Recently we received a surprise email from an Auckland friend – could she come and stay with us in Christchurch and hitch a ride to Kaikoura to inspect and probably buy a tiny little vintage Austin tourer circa 1927? But of course! And so it was arranged. We were keen to see Kaikoura where there… Read more

I’ve been cleaning up a huge selection of old emails dating back to 2002, preparatory to deleting everything from my old computer. Background: I’ve always been a cat lover. Here’s proof: Other photos will have to wait till I can dig them out from storage. When I left Brisbane in 2000 I gave my aged… Read more

By Dave. Last weekend was really busy with the Classic Motorcycle racing at Levels Raceway over a 3-day weekend and the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Founders Association Christmas dinner on the Saturday evening. With the Liberals Raceway being 160 km south of Christchurch and the founders dinner 70 km north of Christchurch it… Read more

I have fallen behind again with this blog – we’ve been back home over a week. Leaving Clyde we set off for Tekapo, with a quick stop at Cromwell to buy some berries. Lake Dunstan looked beautiful. At first there were only Southland yellow lupins lining the road, but then colours started to appear. By… Read more

Where to after Te Anau? Well we have to be back home in 5 days’ time so Asti our wonderful home-garden-cat sitter can take off.  Clyde and our friends Graeme and Barb beckoned. We first met them some years ago in the North Island, travelled with them for a while, spent one memorable New Years’… Read more

We had an invitation to camp on new-found friends’ deer, sheep and cattle property some way out of town, but first we did a quick tour of the Lake itself and had lunch near the small boat harbour which was showing the signs of a lowered Lake level; the entrance channel was very shallow indeed.… Read more