Spring September 2008

Spring is starting to show through here in Auckland after a" long long lonely winter" to quote George Harrison. Spring days always remind me of my eldest daughters birth - which was on the the 1st day of spring. "Without your love, winter would hold no spring".
We had friends Steve and Chrissie over for lunch on Sunday and it was so warm we sat in the courtyard and had lunch at the big table with beautiful New Zealand wine, Earl Grey tea and Lavassa coffee and all the good the stuff that goes with it. Steve came over so I could update his web site for his Shepherd Huts. www.shepherdhut.co.nz He was bit worried about updating the site because he is struggling to keep up with demand (unsurprisingly).

What is it about people that we like to change our appearance? It seems that fashion is driven from a inner need to reinvent the way we present ourselves to the world. Its a funny thing that by changing the drapery we can change how we feel about ourselves for a short burst. We are certainly a social animal getting senses of identity from the reflection of others. This has been formalised for us all in the last few weeks.
I have to admit I felt a bit like Bush wearing a cowboy outfit - but I think i have a much better first lady.


As mentioned we also whizzed off down to Wellington to check out Victoria University and its halls of residence for Lauren next year. We stayed with Gillie's brother Mark who has amazing views from his place out over Wellington Harbour. Wellington sits snuggled at the base of small hills surrounding a beautiful harbour.



Checking out the university and the halls of residences involved much walking up hill and down dales - which made for a wearying day. A good lunch with Amelia at one of Wellington's numerous arty cafe's made the day even more exciting and gave me a chance to sit down and savour the life style.
Wellington has a real art town feel to it with a wonderful promenade at Oriental Bay where they even can make old concrete walls look interesting!


We went to the National Museum Te Papa and saw the Rita Angus exhibition. What an amazing artist! A person with a great sense of vision both in her art and her politics. Another one of those driven human beings trying to reconcile their inner vision to a conservative society. While the art is stunning I was left exhausted by the sheer body of work and intensity of experience. Blew me away that she lived in Mangonui in the 1950's and as an old resident of that community I could see familiar maunga and seascape in her works.
Now we are left with the point of decision - Wellington or Dunedin, Victoria or Otago? Either way the parents will been keen to visit South in the coming years.
Oh by the way we have confirmed the wedding date - Waitangi Day 2009 6th of February!!

Down South (Again)

July turns out to be another full-on month. Last weekend we went down to Dunedin nearly at the bottom of the South Island. We went down to check out the Halls of Residence for Lauren who is deciding where to apply for university next year.
Once again we flew over the Southern Alps which this time of year are snow capped. The view from the air was clear but sadly it was the last bit of sunshine we saw all weekend.
Gillie and I stayed at her nephews place and dog sat their dog called Maxwell Smart who took an immediate liking to Gillie.

Lauren stayed with her friend Alice who is already resident at the University of Dunedin, Otago. We did the dutiful parent thing and had a great time looking around the university. Dunedin was colonised by the Scots in the 1840s and a lot of the buildings are stone with a great Victorian style. The university itself was very impressive and the halls of residence looked like a summer camp. Dunedin also has a stunning railway station which has to be seen to believed. It is next to a train museum (bliss for some of us or should I say one of us).
A short way out of Dunedin is Lanarch Castle which was build in the 1890's. While it is meant to have great views out to sea the day we went it was shrouded in a thick mist. This made it very spooky and the place does have a history of haunting by Lanarch's third wife. Larnarch himself went mad and shot himself in the houses of Parliament.
The castle was abandoned a couple of times in its history until a young couple bought the property in 1967 and set about rediscovering its secrets. While we were not allowed to photograph inside the building the property has extensive grounds including an Alice in Wonderland garden. Apparently a lot of wonderful things were discovered as they uncovered buried treasures in the undergrowth.

The whole time we were in Otago the temp never got above 6 degrees and we were constantly rained or sleeted on But the buildings were fantastic and the people great and we are now keen to head back down in the warmer seasons.
This August we will head down to Wellington to check out Victoria University. Hope the weather is better by then!

Busy July 2008

Its an old maxim that life speeds up as you get older - a bit like reading a good book - cos its good you read it harder and cos you read it so much, its over before you know it. Well that's how this year is feeling - or maybe its just years to age relativity.

Anyway milestone in July for our friend Chrissie turning 50. The whole Tawharanui Whanau and the Sygrove families headed to Rotorua - the famous spa town of NZ deep in the heart of Te Arawa country.

Rotorua has a wonderful old bathhouse built by the Victorians -sits in a great park opposite where we all stayed.

The Hotel is called the Princess Gate and is done out like an old Country Manor House. It has its own hot pool and spa which were soon filled by our young people. Being mid winter in the middle of the North Island the weather was cold with a bit of snow on the hills and a few flurries in the town.

Chrissie looking Regal. Lots of people on the scene having a great night that ended with a cabaret dinner - which I enjoyed drunkenly participating in with much bonhomie.


The weekend also co-incided with the Marist School Ball so young Lauren could not come down with us - but her mum did make a fabulous ball gown for her.
She looked great. She had a wonderful date and they danced the night away!


Finally - we have had a couple of French girls staying on their way to see the Pope in Sydney.
Like good billetts we took them around Auckland and showed them the sites through streaming rain and cold wind (don't you love this place in winter). We took them out to dinner on their last night up to a restaurant on the top of Auckland's Sky Tower. The restaurant slowly rotates giving 360 panoramic views of the city. Fortunately the weather cleared and we had lovely views.
Lauren and the girls have headed off for World Youth Day and the house is quiet - though the rain continues.

Blast from the pasts and scanned memories

When I went up North to Mangonui I took a scanner with me to pick up some family photos from my mum.
In 1987 my daughter and her mum went to England as part of a prize from a competition Sue had won. The trip coincided with Madeline's grandma and grandpa visiting family in Liverpool. Maddy was 6 years old and had a surprise party given to her.
Once she had consumed all the goodies she went into hyper-state and hurtled around the semi-detached back yard like a antipodean Alice in Wonderland. Being the only little person amongst doting grandparents and aunts and uncles the excitement was almost too much. The final part of the Alice in Wonderland bit was when she caught a train to Mousehole in Cornwall saying farewell to her grandparents.








We then flicked back another generation to find a photo of myself at the age of twenty attending a show put on by the Tokoroa Operatic Society - The Belle of New York. It shows we were all young once. And then finally a picture of my mother having lunch in Kensington Gardens London with my older brother (who still is older somehow).
"Fill my cup what boots it to repeat,
How time is slipping beneath our feet,
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,
Why fret about them,
If today be sweet."

Heading North to the top of the Country

From one end of the country to the other - had to pop up North to Mangonui to deliver a piece of glass from out of an old kiln for my mum's garden! The glass is retrieved from the bottom of a decommissioned industrial glass kiln and is rare because it only comes out at the end of the life of a kiln. Makes a great garden ornament.

Mangonui is at the very top of New Zealand's North Island approx 4 1/2 hours drive North of Auckland. Maori named it Mangonui after a chief discovered the harbour hidden within a bay (Doubtless Bay) when he was led there by a giant shark. (Mango - Shark; Nui - big!) It is a fishing village guarded by two large hills at either side of its entrance - which 200 years ago were fortified pa's or Maori villages. The local tribe is called Ngati Kahu.
Mangonui is famous in New Zealand because of its Fish and Chip shop out over the water. It is, apart from being one of the earliest Maori settlements, one of the first areas settled by Europeans and as such as some lovely old colonial architecture.
My kids both attended the local school in the 80's and 90's and my daughter had her first job in the local grocery store - also on stilts out over the water. June is mid winter in NZ and the weather in Northland is never really cold (unlike Southland) but it sure gets stormy. So the photo of the wharf is on a dark and stormy day. In the summer it can get nicely hot and dry and as such its a great vacation area. During the winter the place gets very quiet with just the locals keeping the place ticking over.

Queenstown 2008

Wow went down to Queenstown for a couple of days. Queenstown is 2000 feet above sea level with a lake Wakatipu which is another 1000 feet deep. So even though this lake is in the mountains the lake bed is below sea level! The mountain range is called the Remarkables and the only thing you can say is that they are!
The weather was cold but fine and the clarity of the air was unbelievable. Right at the back of town is a gondala that shoots you up a near vertical mountain to give you the view above.
Rented a car for 24 hours and drove up into the mountains. Came across an amazing vineyard/Winery in the Hills - Peregrine Wines. They have built the winery under a huge wing roof with a very modernistic structure while also maintaining a very traditional Southland landscape with the old farm buildings
While we were blown away by the setting we also hugely enjoyed the wine tasting!
Went on to Cromwell a little town famous for its apricots. The Old Town was deliberately flooded in 1993 in order to create a hydro lake (Lake Dunstan). Some of the old buildings were moved to lake edge while others are partially demolished or half buried in shingle by the lake edge. Everywhere you look are mountains and water its a totally different land than the North Island of NZ.

We stopped off at the Kawerau Bridge on the way back to Queenstown to check out the bungy jumping into the gorge. We missed our opportunity but hope to get back there after the winter and explore more. Finally went back to Lake Wakatipu and looked out across the Lord of the Rings country and felt like ineffective hobbits against the range of serried mountains. Next summer we are back with hiking boots!