts for about 10 days. Warren is desperately in need of a break from work, he has been reroofing a 24 x 7 metre shed and it’s been a shock after a winter of hibernation.  The list of non aching muscles exceeded the list of aching ones. There were 4 sheets of iron to go on Thursday when he stopped work for the weekend.

Burt Munro Challenge

We have been following the Challenge. Not that we are really motorbike enthusiasts but it’s hard not to get caught up in the hype of it all and we actually found the racing quite exciting. Sadly the beach race was cancelled due to gale force winds. Yes, it is still wet and windy down here much of the time. Yesterday however was a nice calm day and the street racing at Wyndham was well attended and there were a few spectacular crashes as you will see in the photo’s. (Coming soon)
We are still based at the Amble on Inn Motor camp as the ground is still quite wet and soft where we were previously. In the interim we are making the most of the closer proximity to town and spending a bit of time biking and walking, weather permitting of course.  We have only 2 months left on this work contract at Southland Hospital and at this stage don’t have plans for what we do after that. There are work options here but we have made no commitment yet. Yes, you got it, ….the weather!

Moved out of the swamp

We tried to move out of our current spot on Sunday as the ground appeared to be drying out and the weather forcast is for more rain. We moved about a quarter of a tyre turn and then the tyres spun in the soft slippery ground.  Stuck!  So after a discussion with the neighbour, the tractor was brought over and on Monday DREEEM was "assisted" back onto the road. We really needed a COF, an updated registration and some LPG.  Today Warren has managed the LPG but failed the COF as the man with the checkerboard noted a broken leaf spring. Apparently we need to have one made and the guy who can make and fit the thing is busy for a few weeks so we have settled down in a motorcamp just 2 kms from the hospital. Probably a great location for walking to work (apart from the weather forcast).

Tui's in our back yard

Mustangs and Maple Glen garden tour

                                     

If it’s a herd of mustang’s then that’s what we saw last weekend. At least 150 inside  the Velodrome at Invercargill and another 20 or so in the car park outside. What a thrill (for one of us anyway) to see so many beautifully restored and polished Mustangs some of them of the fabulous 60’s era and then progressively through to the 21^st century models.  Mostly they were from Mustang car clubs here in Southland, Canterbury and Waikato.  That was Saturday, then on Sunday we visited the Maple Glen gardens east of Wyndham. If ever there was a garden to visit it is this one. I am sure it’s the nicest garden I have ever seen. It was a beautiful day and with Rhododendrums and camellia’s in flower covering 25 acres it was magnificent. I see they have a website so a quick look there is worth while if you can’t get there in person.

Pictures from the weekend

Yesterday was one of those glorious fine Southland days where the air is so clear you can see for miles. We continue to explore the region by car doing day trips as we’re not confident yet to take DREEEM out. The ground around us is drying out nicely but there is more rain coming so it’s safer to stay put for a bit longer.

We went to the Riverton car display and craft market on Saturday. Riverton is a small town on the river mouth on the southern southland coast. The car display was of classic cars – maybe a smaller version of “Beach hop”. Well the amazing thing is that classic cars are cars we have all owned in the past. Of course there was a very strong American car theme down here which suited one of more than the other. Sunday saw us heading to the Gore Rhododendron festival, a picturesque craft day set in the block in the centre of town which is the garden. As Gore is the country music capital of NZ (according to locals) the entertainment was really appealing. With the glorious weather  we decided to head back to the Mavora lakes to take some photo’s. You might remember we tried to get in there in the winter and were blocked by the snow. The extra miles took us past the Air museum just east of Gore where we stopped for a quick look and a lovely lunch. The photo of the train is also taken at this site.

Check out some extra photo’s I have entered in previous entries.

Dunedin

We have just come "home" again after a fabulous three day weekend in Dunedin. We have been meaning to explore up that way sometime and this weekend seemed like the one. We firstly went along the northern side of the Otago Peninsula and "discovered" Carey Bay. Of course that meant stopping at the Carey Bay Hotel for a drink. We thoroughly enjoyed the coast road and Aramoana and the Sealion on the sandy beach. We shopped and dined, then visited the Otago Peninsular. The visit through Larnoch Castle was rather over priced but a oncer and the photos and scenery from there were stunning. We went all the way to the Gannet colony at the end and saw nesting birds and some seals. Today we drove home through Lawrence which is a quaint little old town which began as a gold mining town and has free wifi all through the main street as an attraction to tourists to stop. of course we stopped for coffee and wifi.
Photos to follow.

Warming up

Following our 10 days in the North Island we have returned to a much more comfortable climate down here. Spring must have arrived while we were away. We have been able to do away with some of the insulation we have been using to keep the motorhome warm, we’ve opened up the “climb-through” into the cab and that adds a feeling of more space. We also found yesterday that it was warm enough to leave the door and some windows open all day – what a change!

Overall we have wintered the cold better than we thought. Our efforts to insulate the windows, door and pipes have all been worth while. We are well prepared now for future winters, although we do still think that walls on our awning would be a good investment one day.

Work continues to fill most of my week days and so our adventures are weekend based at the moment. We spent Saturday with Edel and Peter doing the Catlins River walk. We took 2 cars so that we had one at each end and walked from one to the other along the river through Beech forest. The walk took 5 hours (including lunch stops) crossing the river 4 times on swing bridges.  It proved to be a good work out for us as we plan to do more day (and maybe longer) walks while down here.  Needless to say we didn’t go far on Sunday.

Trip North

We have just returned from a glorious 10 day trip north visiting family. We flew Queenstown to Auckland and reverse and had a chance to relish the warmth of the sun as well as enjoying the company of all of our family from Auckland, Clarkes Beach, Te Puru, Tauranga and Cambridge. Thanks to all of you who put us up and put up with us. Special thanks to Tony and Claire for the use of "Bumble", the cramper van. He proved very reliable and certainly enabled us to get about.  Our last day's travel started with a walk to the train station from Craig's, the train trip to Britomart, a bus trip to the airport, a flight Auckland to Queenstown where Rob picked us up and then finally a 2 hour car trip home.
Today it's raining in Invercargill - are you surprised, ...and I was given half an hour warning on return to work that I was required to speak to Mr Tony Ryall (Minister of Health) on the Pre-admision project that I have been running here in Kew Hospital. No pressure!

August update

Well we are in the midst of winter here, the ground is very wet from rain / hail / snow and there is little drying from the sun but springs coming. We know this as the days are getting longer. It's no longer dark going to and from work each day.
The bikes and kayak are hibernating but we did get the tramping boots out again last weekend and walked the tracks on the Bluff hill for 3 hours.  We also appreciate the Splash Palace swimming pool in town with a hot pool and sauna, good on cold days.
We have just bought a slow cooker so if any of you have good recipes to share we would appreciate some.
On the first day we put a beef roast in and it was so good, moist and tender and yummy.

Key Summit

We took the road in from Te Anau toward Milford Sound and parked the car in the car park at the divide.  The climb up through the bush was snow packed and several tree’s had fallen across the track making the progress a little slow. Clearing the bush line we came out to a spectacular snowy mountain landscape. We stopped for lunch after an hour and a half and after a short break made it up to Key Summit.  The 360 degree views of the surrounding mountains and lakes were well worth the climb. What an amazing place all made more impressive as we had been lucky enough to pick a clear sunny day with little wind.  Thank goodness we went yesterday as today is bitterly cold here with snow and sleet showers all day.

Sunday drive

What with all the rain we’ve had, getting DREEEM out and about is not possible due to the wet land between us and the road so our adventures are car based for the winter. This last weekend we took a drive to see Lake Mavora which is off the Lumsden to Te Anau road.  Of course we had just had a week of sleet and hail and so it came as no surprise to see progressively more and more snow as we travelled north and higher in altitude.  However, we weren’t expecting to have to turn back within the last kilometre of reaching the shore. The snow was too deep for the woggie car to navigate. It was however a beautiful day and we were impressed with a local Invercargill family, Mum, Dad and 3 kids who were towing and at times winching their caravan in to the lake edge, through the snow and past fallen trees, to spend the school holidays away from the crowds. They had taken two 4x4 vehicles, one with a trailer and a winch and the other towing the caravan in.

We went on to Te Anau to get photo’s for Sue of the Lake Te Anau with snowy mountains in the background only to find the town in the gloom of cloud, fog and smog from all the chimeys puffing away trying to keep the locals warm.

We headed south through Manapouri and on to Lake Monowai which was in the sun and so managed to get a few photo's which I'll load here as the vodem allows. As we drove in to Lake Monwai we had that "we've been here before" feeling and figured that it must have been at least 16 years ago when we hired a camper van for a tour down here. Of course those trips are always fast and you see so much that unless there are lots of photo's you tend to forget much of it.  Never the less, it was very pretty as you can see in the photo and as it was getting late in the day we didn't stay long.  

Next weekend we're off tramping.....watch out for more photo's.

Queenstown winter festival

As usual we made a last minute decision and on Friday decided to come up to Queenstown for the festivities. Despite there being no snow, there are many people in town and lots of good entertainment, none the least is people watching.  We arrived in time for the very impressive fireworks display on the lake edge, great for all apart from a 3 year old grand daughter who didn't appreciate the very loud thundery bangs as the fireworks explode. The visual was spectacular, the best I have seen for a very long time.  Each day we have walked into town from Rob's which is only a short stroll in to town, today we watched the crazy folk who enter the birdman competition and try to fly off the wharf into the 12 degree lake water. Crazy but great fun to watch. The jetboat racing was fabulous and we were standing far enough away not to get showered in water. One of the smaller jetboats sunk with 5 people and a dog on board which halted the show for a while as they scooped them up with rescue craft.
It's back to work for me tomorrow but Warren plans to stay on to spend the week helping on the building site which is Rob and Tetli's new house.

Stewart Island

We have just been to Stewart Island for the weekend, the first time to the Island for us. Stewart Island is an eco-tourism destination known for its thriving bird and marine life. We left home with Edel and Peter on Saturday morning, a cold windy morning with hail stones still lying thick on the ground from the overnight fall. The comfortable trip across on the ferry took an hour as we motored at 22knots in the Real Journeys catamaran.  On arrival to the motel where we had booked another hail shower hit, this time the hail was horizontal but thankfully brief and the sky cleared for us to take a boat trip across to Ulva Island, a bird sanctuary with very nice walking tracks. No-one lives on the island and so for the 4 hours that we were there, we were the only people there. The first bird interaction was with wekas on the beach. They are flightless birds also called wood hens and about the size of a domestic chicken.  They came running up to us and provided good photographic opportunities for Warren as they showed no fear at all and followed us about.  There was lots of other bird spotting, some birds we had not seen before such as the South Island Kaka, a brown parrot with a grey head which we also saw in the town feeding from the veranda of a local house. We stayed overnight and then after a wander about “town”, a pub lunch and a game of pool we headed home. The ferry trip home a bit more exciting with 50 knot winds through the Foveaux  Strait and a 3 metre swell. How we appreciated being in a bigger boat than Scot Free!

Back home now we plan to settle down a bit for the winter, although this week Warren is off to Queenstown to help build Rob’s new house.

Winters coming

The hail stones that fell through the night are still frozen on the ground this afternoon.  The weather forecast says we should get a high of 11degrees but the temperature display in the car says 1 and in town says zero so it’s a bit chilly!

It’s raining and the locals say if you wait for the weather to be good you will never get out and do anything so yesterday we donned warm clothes and rain coat to go for an afternoon walk on the South coast. The whole idea was to support Peter who has just had his varicose vein surgery and needs to walk.   It was a good walk along the coast and back via a forest road and the hot coffee afterwards was great.   On Friday Warren and I packed our tent and walking shoes and headed out to Hauroko Lake. We had a good walk along the lake edge and part way up to the lookout but we’ve still got a bit of the north in us and we decided late in the afternoon to pack up the tent and head for home, largely due to the rain and cold.

There is still a lot for us to do here and we have plans to head up to Queenstown next weekend for Warren’s big birthday and then the following weekend we are going over to Stewart Island taking advantage of a locals discounted fare offer on the ferry.  We had quite a list of things to do while here and surprisingly we have been here for three and a half months already so we can’t let the moss grow. Having said that DREEEM catcher might not be going far for a while as the ground between us and the road, which is probably 50 metres across the lawn from us, is very wet and soft from the rain. Our house could be settled here til it dries out.

Work is going really well and I am enjoying both the organisation and the people. It is much less stressful and being part time is great. 

Apologies to all who think we have vanished from contact. Our internet coverage is very limited. We find our phone connection variable and of course need the 3G for internet access.  We can still pick up emails and text on the iphone so long as we wait for the signal to come in so you can still get us.  I also check the emails from work but don’t tell them.

Otago Rail Trail

We have just had a fabulous weekend in Central Otago with Peter and Edel Kretschmer.  We left home Friday morning and drove to Clyde, the start of the Rail trail journey.  Cars were parked and baggage labelled for the shuttle to deliver to our accommodation each night, Warren collected the passport for stamping at the stations along the way and we started out on our trusty bikes.  Initially it was quite cool and we hadn’t gone far before some of us added gloves and another layer of clothing. These lasted only until the day and the bodies heated up somewhat.  Those of you who have completed this journey will appreciate the beauty that Central Otago, from what was a previous railway line, has to offer and being autumn the colours of course were really spectacular and reminded us of Wyoming in the fall.

We were very lucky that Peter had booked a perfect weather weekend.  Cool mornings, clear days and no wind.  Since our booking was at relative late notice, our days were longer than some as there is limited accommodation along the way. The trail is 155 kms long. We left Friday and had booked the shuttle trip back for Sunday, “be there by 2pm for loading”, we were told, so we really only had two and a half days.  There were plenty of scenery stops and photo opportunities along the way which doubled as rest stops, during the first 2 days. Cycling through the gorges we went through tunnels, over rail bridges and viaducts and also stopped off at historic sites along the way such as the original site of the E H Hayes engineering works (where every farmers wire strainers were made).

We were very pleased to have spent time training for this and it certainly showed. We “smoked” many of those in front of us each day as we maintained a steady pace.  Sunday we left a bit earlier and were on the trail by 0830. With less scenery on this last 55kms we made very good time and covered the distance in just over 3 hours.  What amazed me was that the shuttle took two hours to drive us back to Clyde!  That really put the distance we had travelled into perspective.

Luckily we had no mishaps along the way.  The bikes and the bodies coped well and the satisfaction at the end was huge.  Our passing message -  If you think you will do the “Rail Trail” one day, you need to get on with it, you won’t be disappointed!