We’ve spent the last 10 days in indolent laziness (!?) looking after Robyn’s home in Blenheim and her darling little 16 year old Burmese cat Kassia. Last time we were there Kassia was rather wary of Penny but this time they simply ignored each other which meant a more harmonious household altogether with all of us watching TV in the evenings – Dave and me in comfy chairs, Penny in her bed on the floor between us and Kassia alternating between our laps.

I did take full advantage of a large washing machine to wash all T5’s bedding, mattress protector, etc., not the sort of stuff you can do when on the run. I also did a small amount of gardening and some baking and Dave mowed the lawn. But mainly we read and caught up on all the internet videos we are unable to watch with our expensive intermittent internet access on the road, and I did some much anticipated family history research and took photos of some glorious sunsets.

We didn’t even venture out much apart from the occasional shopping trip and two quick drives to Picton to see the jeweller who is redesigning my wedding and engagement rings to make one composite ring. One of the stones came out of the engagement ring and I was told the whole setting was so worn that I would soon lose more. My fat little ring finger can only carry so much, I do sort of envy the people who have about 5 rings on one finger!

The vineyards everywhere are green, green, green; most have had top and sides haircuts and many are now sporting netting veils or skirts as well. The methods used do seem to vary from vineyard to vineyard, possibly from grape variety to variety as well. Despite our plans we didn’t manage to have another vineyard lunch, and the 2-for-1 pizza night at the local Renwick pub was booked out.

After 10 days it was time to head back to Christchurch. We opted to travel via the St. Arnaud-Murchison-Lewis Pass route from Blenheim. I don’t think I have travelled the first part of this route before, i.e. Blenheim to St. Arnaud NOT via Nelson. It is very different to the Kaikoura route, initially through miles and miles of vineyards where I could sometimes see black grapes practically dripping off the vines.

The only break in the monotony (but it’s nice gentle monotony) was a stone water trough at Marchburn with a story. It had resulted from a local settler mentioning at a meeting in 1915  “….the inconvenience caused to settlers and the general public by the absence of water on the  road between Waihopai and the Wairau Valley. “ The cost of erecting a windmill, tank and trough was estimated at 30 pounds, part of it raised by the settlers. Some time after it had been completed, “ A three year old boy who had been missing from a nearby Accommodation House was found safe and well three days later at this site.”

It is a far less twisty route than the coast one but there is one mountain range to overcome before Murchison, close to the Rainbow Ski Area and just before one leaves official Marlborough and enters Tasman. These photos were snapped from the moving car, as usual we cannot stop easily when towing T5. One photo missed was of some covered hay bales – in soft pastel colours! Yet another flavour for the marshmallows-for-baby-dinosaurs?

We made an overnight stop at Murchison. The NZMCA POP is becoming more and more popular. The first time we visited there were only a few other vehicles, now the park is more than half full and this is midweek and off-season. The old stables next door have been reopened as a junk shop (they call it the Dust & Rust Vintage Store) with several interesting old vehicles and other stuff outside. I should have taken photos in the evening when the sun was behind me rather than these morning shots.

Inside is very interesting with lots of quality junk-antiques for want of a better word, at very moderate prices. Old farm tools but also old household items, typewriters, china, beautiful coloured bottles,  vinyl records, books, dolls. What I liked was the merchandise was spread out rather than all crammed together in overwhelming fashion as at the other junk shop in the main street, the one every visitor to Murchison sees. One had time to examine and think and also move around rather more easily!

Next day, on to Hanmer via the Lewis Pass. Somewhere around Maruia we spotted more marshmallows in the deep turquoise-blue first (and only) seen near Riverton in Southland. No pinks though, and no rainbow colours.

This is an avenue of poplars to the north of Maruia. Already the leaves are getting sparser and just starting to change colours, and it is only the second day of Autumn.

A zig-zag track of cows….

We stopped for a coffee break just past Springs Junction (we do not have fond memories of our last meal at the cafe there):

And so to Hanmer. We thought there was a fire on the horizon but it turned out to be just a dust cloud. Strangely, several days after we left Hanmer there WAS a huge fire, and quite close to where we were camped at the NZMCA POP near the Hanmer River bridge.

After a couple of days enjoying the late summer ambience and the hot springs, it was time to move on, but not before we did a little blackberrying. Huge, juicy fruit. Where? Shhhh! Close to the Hanmer River.

We are now in our familiar haunt – the chestnut orchard northern Christchurch.

Finally we were off again, heading for Blenheim and another homesit for Robyn and her adorable little cat Kassia. We were delighted to find the Domett Station cafe open, it has been closed the last two times we’ve been past and we feared permanent closure, but the same wonderful chef is still there. Note to self: do not travel that way on Tuesdays, it’s not open that day!

We also spotted the latest colour/flavour in marshmallows for baby dinosaurs – black. Liquorice or squid ink? Who knows?! Dave did start to question the unwrapped bales of hay that we saw occasionally – what are THEY in grandchild-speak?

We settled in at a POP in outer Blenheim, next to friends Graeme and Barb who were the reason we’d left Christchurch earlier than planned. Dave went on a bike ride or two with them. 

On Sunday we all enjoyed a delicious salmon salad at the Hunter Winery Garden Restaurant, the first winery restaurant in Marlborough (1984). Hunter’s Wines in Marlborough is one of the pioneers of the Marlborough wine industry. Established over 30 years ago. Jane Hunter is the most acclaimed and awarded woman in NZ’s wine industry, with an impressive set of accolades.

Car parking is under some elevated vines, probably remnants of an  early vineyard before growing methods changed. The huge grape clusters were just starting to go through veraison (changing colour). According to Wikipedia, “As the grapes ripen, the concentration of phenolic compounds like anthocyanins replaces the green color of chlorophyll in the grape berries…. during veraison which may last from 30–70 days depending on the climate and other factors, the grapes go through several changes which impact their sugar, acid, tannin and mineral composition.”

Later when I took Penny for a walk along the road near where we are camped, right next to one of the St. Clair vineyards, the same abundance was visible but the grapes there were all still green.

Opposite St Clair vineyard is a memorial commemorating the first crossing by air of the Cook Strait, in 1920.

While at the Hunter Winery we were admiring the work of the artist in residence, Clarry Neame, when we learned there’d been another big quake in Christchurch – 5.7. I hope it does not mean we will have to get our house checked again before the renters move in.

On the way home Dave surprised me by saying we might as well pop into the chocolate factory on the way ….. enough said!!

This POP is popular …. here is one of the long-term residents, “Old ‘n Dazed”. Someone lives in it but it hasn’t been on the road for some time. T5 is in the distance. Although lots of caravans and motorhomes have rather twee names, occasionally a clever one is spotted. I always forget to note it down though!

We shift to Robyn’s driveway tomorrow and start ten days of  home sitting.

We stayed at Peski’s for four  days, making sorties into Geraldine when the weather wasn’t too bad. We regretfully gave the 1882 Cafe a miss (“next time”) but did go to view an amazing recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry. Made from million tiny pieces of spring steel, the teeth of patterning discs from an industrial knitting machine, stuck to heavy duty sticky tape, polished with black boot polish – yes really – and then hand painted with the teeniest paintbrush, one tiny tile at a time, it is a real labour of love. Created by Michael Linton, it took 20 years plus a further five years for Michael and his daughter to research, design and create the ‘final section’ of the mosaic. Only eight colours of paint were used, as in the original tapestry, and the whole mosaic measures 42 metres.  www.1066.co.nz

We bought an interactive DVD-ROM which describes the Bayeaux Tapestry in detail, plus it has many other features including lots of mind-bending puzzles. Have you ever really checked out all the figures and animals in the top and bottom borders, not to mention the main figures which tell the story? All are described minutely on the DVD-ROM. Here is a small sample, I hope I’m not breaching copyright posting this very small section – see the website for a photo of the whole. The central figure is Earl Harold of Wessex. Harold was King of England from January 1066 until his fall at the Battle of Senlac on October 14 1066. He is mounted on a palfrey, which is also  described in detail.

Back at Peski’s, Penny told us there was a dog in the mobile home which had recently arrived and set up near us. But it wasn’t just a dog – it was two glorious German short-haired pointers. what’s more they were dripping wet, not so much from the rain but from having a swim in the nearby creek! They reminded me so strongly of an old friend’s dogs which took me for a walk (not vice versa) in Melbourne some years ago. A great reminder that it was more than time to get in touch with my old friend again (which I did, and we’ve exchanged several emails since and REALLY caught up on news of our respective families).

It was time to get back to Christchurch and do some gardening in preparation for yet another Open Home as we try to sell our home of five years. We stopped for coffee at Ashburton. For years we always stopped at the Blue Cafe at Tinwald but it has now closed. However the large Robert Harris cafe near the Christchurch end of the main street has proved very good, with wonderful pastries and usually space to park, even T5.

Back home we parked in our old driveway, the tenants have gone and the house is empty, so we could use the shower and also store some gardening equipment in the garage temporarily. There was quite a bit of gardening to do, all the rain had certainly had effect. It was very nice to be back in my garden for a while, I have missed it very much while on the road. A neighbour popped over to check out who were were, a gesture we appreciated.

Since writing the above we have decided to withdraw the house from the market, put the tenants back in for nine months while we take off to explore Australia, then after that we will move back in for several years while we do some renovations.

It was very pleasant catching up with old friends and renewing acquaintances with the neighbourhood. We were just in time to bid the long-time local chemists goodbye as they are retiring. Penny and I had a pleasant walk visiting our old haunts, how some of the trees have grown.

We decided to return to Geraldine via the coast road through the Catlins rather than through Balclutha, not stopping until we were nearing Invercargill and spotted a sign saying Lignite Pit Cafe. What?! It turned out to be a cafe/camping ground/gardens complex built on the site of an old lignite open-cut mine.

Although the cafe was not officially opened at that time we were warmly welcomed and coffee prepared.

While Dave chatted with the owner I wandered around taking photos (what else) and admiring a very thick locally produced book which detailed all the local families and activities over the past hundred years, obviously a labour of love as well as a work of art. It made me wish one of my ancestors had come from that area!

And so off again heading north and bypassing Invercargill, hopefully but as it turned out in vain leaving the threat of bad weather behind us. We got as far as Ranfurly, mostly in the rain, then just a little further on reached the famed Hayes’ Engineering Works & Homestead at Oturehua where we had camped last year. I did not see over the Heritage-listed Homestead and Works at that time so this time determined to do so. My camera chose that time to run out of battery power and I realised too late I’d forgotten to recharge my spare battery. So most of the photos below were taken by Dave, some at my direction. The cafe people very kindly allowed me to recharge both batteries in the cafe; we did not need any excuse to return repeatedly to the place, the food there is really delicious.

There was only one camper van staying overnight like us and it was home to a lovely Foxy-Jack Russell cross girl called Chewy. I could not get over how Chewy was a sort of hybrid of Penny and  those of Mac the Jack Russell who we looked after in Tauranga last year; she displayed marked traits of both. It was uncanny.
There is a lovely atmosphere at Hayes’. There are very few restrictions and one can wander around the old factory and office at will. Ernest Hayes was skilled at the lathe, anvil and carpenter’s bench, and all are still there … he made tools for fencing, shearers and for pest control, and made more than 400 windmills. The workbenches were littered with wooden patterns (moulds) from which steel parts were cast (mostly in Dunedin) then returned to Hayes’ for assembly. The factory ran from 1902 to well after 1950.

There were several local volunteers trying to get the clutch on an old electric motor which drove the main shaft to the whole factory to work again. The charming waitress at the cafe lived on a farm nearby. The cafe itself is a recreation of the original sun dried brick cottage in which the Hayes family lived for many years. Mrs Hannah Hayes “… was arguably NZ’s first ravelling saleswoman, in full skirt and on a bicycle, rode into the far-off Mackenzie Country with a catalogue and order book in hand while her 12 year old daughter looked after her eight younger siblings.” Eight!

A couple of visiting cars caught Dave’s attention:

The Homestead was full of quirky things reflecting on the owner-builder being an innovative engineer. It was built from sun-dried bricks stored under tussock during WW1. An electricity system brought power generated by the peloton wheel which also supplied nearby homes – this was years before the national grid was switched on. When the Hayes switched off the power for the night it was lights out for all the other homes too.

On the morning of our departure I could not resist a last visit the Hayes’ cafe and bought two cake slices to enjoy later. Also a tiny pot of Arnica ointment  – I tried the Tester yesterday and was pleased with the result.

We stayed at Hayes’ for several nights, making a day trip to St. Bathan’s to see the Blue Lake which was definitely not blue on that grey day.

Approaching the Lake from above, we were horrified to see two grown men helping two very young boys to scramble up the last few metres to safety. The cliff is extremely crumbly, signs warn of the danger, so it was the height of irresponsibility of those men (father and son) …..  Dave said something suitable to them and one responded “It was steeper than we thought” (!).

Leaving Hayes’, our route was decided by a coin toss. Left would lead us back to Ranfurly, Mosgiel and up the coast; right to Alexandra, Cromwell and thence to Tekapo. Right won.

We stopped for a coffee at a cafe and I spotted this sign:

I have always loved the drive from Alexandra to Cromwell  along the river, particularly when the autumn colours are at their finest. But it was only high summer (??), so all the poplar trees were green and the craggy slopes which line the Clutha river a dull brown-grey. It’s still a lovely drive.

We didn’t stop in Cromwell but continued to the Lindis Pass, again looking different to usual, actually more green thanks to the rain. The northern approach to the highest point of the Pass had far more lupins than I remembered, but pale counterparts of those near Tekapo – or was it just the overcast sky? Later as we passed Tekapo it was difficult to see any lupins at all, they had just about finished.

One notable feature of that day – no more classic cars on the road! Ever since we left Christchurch we saw literally hundreds of old cars ranging from polished Classic to very old Vintage chugging along; they’d been in a huge rally all around Otago. It was wonderful to see so many cherished old vehicles and we didn’t mind (much) being stuck behind some of them for miles. My right arm became quite sore from being frequently elbowed by Dave as he drove along: “There’s another one!” There were several at Hayes’ for close-up admiring.

Lake Pukeko was at its turquoise bluest, but with a strong wind at the headquarters, Mt. Cook remained invisible. I never tire of the views of this fabulous lake. One essential – you must have polaroids to appreciate it fully.

There’s a new feature outside the Pukeko Information Centre:

We decided to keep going as far as Peski’s at Geraldine. I wrote about this place a few (?) blogs back. It is a lovely restful place offering power, showers, chooks for all our veggie scraps, and a washing machine; also home-made jams and pickles and if we were lucky other treats straight from the garden. The perfect place to hole up while the rain pelted down. It even has a dump point for our grey and black water tanks.

On one of the finer days we drove north through Balclutha towards Lawrence, trying to keep to the back roads, and a little past the bridge to Clydevale came to the Tuapeka punt on the Clutha river at Tuapeka Mouth, the only punt of its kind in the southern hemisphere. It looked fascinating. It uses the flow of the river to cross from one side to the other, with one man operating a fairly complicated looking set of ropes and one large wheel. 

A sign advised us that the punt only operated between the hours of 8-10am and 4-6pm river level permitting. As it was then about 11 am we determined to continue to Lawrence then return via the road on the other side of the river, cross over on the punt and continue ‘home’ to T5.

The punt was officially opened on 22 February 1896, with 336 passengers and 255 horses being carried in the first month of its operation. The mind boggles. Tuapeka Mouth was an inland port for about 30 years until 1939 for paddle wheel steamers to and from Balclutha.

We continued on to Lawrence through beautiful sheep country with views of distant misty hills (it rained lightly almost the whole day)…

… and just outside Lawrence stopped to admire the site of the old Chinese Camp, founded in 1867 when Chinese were forbidden to live and work within the town’s boundary. With time the camp expanded to have about 100 people. The hotel, still standing, was said to be one of the best wayside hotels in Otago. The owner was a Chinese man Sam Chew Lain, who married a Scottish woman, and it chiefly catered for a European clientele. A Chinese ghost is said to have been known to successive hotel occupants.

Lawrence is chock full of cafes and semi-antique shops (“don’t call us junk!”) and full of lovely old buildings with olde worlde gardens.

The original gold-rush town, it was the home to school teacher John J. Woods who composed NZ’s national anthem. There’s a sort of statue of him, and several other town notables, in the main street. There’s an interesting little local museum, worth a visit. I spotted a whole banana-crate sized box full of local family histories, some obviously prepared many years ago. i wonder if any have been digitised and/or a catalogue prepared.

After lunch we went on a little further to Gabriel’s Gully, site of NZ’s famous gold rush. there are many walking and cycling tracks in the vicinity, and a lovely lake.

it was a little difficult, looking out over the green valley, to imagine it as it was in the gold rush heyday. Within a few months of the first discovery, thousands of mining holes chequered the valley as far as the eye can see.

But we couldn’t wait to get back to the punt! We arrived just before 4 pm and soon saw the ferryman arrive and methodically get everything under way. We were the only passengers, just as well really, also no way could we have done it with T5 in tow. I will let the photos hopefully tell the story. The ferryman was kept busy the whole time, everything was done manually.

After a few days behind a motel in Invercargill we hitched up T5 again and took the old coach road inland and east to Owaka via Mataura and Clinton (the Five Horse town – which I described in detail in a much earlier blog, so we didn’t stop to take photos this time). Not far from Owaka we settled in at the Hillview Camp Site, surrounded by grassy hills.

Nugget Point and its famous lighthouse were minutes away. I last walked the track to this lighthouse in 2000 clad in full bike riding gear including borrowed boots too large for me…. so it was a far easier scramble this time (!). It’s quite a long track winding along the top of the cliff cliff with incredible drops straight down to the sea where seals could just be spotted lazing around near  the rocks at the foot of the cliffs.

There were many more seals in the rock pools among “The Nuggets” which extend out to sea but we did not see any yellow-eyed penguins which are also feature of the area. The Point is also said to be the home of many other seabirds including gannets and spoonbills.

The views from the viewing platform beside the lighthouse are breathtaking. A little beach way below the lighthouse keeper’s house may have been his children’s playground, but how to get down there? The house can just be seen in the upper right hand corner. The lighthouse was built in 1869 and is 76 metres (250 feet) above the water. It was automated in 1989.

We also visited Kaka Point itself, a small tourist village offering “excellent swimming and surfing” – when the sun in shining(!). Even though it was mid January the beach was practically deserted. Road signs cautioned drivers to watch for penguins and fur seals crossing but we didn’t see any.

Cannibal Bay was our next stop on yet another grey cloudy day, beautiful and deserted at the end of a long narrow gravel road which twisted and turned around a headland while offering tantalising glimpses of the sea far away. A lone tree on the cliffside above the beach shows the force of the wind. A couple of oystercatchers kept the seagulls company on the rocks.

I am nearly up to date now – only two more blogs to catch up on!! We are currently back in Christchurch ….

I started typing this blog sitting in the ute waiting for the ferryman … no, I’m not about to hop off the twig, we are at the small vehicular punt at Tuapeka Mouth on the Clutha River between Balclutha and Lawrence. It’s drizzling slightly but otherwise lovely and warm, quite a change to the last few days when a very cold wind kept the temperature down.

We spent over a week in the Catlins, it’s going to take several blogs to describe it all. Yet we only saw a small part of the whole, mainly due to the weather.

When we left Oamaru we drove via Balclutha and Owaka to the eastern part of the Catlins where Dave thought the newish NZMCA camp of Niagara Falls was situated. Actually it is much closer to Waikawa so T5 thundered along the narrow never-ending coastal road in unremitting but thankfully mainly light rain for what seemed like hours, past many enticing vistas not worth stopping for in that weather. We finally reached the camp and set up T5 for the next few days. This was a very convenient place from which to explore the Catlins free from the encumbrance of towing a weighty caravan on the narrow twisty roads. A huge cabbage tree guarded the camp site.

Niagara Falls in NZ, named by a surveyor with an obvious sense of humour, are a little different in size to their North American counterpart. The river was the early settlers’ river-highway and many built their houses along the banks. They took their wool by punt from Niagara Falls to be loaded onto ships at Waikawa. The Maori name for the falls is Mangai Piri referring to the manner in which migrating lamprey eels wriggle up the falls in a mass, using their suckers to hang onto the rocks.

Driving in to Invercargill for the day, the number of ‘permanent’ white-baiting huts along the banks of the Mataura river was amazing. Some were actually on the other side of the road from the river and were even equipped with TV receivers. The main road goes over the Titiroa Stream where there are even more permanent huts. Obviously the sound of traffic does not scare off the whitebait (!).

Many of the roads in the Catlins are lined by toitoi and giant flax, the latter at this time of year all sporting huge red-brown flower spikes. Flax is also used for shelter belts instead off the more usual clipped hedges.

The grass everywhere was a brilliant green, unless it had already been harvested in which case the golden fields were often dotted with pale green ‘dinosaur eggs’, mostly stacked in neat rows with gaps between them, in contrast to the tightly packed caterpillar rows of other parts of NZ.

Near Riverton one day we spotted the latest fashion colour in marshmallows (the big ones used to feed the baby dinosaurs when they hatch …. as a friend was informed by her grandchildren).

On a day when the weather was more promising than usual, we headed back east on the main Kaka Point road, stopping off to visit McLean Falls some way before Papatowai. Named after Alexander McLean, grandson of an early Fencible recruit from Ireland who arrived in NZ in 1848. He was a farmer of considerable ability, never married, churned his own butter and made his own bread. He was also very artistic. he was very hospitable and always made visitors welcome, hence his name became attached to the Falls.

The track to the Falls would through beautiful bush (a blurred photo can give atmosphere, right?) to the lower part of the falls called the Chute, then upwards via a very narrow slippery track on which only Dave and Penny ventured.

Here’s Dave’s photo of the Falls proper:

Further on still heading east we decided to give Lake Wilkie a miss, also Cathedral Cove which we have both seen on earlier visits to the Catlins and anyway the tide was wrong for a visit. Instead we stopped off at the Purakaunui Falls. Not large but very beautiful.

We only went a little further that day, to Owaka for lunch and then a visit to the famed museum. A well-labelled display of early tools caught my eye. Do YOU know what a rabbiting adze looks like?

The shipping section had many artifacts from wrecks, of course, but it also had some interesting information such as about Captain Catlin (1792-1856) and Tommy Chasland (1797-1869), ”The best whaler in New Zealand ….  who spent a lifetime on sealing and whaling ships as well as several shore-based whaling stations. His strength and legendary telescopic vision was a useful attribute for a sealer and whaler. “

We drove back via Catlins Lake which is not really a lake but a saltwater tidal estuary, with old jetty piles from the 1870s ….

… and Florence Hill lookout from which one can view Chasland’s Mistake where en route from Port Chalmers (Dunedin) to Melbourne on 4 Dec 1876, the SS Otago was wrecked. All passengers and crew survived. The area overlooked by Florence Hill is considered a special place as it is the only place left on the east coast of  the south island where native forest fully covers a catchment from hilltops to sea. Ancient forest with trees over 1000 years old grow right down to the seashore, and large unmodified estuary wetlands line the Tautuku river.

Back to a nice dry T5 – we’d had enough of the rain for a while.

After a few days in the driveway at No. 40, and having survived an identity check by a neighbour (good for him), given the garden a good watering and enjoyed a couple of long hot showers, it was time to move on.

The things you encounter on the highway ….. like the vintage car which burbled along and held up miles and miles of traffic, and a house …

We settled in at the NZMCA park at Oamaru A&P showgrounds, a huge open space with only a few other caravans/campervans for company. In a van nearby were two dogs so Penny soon had some new friends.

The day we arrived was fine and hot, a perfect summer day. The next day was unbelievably cold with a wind straight from Antarctica, or so it felt! NZ’s changeable weather at its best.

A visit to the Steampunk museum seemed in order, but first we wandered the old Oamaru precinct. it has such an old-world feel to it, I always expect to see ladies in crinolines and gentlemen in stove pipe hats – as indeed there are but only on Festival days. We really will have to time our visits better. There are some very enticing shops, and also a plethora of old bookshops where it is lovely to see old books and magazines spread out in enticing displays instead of all jammed together as in post-quake Christchurch. Lots of bargains too.

We also had a brief look at the waterfront and discovered a number of veteran and vintage cars, which we later learnt were on their way to a big rally in Dunedin. Among them was a shiny black Chevrolet with whitewall tyres which had Dave in raptures as it was almost the same model his father had owned many years ago, except that this one was a coupe.

The museum – well, what can one say. Dark and mysterious and fairly enticing but only just. The one magic thing was the Portal; you enter through a controlled doorway and for about 4 minutes stand mesmerised by a magical display of coloured lights.

More stuff from inside the museum:

Outside in the yard was more, including our new car, and some gigantic flies on the wall:

One of the best displays is at the front of the museum, a gigantic steam engine – sort of. For 2 dollars you can get the monster to emit some flames and clouds of steam. All very well on that freezing day but by then all I could think of was some hot coffee and – yes, really – a shared bowl of hot chips. Just the thing.

Next day we thought to visit the Library so we could catch up on various Facebook videos and post a blog. Which I did. We returned to T5 via the Whitestone cheese factory and succumbed to a herbed muffin with a generous portion of melting brie inside. which was just as well because when we returned to T5 we could not find the door key!!! AND only that morning I’d been reading in a blog about someone who’d lost a hearing aid and had a whole camp-full of people searching for it (yes it was found eventually, stuck to the underside of the car dashboard). No such luck with our keys, but at least we did have a spare set. After retracing our steps to the library and cheese factory and visiting the police station just in case, we had a new set of keys cut which will be kept in a “safe place”.

After a quick revisit to the police station next morning we were off heading for the Catlins. It rained most of the way so no photos (so far!) but we are hoping the weather forecast for the next few days is accurate.

We were not intending to do another homesit for a while, but spend a quiet Christmas in Christchurch with Dave’s family. But a personal message to us from the kiwihomesitters website was so enticing that when I showed it to Dave he just said a slightly reluctant “Yes”. The message began with … “A sanctuary in the country but not too far from the city of Christchurch. Our home in a park like setting needs an amazing couple to enjoy its spaciousness while we are away for two weeks ….. the stars at night are glorious out here…. come and relax or enjoy a project to two around the place.”

So that is how we ended up looking after a lovely lifestyle-block type home and animals at Swannanoa just to the north of Christchurch for two and a half weeks over Christmas. One old border collie named Scott, 6 young cattle, 10 goldfish and 4 chooks plus a large garden all seemed happy under our attention.

Dave was kept busy shifting the huge irrigation sprinklers and occasionally the cattle, and feeding them barley mash every evening. He got the ride-on mower working again, and twice took a small trailer to collect more barley mash from a neighbouring distributor. Mash is the dregs from beer brewing – which still smelled and probably tasted of beer – was it just that which attracted the cattle so much rather than us?

One heifer took a liking to Penny and followed her when she chased her ball. Hilarious.

I was happy feeding the chooks, so nice not to have to throw out all our stale bread, vegetable scraps etc – no compost bin with a caravan – and pruning the roses, working the veggie garden and occasionally pulling a weed or two until my back started to complain. It was glorious to have such a huge kitchen to play around in, with a full sized wall oven and a dishwasher. Also being able to use a huge en suite with big walk-in shower every day!! Plus there was unlimited broadband.

We held a lunch party fort Dave’s sister’s birthday, it was a dull rainy day so our plans for a garden party setting were thwarted but the big farm table easily seated the nine people who attended. The chooks were supplying lots of huge eggs so I made a quiche as well as a big chocolate cake with sinful ganache icing (half dark chocolate, half cream) topped with a big fistful of raspberries from a nearby farm. The raspberries, strawberries and cherries at OUR farm had by then been seriously depleted, mainly by the owners and their four boys I hasten to add.

We became so familiar with the surrounding countryside through drives to Rangiora (mostly) for shopping that we began to feel like locals. We investigated a swimming hole on the Waimak but did not venture in.

A few times we drove into Christchurch to check out developments in the city and visit Alison. There’s still a long way for the city to go to become beautiful again. I just wish “they” would make up their minds about the Cathedral. At least some old facades are being retained although what will be built behind will doubtless be a trifle more modern. Graffiti flourishes, some not all so bad.

Meanwhile sale of our Christchurch home has stalled; despite four Open Days there were only two low offers and we have decided to hang on a little longer in the hope that post-Christmas things will improve.

Currently we are actually parked in the driveway of our old home, now untenanted, while Dave mows the lawn and we do some tidying up of the garden and a few other odd chores like repairing a toilet roll holder which had mysteriously become detached after the tenants had departed, and bits of extra cleaning here and there. The garden is responding strongly to some occasional watering by us over the last month, it’s amazing what a little TLC (and some rain as well) can do.

Our plan for the next week or so is to head south via Oamaru (and the Steam Punk Museum) for the Catlins before the big tourism rush in February starts. Until our home is sold or we decide to withdraw it from sale and put tenants back in, we cannot plan very far ahead. We still hope to tour Australia for at least six months next winter.