Whittakers Abroad

Making progress

2010-07-18T21:14:00.000+12:00

Despite the winter throwing some truly dreadful weather our way, and both of us being laid low by The Cold From Hell, we've still managed to make reasonable progress on the house build over the last few weeks.

We've finished the cladding!

The west wall, showing the kitchen windows

We've now completed the cladding, and we've started treating it with wood preservative. We wanted a more or less clear finish, as we like the blond colour of the plywood, but there isn't anything like that available in the type of treatment we need to use, so we've gone for a mid-brown stain. It tones well with the roof, and gives the house a rustic, cabiny feel. So far we've only managed to stain the back wall and the east wall, because we've had to wait for a run of two days of dry weather to do any staining, and those have been few and far between this winter!

The stained east wall and some of our new flax plants

You may notice in the photos above that we've now got some plants in our 'garden'. They're a dozen New Zealand flax plants, which we got free from a friend of a friend, whose little garden in town was being overrun by them. In the summer New Zealand flax has large, lily-like flowers on long stalks, and the flowers attract native birds, such as the tui.

We hope to get some tui visiting our flax in the summer.

We've still got a lot of work left to do before we've completed the exterior of the house. Next weekend we're going to start work on the soffit lining on the verandah roof. When we get some dry weather we need to continue staining the cladding. Once the staining is finished we've got to put beading under the eaves and on the gable ends, fascia under the verandah, and timber reveals around the windows and doors. Then there's the verandah deck to build!

Close-up of the stained east wall

Even though we've not finished the exterior yet, we've still managed to complete the first job on the interior, which is insulating the walls. Our next indoors job is to put the insulation in the roof and gable ends. Once that's done and the exeterior is complete apart from the deck, we can get the building inspector in for the 'pre-line' inspection.When we've passed that, we can start putting the gib (plaster board) on the walls.

Frosty morning scene during the cold snap we had last week

Although we're still a long way off finishing building the house, the end does feel as if it's in sight at last, and we're hoping, like all good self-builders, to be in by Christmas. We're not saying which Christmas, mind you! ;-)

Same old, same old

2010-05-31T22:05:00.002+12:00

A pattern has been emerging in our blog posts lately. It goes something like this:

1. We're sorry we haven't posted for a while.
2. The house build is progressing much more slowly than we thought it would.
3. It's getting colder.
4. We're fed up of camping.
5. Here are some photos.

Using this system I will be able to make future blog posts in a fraction of the time, simply by writing a list of numbers, and using font size to indicate relative importance.

Here is today's post:

1 2 3 4 5

Further levels of subtlety of expression can be added by using punctuation marks and bold text, as well as a variety of colours; for example,

(1) 2... 3 4 5!

I think you'll agree my new system is simple, elegant, and time-efficient. I'm predicting it will catch on with other bloggers.

Anyway, that's quite enough enumerating for one day; on with the 5!

Our bedroom door

The front of the house with all the doors and windows in

The view through one of the kitchen windows to the west

The view from the kitchen sink - not bad, eh?

We've started putting in the insulation on the back wall.

An overview of the building site

We're halfway through cladding the west wall.

Helen

Happy Anniversary

2010-05-05T19:53:00.000+12:00

This week we're celebrating (if that's the right word) the one-year anniversary of starting to build the house. In honour of this, I thought I'd post some photos showing the current state of progress.

The view from where our bedroom window/door will be

Our bedroom, currently our workshop

Our lovely yurt basking in the autumn sunshine

The height of luxury - our wonderful toilet in the ensuite bathroom

In the process of cladding the east wall

The latest incarnation of our kitchen with a real, plumbed-in sink.

Note the hastily nailed-together sink unit. We're hoping to manage something a *little* less ramshackle when we build the kitchen for real.

The current state of the east wall. We're getting there...slowly. The difference in colour is due to weathering - the left half was clad a week before the right. We assumed the cladding would get lighter as it weathered, but it's going darker.

Iain looking justifiably pleased with himself after we finished cladding the back wall

That sums up the state of play at the moment, so here's a reminder of where we started:

Our house one year ago

Helen

Another milestone reached

2010-03-18T20:44:00.009+13:00

Me working on the yurt deck

Over the last week or so we've made a real 'do or die' effort to finish the yurt deck. By around 2pm on Sunday we'd finished oiling the floor, and we reckoned it would take us about four hours to take down the yurt, re-erect it on the deck and get all of our stuff back in. It actually took us over ten, and we fell into bed well after midnight, utterly exhausted.

Me in action nailing the floorboards with our new nail gun

All the stress and aching muscles were worth it, though. The yurt is a much nicer space to be in now, and we no longer have to worry about silage heap smells, mouldy canvas, mushrooms growing by the bed, or having to wear our wellies 'indoors'!

Iain cutting the floorboards to fit the circular beam

Now we've finished the deck we're free to concentrate all our efforts on the house, which is just as well. We got our first frost last night, and the prospect of living under canvas during colder weather doesn't appeal. We've already got two duvets on the bed -- it's only a matter of time before we'll have to resort to woolly hats as night wear.

Inside the yurt showing the finished floor

Iain relaxes in front of the yurt

Helen

Ten months in

2010-03-02T21:56:00.000+13:00

I returned from my lightning visit to the UK almost a week ago. When I got back home I wasn't impressed to find that Iain hadn't knocked a single nail in on the yurt deck while I was away. However, I wasn't surprised. Like most men, he needs a boot up his backside before he'll do anything. :-P

We WERE going to spend last weekend putting the cladding on the house, but when we opened up the pile of cladding to take a look, we discovered that they'd delivered the wrong type. SNAFU. So last weekend was spent on the yurt deck instead. We've been working on it over the last couple of evenings as well, and we've almost finished the joists and the circular beam around the outside, which means the next step is the final one: laying the wooden floor.

The plumber came to do the first fix last week, which involves putting all the pipes in. The pipes survived the pressure test without leaking, and his work passed the initial plumbing inspection. Another contractor, aka The Drain Guy, is in charge of connecting the pipes to the water tanks and the septic system. Why the plumber can't do this I've no idea. We've been trying to get The Drain Guy to come and do his thing for the past week, and on a couple of occasions he's fobbed us off with 'Oh yeah, I'm on my way now,' and then he hasn't turned up. We may have to shoot him and chuck his body in the septic tank.

Here are a few pics:

A Spaghetti Junction of plumbing above the bathroom ceiling

Insert shower here

Iain taking a well-earned break on the yurt deck

Helen

Blimey, is that the time?

2010-02-07T20:46:00.099+13:00

I can't believe we're into February already. Christmas seems like only the other week.

We've made slow but steady progress on the build in the three weeks since the last blog post, and we've passed one significant milestone: the roof is now on. Putting the steel on the roof is one of the few jobs that we're not doing ourselves. We decided to get contractors in partly because neither of us has a head for heights, and partly because we knew that if we screwed things up, it could have all sorts of disastrous repercussions. The consequences of not managing to get the roof 100% watertight or completely windproof don't bear thinking about, so we decided to leave it to the experts.

A new accessory for tightrope walkers?

Fixing the last few sheets of steel

The finished roof, complete with guttering and downpipes

The next job is to fix the cladding. We've ordered a type of plywood sheeting called Shadowclad. It's got vertical grooves in it that give the impression of vertical weatherboards. It's one of the cheaper cladding options available here, and is (supposedly) relatively easy to install, so we'll just have to see how we get on. Our building supplier can't deliver the cladding until late next week, so we've got some time to work on the yurt deck and do the thousand and one other jobs that are constantly calling for our attention.

Iain fixing a beam on the deck for our yurt. Can you spot Pookie?

Iain takes a breather

Iain cutting one of the beams for the yurt deck with his latest ~~toy~~ tool, a mitre saw.

It's got a laser, which is very exciting.

Team Whittaker is going to be a man down for a spell (a woman down, to be precise). I was planning on visiting the UK in July to see my Mum, but she's been taken ill, so I'm bringing the visit forward. I fly out on Friday, and I'll be away for eleven days. This will delay the cladding going on, as there's no way Iain will be able to put it on by himself. The sheets of plywood are 2.7 by 1.2 metres and 12 mm thick. You'd have to be a giant squid to be able to handle that on your own.

Gratuitous cuteness: one of the sheep our neighbour is grazing on our land

And with that non-sequitur, I bid you goodnight.

Helen

In the frame

2010-01-13T21:17:00.002+13:00

First of all, apologies for the odd photo placement and sizing. Blogger isn't playing nicely this evening; it took ages to upload the photos, and then I couldn't get them in the right position or the right size. Never mind; I don't mind the fact that the final photo is huge -- I think it's a really nice one of Iain.

A couple of days ago we finished building the verandah roof, which means...drum roll...
...the framing is now complete.

The building inspector inspected the framing yesterday, and, much to our surprise, it passed.

Above: the finished verandah and the yurt

Below: the front of the house

An embarrassing blot on the landscape: our building site. From left to right: the posts for the yurt deck, a pile of soil and clay dug up when the water and septic tanks were buried, the water tanks (with septic system barely visible in front), blue tarp with the concrete mixer underneath, pile of earth from the slab excavations (front) the caravan (middle) and house (back), pile of hardcore left over from the driveway (front), our car (middle), piles of timber (back), our yurt

The first beam of our yurt deck

Iain takes a break from building the deck

Now that the framing's been signed off we can get on with closing the house in. The roof goes on first, then the cladding and finally the windows.

Today we put in an order for the roof. There's a 2-week lead time on that, so we've now got a couple of weeks during which we can concentrate on building the deck for the yurt. Unfortunately they're forecasting several days of heavy rain and gale-force winds to coincide with our days off at the weekend. We're looking forward to the time when the house is closed in and we're working on the interiror, because the weather won't be able to hold us up then.

Helen

New Year update

2010-01-06T21:59:00.000+13:00

This post is brought to you courtesy of Never Mind the Blabbing, Show us the Pictures, Ltd.

We've made really encouraging progress on the build over the Christmas break. I've got to start work tomorrow, so Iain will be knocking nails in on his own over the next few days, until he goes back to work himself on Monday.

At the same time as building the house, we're also building a deck for the yurt. Don't let anyone tell you we don't like to make life complicated!

Iain fixes the yurt deck posts in place before we pour the concrete

What with the verandah posts and the yurt deck posts, Iain calculated that we've mixed and poured 2.2 tonnes of concrete since we bought our little concrete mixer!

Me cleaning the concrete mixer 'apres pour'. Glamorous, eh?!

Iain attaches a rafter on the verandah...

...and now it's my turn.

We're very close to completing the framing for the verandah now. We finished fixing the rafters today and tomorrow Iain's going to make a start on the purlins (the cross-pieces). Once they're done we'll be able to call the building inspector in to check the framing. Once we've passed the inspection, we can get the roofers in to put the roof on - that will be a real milestone!

Right, I'm off to do some yoga before bed. Night, all.

Helen

Finally, some action!

2009-12-26T22:21:00.001+13:00

After the wettest spring since 1945, summer has finally arrived in New Zealand. The job that we’ve been waiting three months to be able to do – digging the holes for the verandah posts – is finally complete and our building morale is on the up.

Timing is very important when you’re digging in heavy clay. If we’d tried to dig the holes for the verandah posts too early, the ground would have been like blancmange, the holes wouldn’t have held their shape and the inspector wouldn’t have approved the footings. If we’d waited too long the ground would have set like concrete and we wouldn’t have been able to get the spade into it.

Me wrapping the frame in builder's wrap

Luckily, by the time this year’s window of opportunity came around we were living up on site, and we managed to get all six post holes dug within the course of a couple of days. Before we could pour the concrete we had to get the holes inspected. At the same time, we asked the inspector to give the frame a quick check. Because it’s spent such a long time being exposed to very wet weather, we were worried that the wood might be too far gone, and we might have to pull it down and start again. That would have really sapped our morale, dented our pockets, and set the build back to square one.

Fortunately both the footings and the frame passed muster, but the inspector said we needed to get the building wrap and the roof on as soon as possible. We were a bit surprised, because the official frame inspection (which we’re not ready for yet because we’ve not built the verandah) is called the ‘pre-wrap’ inspection, so we’d assumed that you couldn’t put the building wrap on before the frame had been inspected. We really wish we’d known this because we would have wrapped the frame up months ago.

This ugly duckling will emerge as a beautiful swan some day. Or at least, a passable duck.

We put the building wrap on the day after the inspection. The roof can’t go on until we’ve completed the framework for the verandah roof, so we got some black plastic sheeting and made a temporary roof out of that. The random pieces of wood you can see in the photo are emergency storm-proofing measures to stop the roof lifting off during the inevitable gale that blew up within a few hours of covering the roof. The house doesn’t look great, but at least the frame now has a chance to dry out at last.

Gratuitous yurt shot. I love our yurt!

Now the inspection is out of the way and the house is protected from the rain, our next job is to build the verandah. Getting the verandah posts in the right positions was fiddly but not as difficult or as time-consuming we'd been anticipating - it only took just over a day. Pouring the concrete was even quicker- just three hours! I'm really glad Iain treated us to a concrete mixer for Christmas!

Iain and the verandah posts pre-concrete

Now the concrete is poured we have to wait for it to cure for a few days before we can start building the framing for the verandah roof, so tomorrow we're going to start work on the deck for our yurt.

Helen

P.S. A trivia question for you: From which computer game is this post’s title taken?

We're still here...

2009-11-09T10:09:00.000+13:00

...honest! We've just got incredibly bogged down with moving-house related stuff, not to mention house-building stuff, and the ever-time-consuming W word. We'll do our best to make a proper post at the weekend, after which normal service will be resumed.

Helen

Y-Day draws close

2009-10-11T15:01:00.001+13:00

This week has been unbelievably wet. We didn't visit the site yesterday because, yes, you've guessed it, it was raining. When we went up there today, we found, not surprisingly, that the flooding hasn't subsided, but we were pleasantly surprised to see that it hasn't got much worse, either, and the end of the veranda trench where we did some back-filling a couple of weeks ago has firmed up considerably. All we need is a couple of dry days, and we get we should be able to drain the trench and fill it with some of the spoil left over from the installation of the water and septic tanks. Then all we need to do is wait a few weeks for it to firm up before we can dig the rest of the holes for the veranda posts. And at that point there'll be no stopping us!

There's great excitement chez Whittaker at the moment, because the yurt is now finished, and is due to be delivered some time next week. We plan on spending next weekend putting it up, and the following weekend moving in. Once we're installed in the yurt we'll hand in our notice at the rental, and that will give us three weeks in which to complete the move. This will be useful because there will be all sorts of loose ends to tie up, such as finding somewhere to store all our furniture, building a temporary ablutions block, and organising an internet connection.

As we're going to be moving up onto the site so soon, and the next two weekends are spoken for, we decided we needed to put up the letter box today. Here are some photos.

We borrowed a post hole borer from our friends, Frank and Linda.

Once we'd removed the turf with a spade, the borer made easy work of digging the hole.

I'm very fond of our letterbox - it seems very exotic to someone who's used to letters coming through the front door!

It's a washout!

2009-09-30T20:25:00.000+13:00

The last couple of weeks have been extremely wet, which is pretty typical spring weather here. At this stage in the build there's only one job left to do before we can make any more progress, and that's putting in the posts for the veranda. We managed to dig one of the six holes before the rain set in two weekends ago, but when we went up on site last weekend, we found that the trench where we need to dig the holes was flooded. We bailed out as much water as we could, but the ground was far too gloopy to dig.

Our newly-installed septic system and water tanks looking the worse for the rain

Oh dear!

There's been an awful lot more rain this week, with more forecast over the next four days, so we're expecting the flooding to be even worse when we go up to the site this weekend. What we need is at least a week's worth of fine weather to dry everything out before we can do any more work on the build. It's very frustrating, as the chances of going for a week without rain at this time of year are pretty slim. The build could easily be held up for another month.

This is where the veranda posts go

On the positive side, we've now only got another two or three weeks to wait for the yurt, and once that arrives we'll be moving up onto the site. We have to give 21 days' notice on our rental, which we won't do until we've got the yurt, which means we'll have a nice and leisurely three weeks to do the move and work out where the heck we're going to put everything.

Picture post

2009-09-18T16:47:00.003+12:00

So much to do, so little time...but just enough to do a quick picture-based blog post to bring you up to date with developments on the house build.

High altitude power tool usage -- Iain takes his life in his hands as he trims the hanging rafters

Batter boards, Mark II: our new, improved version, with string lines marking out the position of the veranda

We were given this caravan by our friends Frank and Linda. They lived in it while they were building their house, but it's spent the last twelve years as a storage shed.

First job is a thorough clean (I'm halfway through that now), then we'll give it a couple of fresh coats of paint inside and out, and some new upholstery. It'll never be roadworthy again, but it's going to make a great kitchen/diner while we're living in the yurt, and a cosy office-come-guest room once the house is finished.

Rob the Digger Bloke starts digging the hole for the septic tank.

Our septic tank is huge. Iain's planning on doing a lot of poos.

20 minutes into the dig. It would have taken us months to dig out that hole by hand. Hooray for diggers!

The septic tank is winched into place.

The installed septic tank (buried, at the front) and water tanks (half-buried, at the back)

Spring is sprung

2009-09-01T16:11:00.019+12:00

September the first is officially the first day of spring in the southern hemisphere, so in honour of the occasion, here's a little ditty my parents taught me when I was little.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz,
I wonder where the birdies is.
The little bird is on the wing.
Well that's absurd!
I always thought the wing was on the bird.

I've no idea who wrote it. My parents used to recite it in a bad New York accent, saying 'boid' for 'bird'. At that age my only experience of a similar accent was from watching The Abbott and Costello Show on Saturday afternoons, so for years I assumed it must be one of their little bits of nonsense. After a few minutes of Googling I discovered that some sources attribute it to Ogden Nash. I've not found definite proof that it's one of his, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were.

Iain and I have been very busy since I last posted. In my free time last week I took part in a collaborative project called SPARK, in which writers and artists create new pieces using each others' work as inspiration. I was paired with artist and musician Jim Doran from Baltimore, Maryland, and I wrote a story inspired by his photo 'Sisters'. Jim created a wonderful cartoon after reading one of my poems. To read my story and for a link to Jim's cartoon visit my writing blog here. By the time you read this, the work from the latest round (Round 5) might have been posted on the SPARK website. If you go there you'll also be able to see the photo of Jim's that inspired my story. It's well worth a look. And, of course, it goes without saying that you'll also be able to see the work created by all the dozens of other writers and artists who took part. I'm looking forward to reading what my friend Melissa has written.

House-build-wise, Iain and I had a wonderfully productive day last Saturday, and an incredibly frustrating one on Sunday, so our batting average for the entire weekend was fair to middling. We've completed the eaves on the back of the house. Cue photo...

To paraphrase Churchill: 'Never in the history of human building has it taken two people so long to attach 12 pieces of wood.'

We've also installed the hanging rafters on one side of the house, and trimmed them and the purlins to the right length.

Iain attaches the last of the hanging rafters on the east side of the house

We're now only a couple of hours (or, as Iain would say, 'a gnat's cock') away from completing the roof framing. So next weekend we'll be able to make a start on the veranda posts (at last!) This will involve concrete. Be prepared for some interesting photos of mess and mayhem!

Helen

Suggestions, please

2009-08-24T14:47:00.005+12:00

Like most writery-types (and pretty much everyone in my family too), I'm obsessed with names.

We've already got a name for the house when it's finished. Being typical newcomers to the country, we wanted to have something that shouted 'New Zealand'. We didn't want a Maori name, though. In New Zealand, having a Maori house name when you're not Maori is the equivalent of having a French house name in Britain (i.e. it's a bit pretentious). We've decided on 'Fantail Cottage' because the fantail is one the native birds that regularly comes to visit us on the building site.

So now all we need is a name for the yurt. If you've got any ideas, we'd love to hear them.

The fantail, a native New Zealand bird (Maori name: piwakawaka)

Y-Day Minus 56

2009-08-23T13:33:00.008+12:00

We've been and gone and done it now - we've ordered the yurt! Estimated delivery time: 8 weeks. It's taking such a long time because all Jaia's yurts are custom-made to order, by hand.

Living in a yurt is something we've both fantasised about for years, for some unfathomable reason. Neither of us have ever even seen a yurt 'in the canvas', let alone set foot in one, but we're attracted to them like bears to honey (or, more accurately, like hippies to alternative forms of accommodation).

On Friday afternoon we decided on the best position for the yurt, and used some electric fence 'pigtails' to mark out where it will go. In this short video Iain gives a guided tour - in mime. You may notice the picture shaking a bit; this is because I was laughing so much I couldn't hold the iPhone still.

The Game...

2009-08-17T15:05:00.006+12:00

...is afoot!

Not much progress on the house build this weekend, but some interesting developments.

We spent Saturday on site as usual, but on Sunday it bucketed down with rain all day, so we ended up having an enforced day off. Having time on our hands, we got talking about the build, and we decided that we want to do something to speed things up.

So we've made a decision. Gulp. We're going to give up our rental in town and go and live on site. That way we'll be able to put in a lot more building hours per week, and as an added bonus, we'll be living in the place we really want to be.

Camping out for three (or more) months won't be easy, but at least it will be during the spring and summer, so we shouldn't get hypothermia. We've thought up solutions to every practical problem we can anticipate, such as what to do about cooking, having a shower, going to the toilet, doing the laundry, connecting to the internet (essential for my work) and storing our furniture, we've drawn up an action plan, and we've taken the first steps on it. Our aim is to be camping out in our paddock by the beginning of October.

We've not yet finalised exactly what we'll be camping in, but at the moment the front-runner is a 7-metre yurt, hand-built in New Zealand by the lovely hippies at Jaia. Take a look at some photos of their yurts here.

One of the first steps on our action plan was to buy a letter box, as we won't be able to have mail delivered without one.

Our letter box -- rural NZ utility style. I love our house number, and it's so easy to remember: 'Unlucky for some, the answer to the ultimate question'

Random silly photo -- Iain has been playing around with a program called iCover which lets you transform your snaps into magazine covers. This is his favourite result...

...and this is mine. The bundle of fluff is Pookie when she was an itteh bitteh kitteh -- aaah!

Where did you get that hat?

2009-08-09T20:39:00.006+12:00

By now I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that 'Chez Whittaker' is getting further behind schedule with every week that passes. Fortunately, Iain and I laugh in the face of schedules, and like John Cleese's French k-nig-ht, we blow raspberries at them, too, (but only when we're sure they're not looking).

We had hoped to finish off the purlins last weekend, but we didn't go up to the site at all, because I was in bed with the 'flu, and I wouldn't let Iain go on his own, as I didn't think he would be safe, working three metres off the ground with no-one to look out for him apart from a few dozen bemused sheep.

Since the last time we were on site a fortnight ago, Iain has bought himself a new toy --an iPhone. He brought it along with him this weekend, partly in case the house got burgled while we were out, partly to find out what sort of 3G reception we're going to have (not very good!) and partly to test out the iPhone's camera. The camera's not bad. Here are some of the pictures it took:

Sartorial elegance, Whittaker style: if you look carefully you might be able to work out where Iain got this hat from.

My hat's from the same place (the local DIY store). It's not quite so in-your-face as Iain's, but I reckon you could have somebody's eye out with that brim.

View of the building site from the highest point on our land, which we refer to affectionately as 'the nob'. The building on the right is the neighbour's woolshed.

Me in action, attacking some wonky-looking batter boards with a sledgehammer, in preparation for marking out the veranda...

...and working on the eaves at the back of the house.

So, how far have we got now? Well, the purlins are finished at last, which leaves just two more jobs to do on the roof. The first task is to attach the hanging rafters, which hang out over either edge of the roof, resting on top of the end trusses. Once that's done we need to construct the eaves along the back of the house, and the roof will be complete. If we're lucky we might get this all done next weekend, but given our rate of progress so far, it's more likely to take us the next two weekends.

Merlin of the purlins

2009-07-26T20:44:00.007+12:00

It's Sunday evening, I'm tired, my brain has turned to mush, and my hands are playing up from a combination of arthritis, RSI and excessive use of a club hammer, which means I won't be typing much, and I'll be letting the pictures do most of the talking.

It was a glorious day today. This is the view down the valley from the top of our driveway.

I spent most of the weekend up scaffolding, hammering wire dogs and z-nails into the trusses. This is the view from my little perch. Nice, eh?

On Saturday Iain got the car stuck in the mud. Our neighbour Mike, who sold us the land, offered to pull us out with his quad bike...

...but the quad bike wasn't up to the job, so he had to use his tractor instead!

Driving home through a sea of sheep on Saturday

Iain, AKA 'Merlin of the purlins' attaches the first purlin on the southern side of the house.

Progress so far - a view of the house from the west

In the pink

2009-07-16T19:22:00.016+12:00

Last weekend Iain took a couple of days' leave and we spent four days on site, putting up the roof trusses.

Since the house is only 5 metres deep, the trusses aren't excessively heavy, but it still wasn't easy for a pair of wimps like us to get them into position on top of the wall framing. Strong winds on Sunday made the process even trickier, and we almost gave up at one point due to safety concerns, but after a cup of tea, a sit down and a bit of head scratching we managed to develop a system that allowed us to hold the trusses rock steady in even the strongest gusts while we were in the process of securing them.

The trusses are a rather fetching pink colour, thanks to the type of wood-preserving treatment they've been given. In most 'normal' house builds in New Zealand all the internal framing is this colour. Our wall frames, however, are green (a higher grade of treatment) because we knew they would be exposed to the weather for several months rather than the more usual couple of weeks.

Last weekend's work was really satisfying, because it was the first time in about six weeks that the house has looked different at the end of the weekend compared to the beginning. Once we'd got all the pieces of the frame up, it took an awfully long time to nail in all the hardware, get everything square and attach the ribbon plate, and there wasn't much to show for our efforts at the end of each day's work.

The current state of play is that all the roof trusses are up, and we're about one quarter of the way through attaching the purlins (the horizontal timbers that stabilise the trusses and will support the weight of the roof). Another two days' work should see the roof framing complete, and then we'll be able to move onto the verandah and deck. It's getting more exciting all the time!

This coming weekend we won't be doing any building work, partly because there's a severe weather alert, but mainly because Iain has got an assignment to do for the e-learning diploma he's currently studying for. I'm enjoying the build a lot, but I'm really looking forward to the prospect of a rare weekend off!

The roof trusses looking very pretty in pink

Iain taking a breather from securing one of the end trusses

Me enjoying a break from hammering and a short spell of sunshine

It's starting to look more like a house now the roof's on

Iain defying gravity to attach the purlins

Plans and progress

2009-06-28T17:29:00.021+12:00

Plans

I've just realised that the only plans we've posted on the blog are the first set we had drawn up, which were designed by an architect. As you may already know, we had to abandon the original design because it would have been too expensive to pay someone to build it for us, and too difficult for us to attempt ourselves as first-time builders.

So here, at last, are the plans of the house we're actually building! Iain and I decided on the layout together, and I produced detailed sketches which Phil (our tame architect) then transformed into proper plans that would cut it with the planning department. Not so much Grand Designs, more like The Playschool School of Architecture ('Which window will it be today?'- the square window!)

The floor plan

After my friend Melissa and her son Nikko came to visit us on site, Nikko expressed concern that the bedroom might be too small for our bed. I can assure Nikko (and anyone else who's wondering the same thing) that the bedroom is big enough for the bed, but that fitting anything else in the room once the bed is in (such as a person, for instance) might be a bit of a tall order. There's a reason why the bedroom door slides into the wall rather than opening inwards like a normal door.

The sitting room's not a bad size; in fact, it's bigger than the sitting room in any of the houses we've lived in since we got married. The kitchen is compact, but no smaller than the kitchen of the rental we're in at the moment, and that's plenty big enough for us.

We're not bothered about the size of the rooms, but there are a couple of things we think will take a bit of getting used to. Firstly, the lack of storage (there's just one small cupboard in the entire house) and secondly the fact that we've effectively only got one usable room, so we can't get away from each other very easily. Still, there's a whole lot of outdoors to escape to!

A view of the cabin from the front

Here's a view of the front of the cabin. At the moment we're thinking of painting the cladding red and having a green roof. There are lots of north-facing windows (the equivalent of south-facing windows for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere) so the interior should get plenty of light, but the veranda will keep out direct sun, which should keep the house nice and cool in summer. Both rooms have sliding doors out onto the veranda. We're planning on extending part of the deck a couple of metres past the veranda, so we've got a nice outdoor living and entertaining area.

Progress

At long last, we've completed the wall framing, which is quite a milestone! It's taken us six weeks to do what a team of builders could have accomplished in a couple of days, but we're chuffed to bits about what we've achieved so far. It will take us as long as it takes us, and fretting about how slow we are won't help us to finish any faster.

The two photos below show us both in action, nailing the ribbon plate onto the top of the external walls. We're using clamps to make sure the ribbon plate is flush with the outside of the top plate.

Iain shows off not only his hammering skills but also his double chin

I prove that hammers and double chins are not just for blokes

After we'd nailed the ribbon plate down we had to secure it to each stud with a wire dog. The wire dogs require a lot of force to drive in, and I wasn't getting anywhere with an ordinary hammer, so I used a lump hammer instead. Every ten minutes or so I had to take a 'pathetic girly' break because my arm was aching so much.

View of the frame - looking towards the kitchen from the bedroom door

Next weekend we move onto a new and exciting job - putting up the roof trusses. I'm looking forward to it!

And now for something completely different

2009-06-17T10:50:00.029+12:00

As I've got a bit of spare time this week, I thought I'd spend some of it posting to the blog about a few of the other things we've been doing lately, apart from building our house.

Iain's role at work this year has changed a bit. He's no longer tutoring on the full time teacher aide course. Instead he's in charge of the 'mixed mode' version of the course (partly correspondence, partly taught). This consists of regular workshops and tutorials, as well as visiting students in school placements, but it's not a full-time tutoring commitment. The rest of the time Iain's been putting together the company's e-learning website.

The first course to go online is the certificate in adult literacy, and eventually all the company's courses will be available online, including the teacher aide course. Creating an online learning site from scratch is proving a steep learning curve, even for someone as techno-savvy as Iain. It involves programming, design (of the online activities as well as the overall look of the site), video production and editing, and learning to use a whole range of unfamiliar computer programs. Here's the link for anyone who's interested: www.t4uonline.co.nz

Shot from the local newspaper of Iain, his colleague Jason and the e-learning site they've created

As well as putting in lots of time creating the website, both during and after work, Iain's also studying for a postgraduate diploma in e-learning, which takes up most of his remaining free time in the evenings. As for the weekends, I think you already know what he spends them doing!

As for me, after an intense couple of weeks in order to meet a consultancy deadline, I've now got a whole week off. Work often pans out like that for me; I'll have weeks or even months of working ridiculously long hours, and then I'll have other times when I have no work at all. For someone like me, who loves routine and tires easily, it's the only real downside of my job.

My latest big project -- a series of six library books about space for Macmillan Australia -- is now in the design and production phase. The series is going to be called 'Space Frontiers' (not my choice of title!) and is aimed at 8 to 12 year-olds. I'm looking forward to seeing the first set of proofs in the next couple of months, with publication being scheduled for early next year.

I've got a new big project on the horizon, too. On the back of my work on 'One Africa Maths' I've been offered the opportunity to write a science scheme in a similar vein. Initially the scheme will be produced for the Nigerian market, but the plan is to adapt it for other African countries at a later date, so it could end up being a long-term commitment.

And what about the rest of the family? Not having any children to boast about, I'll have to regale you with a story about the cat.

Pookie, our retarded 22-toed excuse for a feline, will never make it into the 'heartwarming animal story' slot at the end of the TV news. She can't skateboard, she doesn't steal stuffed toys, and she never takes a ride in the postman's mailbag. However, she has exhibited her fair share of bizarre and neurotic behaviour over the last three and a half years, including bringing home litter, digging bowling ball-sized holes in the lawn and biting chunks out of Iain's ankles. Her latest habit is piddling in the bath. She can get out of the cat flap during the day and she's got a litter tray to use at night, but she's obviously decided that pristine white porcelain is more the cut of her jib than garden dirt or kitty litter. At the moment the worst marital misdemeanour Iain and I can accuse each other of is leaving the bathroom door open.

Pookie engaging in another of her hobbies, climbing in the cupboards

A frustrating fortnight

2009-06-14T19:55:00.012+12:00

Progress on the house build has been frustratingly slow over the past couple of weeks. We had hoped to have got the roof trusses up by now, but things won't allow themselves to be hurried, no matter how impatient we get, so we're doing our best to just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.

Last weekend we finished attaching the hardware, which was cause for a minor celebration. Every window needed a strap on either end of the lintel and every stud above the lintel had to have a strap attaching it to the lintel and going all the way over the top of the frame. Like the wire dogs the week before, everything had to be routered in. Regulations call for six nails in every side, which came to a total of around 240 nails -- that's a lot of hammering! My hammer, a cheap one that came as part of a tool kit, started to fall apart, so I had to buy a new one.

The finished strapping on one of the kitchen windows

We've spent most of this weekend trying to square up the frame. There were still two corners to plumb up, which proved to be a real headache. We had to rebuild part of the frame, taking out a couple of nogs (the horizontal pieces) and replacing them with shorter ones so we could bring the end of the wall in a bit. I'm sure that if we'd known what we were doing we could have straightened everything up more easily, but we haven't got a clue about what you're supposed to do. When our first method (whacking the thing with a sledgehammer) didn't work, taking the frame apart was the only alternative we could think of.

Once the corners were plumb we made a start on getting the top of the walls straight. They tend to bow in in some places and out in others, so you have to use a string line to work out where they ought to be, and then use bracing to keep them there. We've now finished the bracing along one of the long walls.

We've borrowed the neighbour's lawnmower -- Mike's bullocks grazing our hill

The completed bracing along the front wall

Once the bracing is complete, it has to stay in place until after the cladding is on, otherwise the walls might bow out under the weight of the roof.

Next weekend Iain's taking both Friday and Monday off work, so we'll have four days to spend on site. The next steps are: 1. Brace the other three walls, 2. Attach the top plate (more wire dogs - ugh!) 3. Put up the roof trusses. This week I'm letting go of expectations, so I'm not going to predict how far we'll get. We'll just have to wait and see.

Going to the dogs

2009-06-01T21:29:00.009+12:00

No, that's not a river -- the lower part of our track is flooded.

Iain took Friday off work, and today was a bank holiday, so we had a four-day weekend to work on the house. Winter has arrived in earnest now, and it’s been a struggle to motivate ourselves in the mornings, but once we’ve arrived on site, we’ve been too busy to pay much attention to the cold.

Me (AKA Antifreeze Woman) not noticing the cold

Our first job was to straighten up all four corners of the frame so that they were vertically plumb. We reckoned this would take us about half a day, but it ended up taking us all of Friday and Saturday. This was because we had to partially rebuild one of the end walls, which was seriously wonky. It wasn’t right when it was delivered, but dropping it when we were trying to put it up the other week probably didn’t help to straighten it!

Our next job was to attach the wire dogs: enormous hammer-in staples, which will prevent the roof lifting off the frame in high winds. The wire dogs go on all the exterior walls, joining every stud to the top plate, both inside and out. They need to be flush, and our friendly builder, Denis, said we should ‘just bruise them in’. Evidently neither of us is much of a bruiser, because we couldn’t get them anything like flush using the brute force approach, so we had to cut out channels. For all 170 of them. Iain used a router for the studs in the middle of the walls, and where the router wouldn’t fit (in the corners and at junctions with internal walls) I cut out the channels by hand with a chisel. It took us all of Sunday and Monday. From now on, we’ll be using ‘wire dog’ as an expletive.

Iain, a ladder, a router and lots of wire dogs

And finally, something not related to the house build. In typical laid-back Kiwi fashion, the photographer who took photos of the citizenship ceremony took almost three weeks to post the proofs up on his website. Here, at last, is the promised snap. We reckon it’s not a bad one of the two of us, although my hair looks inexplicably ginger. Either the photographer didn’t have the white balance adjusted correctly for the lighting conditions, or else he was using a special gingerfication filter. I prefer the second explanation.

We don't scrub up too badly, do we?

The hare and the tortoise

2009-05-24T21:24:00.019+12:00

The Hare

On Saturday, en route to the building site, we went down to the river to take a look at the boat Earthrace, which was moored in Wanganui for a few days during a promotional tour around New Zealand.

Earthrace moored on the Whanganui river

If you're not familiar with Earthrace, she's a 24 metre long tri-hull 'wavepiercer', which means that instead of riding over the top of the waves like an ordinary boat, she cuts right through them, dipping up to 7 metres below the surface. The Earth bit of her name is a nod to the fuel she runs on: 100% biodiesel. The race bit refers to the fact that she was designed to break the record for circumnavigating the globe. She did just that last year, setting a new world record, when she crossed the finishing line just a few minutes short of the 61 day mark.

The back end of Earthrace (note my careful use of the correct sailing term)

Bizarre Fact
The skipper of Earthrace, Pete Bethune, underwent liposuction, and the fat was used to make a small amount of biodiesel for the boat.

Iain was blown away by the boat's radical design (but, I noticed, not sufficiently impressed to pay 5 dollars to get on board and have a look inside.) I was more lukewarm in my appreciation. I'm not a big fan of boats, mainly because of the whole seasickness thing. I was also disappointed to see that the outside of the boat had been vandalised by taggers (probably while it had been moored in Auckland), so it was looking a bit tatty. Finally, I've got reservations about the boat's ecological credentials, because I'm not convinced by the 'biodiesel is green' argument. Sure, biodiesel is carbon neutral, so it's much better than ordinary diesel, but it's a long way from being pollution-free. If you were really serious about minimising your environmental impact, you'd be in a saiboat.

The Tortoise

Iain and I spent the weekend on our building site (the plan for every weekend for the forseeable future). The weather was cold, windy and wet, but we gritted our teeth, wrapped up in seven layers of clothing each, and got stuck in. Our job this weekend was to secure the frame to the slab, which doesn't sound like much, but it took us the whole weekend to do it!

Iain hammers in a bolt

The base plate of the frame is attached to the slab by 14 cm long bolts - sixy-five of them in all. To attach the bolts you have to drill through 4.5 cm of wood and 9.5 cm of reinforced concrete. We had to hire a special hammer-action drill to do this. We also had to repair the frame in one place where it had split, and we had to take apart a piece of framing and alter it when we found that one of the drainpipes coincided with a stud.

On Saturday afternoon we had a flying visit from our friend Diane. She took this photo of us. As you can see, conditions were pretty grim!

Hammers: blokes' version (left) and girls' version (right)

Next weekend we've got a load more hardware to put into the frame (straps on all the lintels and window studs, and about 200 wire dogs to attach each stud to the top plate). We've also got to plumb the walls vertically and get the top plates square horizontally. We're going to be spending a lot of time going up and down ladders!

The first week on site

2009-05-18T20:26:00.006+12:00

I took a week off work in order to make a start. The weather didn't do us any favours and it took us a while to get into our stride, but we're making progress! Next weekend we hope to get the frame trued up and properly bolted down.

Everything arrives

Where do we start?...

...With a cup of tea!

"Which way round does this go again?"

Only another 100 slots to chisel...

Making progress

Citizenship ceremony article

2009-05-15T20:34:00.002+12:00

Click on the link below to read the article about the citizenship ceremony, which contains our interview.

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5295/citizenshiparticle.jpg

P.S. More build photos coming this weekend!

The finished slab

2009-05-09T16:52:00.013+12:00

This morning we drove out to the building site to take our first look at the completed slab, and to see how the driveway has held up under the more or less incessant rain we've had over the past week.

Part of the lower section of the drive is flooded, but the slope is reasonably dry, and there haven't been any major landslips where the hill has been cut away, so hopefully the lorry that delivers the framing timber on Monday will be able to get up the hill.

We took a couple of photos of the slab. The first one gives you a pretty good idea of how big our house is going to be (or how small, if you happen to live in anything bigger than a caravan). It also makes Iain laugh like a drain, because it caught me off-guard in a moment of excessive Gumby-ness.

A quick reminder: Monty Python's Gumby family

Spot the family resemblance?

The second photo gives a close-up view of some of the pipes and wiring. Iain's standing just outside where the kitchen window will be, and I'm stood just outside the bathroom. The grey pipes in the foreground are the toilet cistern inlet pipe on the left and the toilet waste pipe (the big one!) The short green pipe with the coil of cable coming out of it is the telephone cabling. We have no idea why it's coming up next to the toilet, but no doubt it will be handy if Iain ever gets a hankering for pizza while he's sitting on the bog! The thick black cable is the electricity.

Tomorrow we're meeting a builder on site, who is going to give us some tips for putting up the framing, and then on Monday the frame and trusses are being delivered, and we'll be starting work. Watch this space!

We're kiwis!

2009-05-08T17:53:00.004+12:00

Iain and I have just got back from the District Council offices, after being sworn in as New Zealand citizens. There were about forty or so other people being granted citizenship at the ceremony, from eleven different countries.

Standing up and making the affirmation was done on an individual basis, and I was pretty nervous. It doesn't help your nerves when your surname's at the end of the alphabet, and you have to go last! Making the affirmation feels similar to making your wedding vows, but rather than making a commitment to a person, you're making a commitment to a country.

While we were waiting for the ceremony to start, Iain and I were interviewed by a reporter from the local paper, and the article should appear in print on Thursday. I'll scan it in and post it up when we get a copy.

We took our little snappy camera with us, but we didn't bother taking any photos, because there was a professional photographer there. We'll post up some pics when we get them.

Pouring the slab

2009-05-02T14:00:00.003+12:00

Four years and four lists of four things

2009-04-25T10:55:00.045+12:00

On Sunday it will be four years to the day since we arrived in New Zealand. To mark our four-year anniversary, here are four lists of four things Iain and I have put together.

The 4 best things about New Zealand

New Zealanders. The people here are laid-back, open and friendly. They're enthuiastic and self-reliant but at the same time pretty liberal-minded and accepting. Generally, people have a more positive attitude to life, which they call 'Kiwi can do'.

The weather. There's a hell of a lot more sunshine hours per year here than in the UK. Even in the depths of winter, we rarely go for more than a day or two without a blue sky day. It really lifts the spirits, and makes winter a breeze to get through. It also helps that winter only lasts for two months, instead of six! Summers here are long, but not too hot, which suits us just fine.

Space. No, not the final frontier, but the room to swing a very large cat! With a landmass 20% bigger than the UK and a population about 1/15th the size, crowds just aren't a problem. There's no overcrowding, so everything feels that much calmer and less manic.

Milford Sound

The Landscape. We're sure you don't need us to tell you that New Zealand has some of the best landscapes in the world. Alpine mountains, lush rainforests, crystal clear lakes, volcanoes, stunning beaches and wide open plains. We've got all these and more besides. On a more personal note, we reckon the view from our soon-to-be-built cabin is going to be pretty spectacular too.

The 4 worst things about New Zealand

A typical Kiwi house

Kiwi houses. We read somewhere that New Zealand has the worst housing stock of any country in the OECD, and we can believe it. Almost without exception, the houses here are cold, damp, and look as though they were last decorated in the 1950s. Double glazing and central heating are only just starting to arrive here, and insulation of any kind has only been in the building code since the late 1980s. The poor quality of the housing is one of the factors that has led us to build our own house.

Boy Racers. In New Zealand you can legally drive at 15, you don't need insurance and Japanese muscle cars are cheap and easy to come by. As a result most Friday and Saturday nights in town are blighted by the sound of boy racers doing burnouts and donuts. This is one of the reasons why we've decided to move out to the country!

The 'She'll be right' attitude. The flip side of 'Kiwi can do', and the reason why the houses are so shoddy, is a 'bodge it and make do' attitude, which Kiwis call 'she'll be right'. There is a common belief that everything can be fixed with a piece of number nine fencing wire, which is probably a spin-off from the first European settlers. Often, tradesmen here use this attitude as an excuse for not doing a proper job.

Kiwi TV. We're clutching at straws here for number four, but the TV is probably the strongest candidate for this slot. In the UK we were used to watching the BBC, which is advert-free. Over here, all channels carry adverts, which are monumentally bad, and far more frequent than the adverts on the commercial channels in the UK. Combine this with distinctly amateurish TV programmes and the outcome is that we'll be selling our TV when we move into our cabin.

4 highlights of the last four years

The Arrivals hall at Auckland Airport

Making a success of emigrating. The process of emigrating halfway around the world was time-consuming, extremely expensive and very, very stressful. However, having come out the other end, it has given us a new perspective on life. We're now far more pro-active in steering our lives in the direction we want them to go.

Exploring New Zealand. The place we now call home is such a beautiful country. We've thoroughly enjoyed the exploration we've done so far, and look forward to discovering even more in the future. For me (Helen), studying the Maori culture and language has been very rewarding, too.

Establishing our new careers. We've both made a clean break from primary school teaching, and we're both loving what we do now. Iain gets a lot of satisfaction from his job, and I relish being self-employed, and spending all day mucking about with words!

Buying a 'lifestyle block'. As soon as we 'got over' emigrating, we started looking around for a fresh challenge, and found one in July 2007, when we signed a contract to buy 8 acres of farmland out in the sticks.

4 things we're looking forward to

Establishing our new home. This will be our biggest challenge yet. We've got to learn how to build a house, design a garden, grow fruit and vegetables, manage 8 acres of land, look after livestock, and adapt to living in the country.

The 'Good Life'

Changing our lifestyle. Even though our quality of life is much better than it was in the UK, our lifestyle is still basically the same. We live in the suburbs, and do all the typical townie things. By moving out to the country we're going to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. Mind you, Iain's more than happy to swap his lattes for home brew!

Travelling. Once the house build is out of the way, we're planning on spending most of our spare cash travelling around this part of the world, visiting places that always sounded very exotic when we lived in the UK. Australia, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands are all on our list!

Becoming New Zealand citizens. We haven't got long to wait for this one -- our citizenship ceremony is on May 8th. After that we will apply for NZ passports. Iain plans to call himself a New Zealander from now on, whereas I'm happy to have a foot in both camps.

Did the earth move for you?

2009-04-19T21:38:00.011+12:00

Carlo the concrete guy has been a busy bee this week - he's just finished the track and has now downed tools while he waits for the plumber to do his stuff. The power guy has buried 300m of very expensive cable somewhere under the site. When the phone guy came to lay his cable, like all good workmen, he sucked in his breath, shook his head and said, "You'll be needing another pole for that." He did manage to get the cable in though, so we won't have to resort to two tin cans and a long piece of string.

The next step is for the plumber to do his bit and the inspector to come and check it over.
Whenever I hear the word 'inspector' I can't help thinking of Blakey off 'On the Buses'. Hopefully he remembers his clipboard!

Carlo's little digger creates some parking space

Our deck and veranda still need a bit of work.

Easter

2009-04-10T20:04:00.002+12:00

Easter kicked off with an office Easter egg hunt, which involved hurtling around foggy country roads and doing a range of dares in order to earn our Easter choccies! A fair amount of alcohol was consumed and I suspect there were a few sore heads this morning. Somehow we conspired to leave all our Easter eggs behind!

Our Easter egg team Dean, Helen, Nicole & me

Over the last few days our concrete guy, Carlo, has been very busy digging out a track and boxing up the slab ready for pouring sometime next week. The electrician and phone company are coming to lay their cables before the hardcore goes down on the drive and the plumber is pencilled in to come and stick bits of pipe into the foundations before the concrete gets poured. It's all getting rather exciting now - hopefully it won't be long before we can get stuck into the building proper. I've booked 3 weeks off work in anticipation of the slab being finished, so hopefully it all goes according to plan.

The partially excavated drive

Carlo's mate, Eric, using subtlety and precision to place the boxing for the foundation slab

Me testing out the drive

YEEHAA!

2009-03-25T17:11:00.003+13:00

I've just received an email from the council, saying our building consent has been granted! I'm off to the council offices tomorrow morning, to collect the consent document and pay another $1,500 (the second half of the consent fees).

From now on things should start to hot up. Watch this space!

Helen

First things first

2009-03-16T21:05:00.003+13:00

Well, we're still waiting for a building permit before we can start putting the track in and getting on with real work. In the meantime however, we did manage to stick up a gate. Doesn't sound too tricky, but the gateposts seemed to be made out of wood from the rare New Zealand Concrete Tree - so there was a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth. We had to have a picnic and a big sit down afterwards.

We did mark the house out with some string, but sadly you can't see it in any of the photos. (Probably because it was so small!) We've now run out of things to do other than wait for the council. Fingers crossed they get back to us this week.

Be afraid - Helen with power tools!

Me in a battle of wits with a post - It was a close thing!

The finished article. The sheep won't be too happy.

Limbo

2009-03-08T20:27:00.018+13:00

No, I'm not talking about the party dance popular in the '70s involving a stick and the risk of a slipped disk. Over the last couple of weeks we've felt at a loose end, wanting desperately to start building our house, but having to wait for building consent. I rang the council on Monday to find out how things were progressing, and they sent me a copy of the list of queries they had just sent to our architect. I panicked when I saw there were about a dozen issues needing attention, but apparently this is pretty normal. It's not unusual to have up to thirty queries. None of the queries were major, either, which is a huge relief. There was nothing relating to the position of the proposed building site, which is great news; Iain and I were worried that we might not be allowed to build on the hill, which is by far the best spot for a house. So the upshot is that we should be good to go, but we'll just have to wait a few more weeks before we can start.

There's another reason why I'm feeling a bit lost at the moment. After an intense couple of weeks of working ten-hour days to meet a tight deadline, my hands and wrists are painful from too much typing, and I have a lump on my left wrist that is restricting movement in the joint. Fortunately, my workload next week is very light, so I should be able to get the rest I need, but typing like I am now is very slow and terribly frustrating. (I'm typing with two pens, each one acting like a forefinger.) Consequently this post isn't going to be very long!

My wrist injury is affecting my yoga practice, too, with a fair number of poses being impossible right now. It's another source of frustration, but a good opportunity to try practising acceptance (one of life's lessons I really struggle with!)

Somebody once famously (and extremely annoyingly) said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so to save me too much frustrating typing, here are a few photos from the last couple of weeks.

Me and our kowhai trees which we planted from seed a year ago

Here's a reminder of what they looked like 6 months ago.

A particularly eerie rainbow over the roof of our little rental

Book Club meeting at our section (l. to r. me, Sally, Rena, Diane and Annette)

That's going to be our view, that is! (l. to r. Annette, Melissa, Sally and Rena)

Well, this has taken me almost an hour to put together, so I'm going to sign off now. I'll try to cajole Iain into making the next post.

Helen

A Night Under the Stars

2009-02-15T15:36:00.005+13:00

To celebrate finally getting the title to our thistly field, we decided to camp out there last night. Helen grabbed this piccy, although a camera can't really do justice to how spectacular the night sky was.

Here are a few more photos we took while we were there.

A view down to the neighbour's woolshed

A view to the far side of the valley

A view towards our gate

Me doing a spot of weeding

At last!

2009-02-13T17:25:00.004+13:00

We are now the proud owners of a field full of thistles!

The title on our land came through today. It's only taken 19 months. :( The next step is to submit a building consent application (on Monday) and then wait for the council approval. In theory they have to deal with it inside 20 working days, but that resets if they ask a lot of questions - which, being a council, they probably will. I'm hoping it'll take maybe 6 weeks and then Carlo, out Canadian concrete guy, can put in an access track and get the slab down, and the electrical contractor can hook up some temporary power to the site.

The next few weekends will be spent grubbing thistles and figuring out how the hell to manage the place. Anyone got a hovercraft sized Flymo they want to lend me?

Happy New Year

2009-01-06T10:07:00.003+13:00

Hope you have a great 2009!

We've been a bit slack on the blogging front for the last few months - sorry about that! The house is in limbo at the moment, but looks like it'll all come together fairly soon - we're busy getting quotes for all sorts of stuff and will probably put all house related things in a different blog and give a blow by blow account of all the details when it's done. We're over the whole waiting thing now and want to get started.

In other news, we've been granted citizenship! We have to attend a ceremony in the next few months, then we can apply for NZ passports which will give us travel & work rights in Oz amongst other things. For us, it's a statement that NZ is the place we call home and feel comfortable in. The UK seems a long way off and a distant memory now.

My work is looking interesting for 2009 - I'm developing the distance & e-learning aspects of our course, so no full-time teaching for me anymore. I'll be delivering workshops in various parts of the country and putting together an internet delivery option for 2010. So 24 days of teaching adults in a workshop setting, maybe 30 days or so of visiting and observing students in schools and the rest of time spent developing new course materials and playing with computers. Exciting stuff - I'm not sure how I'm going to fit it all in, but it'll be fun trying!

Helen is busy as heck - she's currently doing digital photography course and is working flat out with her writing. She has also landed her dream gig next year, as she's being commissioned to write some children's fiction. There's also prospects of some African work again during 2009.

Looking good this year, now we just need that land title to arrive....

Growing, growing...!

2008-09-02T14:57:00.006+12:00

In an earlier post I think I may have mentioned that, back in March, we collected and planted the seeds from some native trees. They took ages to germinate, and lots of the seeds failed to do anything at all, but six months on we have about half a dozen healthy-looking seedlings. We've managed to identify the trees they'll eventually grow into (providing the rabbits/possums/insects don't get them first, of course.)

Kowhai
(pronounced KAW-figh)

Kowhai are small trees, growing to a height of only about 8 metres. They're so common that the kowhai flower is the official national flower of New Zealand. Many species of kowhai are deciduous, which is unusual for a native New Zealand tree (most are evergreen). The tree gets its name from the Māori word, kōwhai, meaning 'yellow'.

Pookie poses with our baby kowhai trees

Kowhai bloom on bare branches in early spring

Raucous tui love eating the nectar of the kowhai flowers

Matai
(pronounced MAT-eye)

Matai is a type of native pine tree that grows up to 40 metres high. The seeds are dispersed by the kereru (New Zealand pigeon), which eats the matai berries and passes the seeds in its droppings. In the past the timber was used in house building, especially for flooring.

Our matai seedling (I don't think it's big enough to be classed as a sapling yet!)

A mature matai- we'd better not plant ours too close to the house!

Among the birds our matai should attract is the kereru (the New Zealand pigeon)

Hope you enjoyed the pics.

Helen

Back to square one

2008-08-31T21:55:00.007+12:00

We had some disheartening news this week.

The first of the builder's estimates has come in for our house, and it's almost 50% above our upper budget limit. It's looking unlikely we'll be able to build the house Phil designed for us. The the other two builders' estimates will probably be pretty similar; if anything, they're likely to be higher, as they're both registered master builders and the bloke who's already submitted his quote isn't.

We'll wait until we get the other two quotes in, then we'll make an appointment to see Phil and discuss our options, but with one third of the total cost needing to be trimmed, and with few frills, only one bedroom, and the fact that we're already planning on doing most of the interior fit-out ourselves, there's not much room to make the radical cuts needed.

As well as being disappointed, we also feel disgruntled with Phil, because his estimate of what the design would cost was so far out. We made our budgetary constraints clear to him when we had our initial meeting, and he assured us he could design something that would come within them, give or take the usual 10% margin of error. We knew we were taking a calculated risk when we employed an architect to draw up plans, but it still smarts a little, knowing we've spent $3,500 for nothing.

So it looks as if we're back to square one with our 'grand design', and we'll need to spend more time re-evaluating all the options open to us. On the positive side, the collapse of our plans may force us down a more adventurous path - of building our own home out of adobe bricks, for example, or of living in a yurt. While neither of these possibilities could be considered an easy option, either of them would give us an exciting change of lifestyle, and an opportunity for personal growth.

Maybe things not going according to plan isn't such a bad thing after all!

Helen

Our neighbours are building an ark...

2008-08-17T15:53:00.015+12:00

...not really, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were, because it's been raining incessantly for weeks. It's great news for the reservoirs, which are not only our source of water, but also a major source of power, but it's a bit of a drag for any animal not endowed with scales or webbed feet (or preferably both, like this little fella).

The Lesser Duckodile

Rather frustratingly, we've not been able to do anything related to the house build over the last few weeks. There's nothing else we can do until we get the estimates back from the builders and that's probably another week away yet. As far as being granted title to the land is concerned, we've just going to have to keep on waiting. Part of my daily daydreaming time has been spent thinking up possible names for the house once we've built it, and one idea that came to me this week is 'Manawa-nui' which means 'patience' in the Māori language. The other name I'm threatening to give the house is 'The Hermitage', which is my way of pulling Iain's leg about his desire to get away from it all. Any other house name suggestions welcome.

One of the things we have been able to do in the last couple of weeks is to submit our application for New Zealand citizenship. The process can take a while to complete - up to eight months, apparently, but the application process is ten times easier than applying to emigrate, and when it's complete we'll be eligible to apply for New Zealand passports, which opens up Australia and many of the pacific islands as visa-free destinations. We're not going to give up our British citizenship, but it will be nice to feel as though we really belong in our adopted homeland.

In the last few weeks a couple of the writing projects I've been working on lately have been published. As part of my contract I usually get a couple of free copies of each title, and it's always exciting to see the finished product. Here are some pics:

Boost English - a series of 21 workbooks for ages 4 to 12, for Pearson Education, Australia

Rocks and Minerals Workbook for Dorling Kindersley, UK

In desperation at the end-of-winter downpour, last week we went on a fantasy holiday to the little-known Pacific island of Tongmoaji. In case you were wondering, it was while we were on the island that we took the photo of the Duckodile.

A holiday snap: me doing the hula on the beach

Must dash -- still got to get the sand out of my smalls.

Helen

Whittaker Witterings

2008-08-03T20:37:00.007+12:00

Blimey, where have the last three weeks gone? Is it really that long since I last posted to the blog?!

I'm very excited about our new 'Visitor locations' map, which some of you may have noticed on your previous visit. In the last fortnight we've had more than ten hits from the UK (hi Relatives and The Burton Crowd!), at least one from Canada (hi Donna & Doug!), and at least one from Auckland (hi Carin & Jim and/or Ian & Carol!) I know these are pathetically small numbers, but they're tremendously encouraging for us, because if only one other person is reading this blog apart from us two, (and of course Richard D, who doesn't really count)*, then it's worth doing.

Iain's latest obsession is with learning to play the keyboard, and in recognition of the fact that he's stuck it with for the last four or five months or so (nothing short of a miracle where Iain's concerned), he's treated himself to a Roland something-or-other. Not Orzabal -- he was the bloke in Tears for Fears with Curt Smith -- but a type of synthesizer. A set of headphones was an essential companion purchase for reasons I'm sure I don't need to go into.

If Iain gets a synthesizer for sticking with the keyboard for five months, I'm beginning to wonder what I might be entitled to for sticking with yoga for eight years - I'm sure it must be worth a yoga studio, at the very least! Actually what I'd really like is to have not only the intellectual understanding that I am, in fact, one with the universe, but also the ability to feel it. Think I'd better stick with the meditation.** It's just a shame that it's so bloody hard.

As far as the house build is concerned, in the last three weeks we've:

i) received a letter from our solicitors saying, to paraphrase, 'Goodness me, this land purchase is taking a long time!' (It was nice of them to tell us, otherwise we wouldn't have known.)

ii) had another letter from ours solicitors containing a copy of a letter from the vendor's solicitors saying they can't give us an estimate of how much longer it will take

and

iii) sent off copies of the plans to three local builders for a rough estimate.

The weather has been pretty bad over the last few weeks. Storm after storm has battered the country, but we've got off pretty lightly here; in other parts of New Zealand there's been extreme winds, severe flooding, landslides and power outages. Nevertheless, the days are beginning to draw out, and when it stops raining long enough for the sun to come out, it's been getting almost warm, so spring, although not here yet, is definitely within sniffing distance.

I've just realised I've gone rambling on for ages and I've not got any photos to break up the monotony. So here's a gratuitous cat photo (it's my post and I'll put in whatever photos I like! :P)

Right, that's all for now.

Catch up with you again soon.

Helen

___________

* Only kidding, Richard!

** Or should that be medication?

Developed concept plans

2008-07-13T22:14:00.006+12:00

Hello everyone; this week’s blog post is a little different from normal. Instead of typing in the text, I'm dictating it. No, I haven’t employed a personal assistant; I'm trying out a computer dictation program.

I've been spending so many hours a day typing, I've been getting a lot of pain in my hands and arms. I'm not able to cut down on the amount of writing I do, but I can hopefully find a way of cutting back on the amount of time I spend pounding away at the keyboard. By using a dictation program I might eventually be able to reduce my keyboard time by 25% or so. It takes a lot of getting used to, though. You have to speak very clearly, and even then it's not 100% accurate. You always need to go back when you’ve finished, and correct the mistakes. Iain has tried it out, but didn't get very good results. Maybe the program didn't like his Stoke accent!

Last weekend we drove down to Wellington to see a rugby test between New Zealand and South Africa. Even though we've lived in New Zealand for over three years, this is the first time we've seen the All Blacks play live. The atmosphere at the match was excellent, and it was great to be able to cheer the All Blacks to a home win. It's a refreshing change for English people like us, to be able to support a national team that isn't woefully inept. :-)

On Friday our architect, Phil, sent us the developed concept plans of our little house. He's added a carport on the eastern side of the house, and we think this will not only be practical, but will also help to visually balance the roofline. At the moment the plans show a store and woodshed on the southern side of the house, but we've decided to get rid of these, which will open up the back of the house, and allow more light into the bathroom and laundry. We think a couple of cheap sheds off the driveway will do the job just as well, for a fraction of the price.

The pictures below give a rough idea of what the front of the house will look like. (Apart from the fact that Blogger has mangled the colours for some reason; must be going through its Blue Period.)

Two views of the front of our house (click for a larger image)

The choice of cladding will make a big difference to the way the house looks. We think we’ll probably go either with board and batten, in a plain wood finish, like the first photo, (except not blue!) or else with a vertically grooved board, painted red, as in the second photo.

The 'board and batten' cladding style --

it looked good when I uploaded it! :-(

The 'Shadowclad' cladding style (this is our rental in Titirangi)

The developed concept plans include a specification list, so we’re now at the point where we can get some quotes from builders. This is an exciting stage of the process, but it's also pretty nerve wracking. If the quotes come in way over budget, we may have to rethink our whole plan, give up our dream of a one-off cabin, and opt for something a bit more standard. We’ll also have wasted all the money we've already paid the architect. Still, we knew the risk we were taking when we started off down this road, and as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

About three months ago, we started collecting seeds from trees whenever we went out for a walk. We've been planting them up, and we now have a collection of seedlings of various native trees, only a couple of which we know the names of. Hopefully, some of these will survive long enough so that we can plant them out in our new garden. Next week, we’re going to make a start on growing some fruit trees. The climate here is mild enough for lemons and olives, so we're going to collect stones and pips, soak them overnight, plant them out, and see what happens.

Well, I'd better go now, as it's my bedtime! Catch you again soon.

Helen

A visit to the big smoke

2008-06-27T21:09:00.004+12:00

Last weekend we took advantage of a spell of unexpectedly sunny weather to take ourselves out for an airing. It was a bit too chilly for a stroll along the beach, so, seeing as Iain had a pile of old computer games he fancied trading in for a couple of new ones, we set off to the nearest big city, Palmerston North, for a rare shopping expedition. Palmerston North was given the second part of its name by New Zealand Post in 1871, to distinguish it from another town called Palmerston, which is on the South Island. Around here people simply refer to it as 'Palmy'. Iain and I like to call it 'the big smoke'.

The town park, where ducks rule

More ducks in action

When we say 'big' it's with our tongues firmly in our cheeks. It's the biggest settlement between here and the capital city, Wellington (which is a three hour drive away), but its population is only about 79 thousand. I wanted to look up a list of English towns and cities by population, so that I could find a town to compare it to, population-wise, but the only list I could find didn't have anywhere with a population of less than 100,000. So, it's probably safe to say it's not very big at all by UK standards.

Roses in June (the equivalent of December for all you 'topsiders')

Palmerston is a monumentally unattractive town, in stark contrast to Wanganui, and it has its own rather unfortunate microclimate that means it sees far fewer sunshine hours than here, gets a lot more rain, and is several degrees cooler, especially in the winter. When John Cleese toured New Zealand a couple of years ago, he referred to Palmy as the "...suicide capital of New Zealand. If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick." According to Wikipedia, one of the municipal rubbish tips now has an official-looking sign naming it "Mt Cleese".

The city council offices

While we were out and about I took a few snaps with the little camera I always keep in my handbag, and hopefully these show some of the more photogenic sights that you can catch in Palmerston, if you know where to look.

The wild west saloon look, typical of old pubs and hotels

That's all for now; it's late and my brain is flagging. I hope to be able to post an update on the house build before the week is out.

Helen

Apt and witty title suggestions welcome

2008-06-07T15:12:00.009+12:00

A bit of an update on the house-building front.

Last week I went to meet Phil at the section, so he could get a better feel for the site and its outlook. He gave me printouts of the CAD drawings of his initial concept plan. These include a more detailed floor plan, all four elevations and two perspective views, one of the front of the house and the other of the western outlook. We can't post these here, unfortunately, because they're on A3 paper, which means they're too big to fit onto our scanner.

Iain and I studied the CAD plans and there are just a few minor tweaks we've asked Phil to make; mainly concerning the size and positioning of windows. Next step is for Phil to come up with a developed concept plan. This needs to be detailed enough for builders and other trades people to be able to draw up quotes for products and services. I expect this planning stage will take the longest to complete, as there will be so many details to consider, so lots of to-ing and fro-ing with the specifications. At the end of the process we aim to get something that fits the budget constraints, suits the smallholding lifestyle and excites us. Not a very tall order, really! ;-)

Phil says he's been inspired in his design by the architecture of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an ex-pat Austrian who lived in New Zealand for the last twenty-five years of his life. Before I came to New Zealand I only knew Hundertwasser for his paintings, but he's probably better know for his architecture. His public toilets at Kawakawa, in Northland (the northern part of the North Island) are a well-known landmark here and are on the tourist trail.

Hundertwasser's public toilets in Kawakawa, NZ...

...the entrance

...interior view

Hundertwasser was famous for his dislike of straight lines and right angles, preferring everything to be wonky and curved. Looking at Phil's design for our cabin, it's difficult to see where the Hundertwasser influence comes in, because all the lines are straight, with no curves at all. I expect Phil's used straight lines for the reason most architects do; straight shapes are much cheaper to build.

One area in which we might be able to make the house more Hundertwasser-like is in the exterior colour scheme. Phil's proposing cladding the house in plywood panels, which can then be painted or stained in a variety of colours. Maybe he was thinking of this building in Vienna:

The 'Hundertwasser House' in Vienna

To get even more of a Hundertwasser vibe, it might also be fun to use coloured bottles and mosaic tiling in both the interior and exterior detailing. I've done mosaic work before, and I'd be keen to incorporate it into the new house. I especially like the idea of a mosaic on the wall of the outside room.

Anyway, I've got to go now; I've got a busy day today and my allotted 'posting time' is now over.

Helen

Autumn up the river

2008-05-31T16:31:00.009+12:00

This week's post is going to be light on words and heavy on images.

We had a very special book club meeting this week. We went out to Annette's place, which is about 45 kilometres out of town up the river road, and stayed overnight. Iain and I have stayed there before, as paying guests, when we took Jane and Pete up the river, and we had a wonderful time. See our write-up here. It was great to be going back again so soon. Here are some photos.

Tree ferns in the early morning light - can you spot the Moon?

Annette and John's house, as autumn turns to winter

On the deck

One view from Annette and John's deck...

...and another

...and another!

Inside the cottage where we stayed

Loading up the eponymous Flying Fox, the cable car across the river

View back to the house from the cable car

Me on the cable car

Gaye on the cable car

Carvings at the cable car station

Helen

Baby steps

2008-05-28T18:58:00.010+12:00

Yesterday we took a couple of baby steps on the house-building journey.

The vendor's solicitor rang yesterday morning to say the surveyor is finally going to do the survey. He reckons it will take around four or five weeks for the legalisation process to be completed, at which stage it will be back in the hands of the council. With a bit of luck, we should finally have title to the land in about 3 months' time -- thirteen months after we signed the contract!

We got another pleasant surprise in the afternoon. We hadn't expected to receive the initial concept sketches from the architect, Phil, for another month or so, so we were delighted when they turned up in my e-mail inbox. Phil explained that some ideas won't let go of you until you put them down on paper, and this had been one of them (I know exactly what he means -- sometimes poems and stories do the same to me!)

Iain and I spent a few hours last night poring over the design and talking it through, and we really like it -- Phil's met our criteria really well, and we've got a renewed sense of enthusiasm about the whole project. It's going to take a lot of time and effort, because we'll be managing the whole project ourselves, and doing the majority of the internal fit-out too, but we're confident we're going to end up with a home we'll love.

Anyway, I'm going to sign off now. I've got a raging sore throat and my brain is fried. I just wanted to share the good news and show off the preliminary sketches.

I've got a site visit with Phil next Wednesday, so I'll give you an update after that.

Helen

Click on the pics to get a bigger view.

Initial concept: Elevation

Initial concept: Floorplan

Land stuff

2008-05-22T21:54:00.004+12:00

H phoned up the district planner today to find out what the hold up is. For a council department they were refreshingly open and forthcoming. No big issues by all accounts, just the need for the vendor's surveyor to do his job and submit the survey, then it's all done. It'll take 2 months from then to process.

The surveyor is, however, a muppet. So to anyone in the area who wants to employ a surveyor, I'd recommend avoiding John Harrison of Harrison & O'Sullivan unless you like waiting 12 months to get a field surveyed. Our surveyor did a really detailed geotech report in less than a month, so how a basic land survey can take this long beggars belief.

Decisions, decisions, Part 2

2008-05-19T20:52:00.011+12:00

Apologies for not posting part 2 sooner, but another contract came along (thankfully a nice short one this time!) When I'm chasing a deadline and spending long hours at the computer every day I try to avoid spending any of my spare time at the keyboard.

Anyway, trying my best to pick up where I left off last time...

After making the decision to get a house designed with an architect, one fell into our lap, figuratively speaking. Iain was talking about our plans with a work colleague and it turns out she knows an architectural designer who works in Palmerston North, the 'big smoke' about an hour's drive from Wanganui. She gave us his contact details and we looked up the website of the firm he works for. We felt a bit intimidated when we saw the buildings in their online portfolio, but we dropped him an email nonetheless, asking if he'd be interested in designing a 'hippy cabin'. Thankfully, he said it sounded like fun, and would we like to arrange a meeting to discuss our ideas?

So that we'd have something to discuss at our meeting, and to give the architect, (whose name is Phil, by the way), a better idea of the sort of thing we were after, we sifted through the hundreds of house-related images we've collected from the internet over the last year or so, ever since we decided to build a new home. Initially we narrowed it down to about a dozen that we both liked, but I thought we might actually muddy the issue if we gave Phil too many images. I thought a single, well-chosen image would communicate our vision much more effectively.

Here's the image we gave him:

An interior we both really like

There are so many things that appeal to us about this interior: the 'solid' feel (even though it looks as if it the walls might be straw bale), the rough plaster finish on the walls, the rough wood cladding, the wooden post and beams, the wooden doors and windows, (yes, we're suckers for wood!) and the way it manages to feel both light and airy and cosy at the same time. It's neither strikingly modern, nor overtly traditional, but a clever and unpretentious blend of the two.

Once our 'key image' was chosen we needed to communicate the nitty-gritty of what we want from the house, and we decided to draw a mind map for this. When we first started we thought the complementary areas of form and function would be pretty evenly balanced, but as the mind map evolved, we discovered that for us, the functional considerations far outweigh the aesthetic side of things. This came as a bit of a revelation, or at least it did for me. I've always been an out-and-out dreamer, and I never realised before how important practicalities are to me. Maybe it's a function of middle age? (All observations welcome.)

Click here to view our new home mindmap. (Be patient; it's a big file!)

We had our initial meeting with Phil last week, and explained our ideas. We also gave him some photos of the section, as well as a map the engineer drew when he did the geotech report. He said it was an ideal spot to build a house, which was gratifying, because it confirmed what we've thought all along - that we've got a real cracker of a site, which we should be able to make into something really special.

Phil's busy on a big project right now, but he should be free in about six weeks time, and then it should only take him a couple of weeks to draw up a concept plan. Fortunately Phil seemed to think it would be possible to build the sort of thing we're looking for within our budget, and he even talked about the possibility of building a mezzanine, which is something we'd always fancied, but always assumed would bump the price up too much.

On the land purchase front there's still no more news on when the subdivision is likely to go through; we won't be at all surprised if the first anniversary of signing the contract comes around and we still haven't got the land.

Anyway, it's getting late, so I'll sign off now and catch you again next week.

Helen

Decisions, decisions Part 1

2008-05-04T16:09:00.020+12:00

Ever since we signed the contract on our section out at Turakina almost ten months ago we've been talking about what to do with the land, and the main topic of our discussions has been what type of house to build.

Thanks to Iain's tireless research efforts, we've looked into many possibilities. They are, in no particular order:

Relocating an old house and renovating it on site. 'House Movers' has a whole different meaning here in New Zealand, where houses are stick-built and can be picked up and put on the back of a lorry, even if it does mean cutting them in half first.
a Lockwood Home (the 'posh dream home' option).
an almost-dream-home with one of the other national house building franchises who have branches nearby
a standard home design with a local builder
a non-standard home designed by an architect
a lined and insulated garage
a tipi
a yurt
a caravan
a house truck
a geodesic dome
an earthship
a prefabricated wood cabin
a prefabricated 1880s style cottage
a kitset home (you buy the materials in kit form and either build it yourself or get a local builder to put it up for you.)
a bach (cheap holiday home)

We were anxious not to overlook any of the options open to us, but after a while it became necessary to throw out some of the ideas, just to keep our heads from exploding.

Decision number 1: Build a permanent home. We made this decision because we want to live in a particular spot on our section. If we were to build a temporary structure, someone on an adjacent section could build their house too close, and we'd lose our ideal, private building site. The tipi, yurt, caravan and house truck had to go.

Decision number 2: Borrow as little money as possible. Both of us earn only modest amounts of money, but in discussions with the bank we found they were willing to give us a quite immodest loan, which would translate into mortgage repayments that would soak up a truly scary proportion of our disposable income. Tempting as it might be to borrow the full amount the bank is offering, if we did so we'd never be able to afford to develop the land, to go on holiday, or to do any of the other things we enjoy doing, and we'd be suffering extreme anxiety every time interest rakes took a hike. What's more, we'd never stand a chance of paying our mortgage off before we reached 65. Iain also did some rather sobering calculations on the long-term cost of borrowing, and found that the overall cost of borrowing doesn't rise proportionately with the size of the loan, but exponentially. Out went the dream home and the nearly-dream-home.

Decision number 3: Go for practicality. Practicality is always an important consideration for us in most areas of life, so I'm surprised we didn't reach this decision sooner.

Impracticality comes in many forms, and we decided to get rid of the renovating an old house option because of the potential for significant overspend. It's difficult to estimate costs accurately until you start dismantling things, and discover the whole roof/framing/floor needs to be replaced because of rust/wetrot/woodworm/*insert other problem here*.

We binned the geodesic dome and the earthship on the same 'impracticality' pretext. It would cost a lot to get either of them built, because they use specialised building techniques, and we weren't prepared to take on the huge task of building them ourselves.

Decision number 4: Go for something that inspires you. At a stroke this decision got rid of options 4, 6 and 16. We just didn't feel excited about the prospect of building a cheap, off-the-peg kiwi house, a garage or a bach.

That left us with just four options, (numbers 5, 13, 14 & 15) which was a much more manageable number to choose from. We weighed all these four options up again, and decided that the one that enthused us the most was to get a non-standard home, designed by an architect.

Iain found out that, on average, it costs about 20% more to build an architect-designed house rather than an off-the-peg one, but there are several ways that we're planning on clawing back the extra expense: First of all, we're willing to sacrifice size (there are only two of us, after all - we don't need the 'standard' 150 to 200 square meter home - we reckon between 80 and 100 square meters is plenty big enough. We're also happy to use building materials that are chosen for their practicality rather than their aesthetics, i.e. rough board and batten cladding instead of the more expensive weatherboard. Finally, we're willing to pitch in and do the interior work ourselves. We've looked into what's involved in an internal fit-out, and while it will be very time-consuming, we're confident that we've already got most of the skills involved, and those we don't have, we're capable of learning.

Well, this post has gone on for a lot longer than I expected and I've run out of time, so I'm going to have to make it a two-parter, with part two next weekend.

Helen

Quiz team celebrates in style

2008-05-01T17:10:00.003+12:00

This is just a very quick post to upload some photos I was given (thanks, Frank.) I'll write a proper blog entry at the weekend.

Some of you may remember a post from December 2006 with photos of our pub quiz team's Christmas bash. Well, I'm pleased to report that the team's still going strong, although we've moved to a different pub, where the quiz is livelier, the food is better, and the prize vouchers are not only more generous, but they're also valid for twelve months rather than for three nights of the following week.

We've been doing pretty well in the quiz, often coming second and sometimes even making first place, and as soon as we collect enough vouchers, we spend them on a celebratory meal. Here are some photos of our latest 'team meal' last weekend.

'Bill's Clues'. On the right (l to r): Scott, me, Frank and Linda

On the left, (l to r): Jane, Andrew (AKA Maccas), Iain and Bruce (AKA Lippy)

Bruce before drinking the Sambuca...

...and after

Helen

Jane and Pete's visit - Part 2

2008-04-21T10:50:00.009+12:00

Welcome to Part 2 of Jane and Pete's Visit. This time I'm going to let the photos do the talking, and keep the words to a minimum. Partly, this is because I don't want to bore anyone with my rambling narrative, but mainly it's because the things I'm writing about happened about six weeks ago, and they're beginning to fade from memory. While I have an amazing recall of useless facts and figures, I've always had a very poor memory for events, and the older I get, the woollier it becomes.

After returning home from our trip up the Whanganui River we hopped aboard Jane and Pete's mobile home, and set off for a bit of a tour. First we went to Waitomo Glowworm Caves, near Hamilton. Flash photography isn't permitted, because it disturbs the glowworms, so the only shot I got was of the river as we emerged into daylight at the end of our trip.

The Waitomo River, outside Waitomo Glowworm Caves

There's an interesting short video about Waitomo Glowworm Caves here.

After Waitomo we made our way to Rotorua, which many kiwis call Rotovegas, because it's the tourism capital of the North Island. The two main attractions we checked out while we were in Rotorua were Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, and Tamaki Māori Village.

Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland

The Devil's Bathtub - he must use Radox

Bubbling mud pools

Thermal Park Panorama - The Artist's Palette and The Champagne Pool

The Lady Knox Geyser

Jane and Pete in the foreground, some geyser in the background!

Iain and I

For more information about Wai-o-Tapu Termal Wonderland, visit their website.

Tamaki Māori Village, Rotorua

The cultural evening at Tamaki Māori village was excellent. We didn't manage to get any decent photographs, though, because we were at the back of the group, and most of the events were held outside, in the dark. As a result, I have several dozen beautifully illuminated photos of someone's bald head, and not much else. To see some good photos, and to find out more about Tamaki village, visit the Tamaki Māori Village website.

On our way back to Wanganui from Rotorua we stopped off at Huka Falls near Taupo. Huka Falls is the largest waterfall on the Waikato River, and although the water level was much lower than normal, after several months of drought conditions, they were still spectacular. I fancied a ride on the jetboat, but had to make do with watching it from above. That's an experience to write on my 'to do' list.

Huka Falls, near Taupo

The Huka Falls Jet Boat - looks like fun!

Helen

Jane and Pete's visit - Part 1

2008-04-11T19:21:00.027+12:00

For the last three and a half months I've been spending 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week sitting at the computer, writing. Not surprisingly, I've not felt like spending any of my spare time sitting at the computer, writing, so I've not made any blog posts. Now the mammoth project is finished, I have no more excuses.

At the end of February Iain and I took a week off work to spend with Iain's sister Jane and her partner Pete, who were visiting from the U.K. It was great to see them again after three years, and it was exciting for us to be able to show them around our adopted country. Before they arrived in Wanganui they spent a couple of weeks touring round the northern half of the North Island in a camper van.

Iain and I on the jetboat up the Whanganui River

The Flying Fox: view from the deck of Annette and John's house

When Jane and Pete arrived in Wanganui we took them up the Whanganui River by jetboat and stayed at The Flying Fox, which is owned by Annette, a friend of mine from book club. It's difficult to describe The Flying Fox, because there's nothing else to compare it to; it really is unique. It's situated miles from anywhere on the banks of the river, surrounded by native bush. Annette and her partner John have built two guest cottages and a little wagon they call The Glory Cart, or you can camp out in the clearing, under the stars. You can self cater, or do as we did and take advantage of Annette's fantastic cooking. Almost everything is grown on site, in their organic gardens. There's no road access, so the only way to get there is by boat, or via the flying fox across the river, from which the place takes its name. As soon as you step off the boat the place starts to work its magic on you. You can feel your breathing slow and deepen and your blood pressure drop.

The cottage where we stayed

We stayed in one of the cottages, named after the local poet, James K. Baxter, and had our first encounter with a composting toilet. We're thinking of installing one when we build our house, so it was good to be able to try one out. It was a bit whiffy, but Annette explained that this was because the fan had been off for most of the day, because there had been a power cut. When the fan's working there's hardly any smell, apparently.

We spent a very pleasant evening eating, talking, laughing, listening to the cottage's eclectic record collection and (with the exception of yours truly) drinking wine. Iain and I had the upstairs bedroom, and we left the curtains open all night so we could look out at the forest and the stars. The mosquito net above the bed wasn't just for decoration -- we were very glad we had it. At dawn I sneaked outside and practised yoga in the clearing outside the cottage, to the sounds of the river and the awakening birds. It was, as the kiwis are so fond of saying, awesome.

Morning light

After a delicious breakfast courtesy of Annette and some basic canoe instruction from John, we canoed back down the river. Iain and I have been in a canoe together before, and it was not a happy experience*, so it was great to be able to swap partners this time. I sailed with Pete, and once I'd got the hang of steering, everything went smoothly and we had a relaxing paddle, with just a couple of hairy moments, when we hit a log side-on and when we found ourselves going backwards down a rapid. Iain and Jane had a more torrid trip, but miraculously managed to avoid running aground or capsizing.

We made it! At journey's end

Well, that about does it for part 1. I'll post up part 2 in a week's time.

Helen

*the biggest understatement of the millennium

It's been a while

2008-04-09T18:54:00.005+12:00

H was supposed to be taking over blogging duties for a bit, but seems to have run out of things to say. (That's a first!) In her defense, she's been rather snowed under with work. That's all done now, so hopefully she'll put a couple of posts up concerning our recent activities. Watch this space!

Don't fall off your chair...

2008-01-30T19:23:00.000+13:00

...but it's Helen making this post. Over the last six months or so Iain has taken over blogging duties almost entirely - a distinct role reversal, compared to the early days when we first started the blog. From now on I'm going to make an effort to pull my weight a bit more.

In the last few weeks we've been settling into our rental, and Iain's been settling back into the routine at work. He loves the fact that work is now only a three-minute drive away, compared to the hefty seven-minute commute he was doing before. ;-)

Our little rental - 'granny' but good

I'm pleased to report that Pookie has settled in well, too. We bought a pheromone diffuser which our cattery guy recommended. It's like a plug-in air freshener, but instead of perfume it diffuses a synthetic version of the cat facial pheromone (the stuff cats are spreading around when they rub their face up against the furniture). I think the cat pheromones must be working their magic on me, too. I was feeling very stressed before the move, but now I feel unusually chilled out, despite working long hours.

My workload is absolutely manic right now. Since just before Christmas I've been working seven days a week on a project for Pearson Education in Australia. It's a series of 21 home practice workbooks in English, and the deadline for completing the first draft of the manuscripts is the middle of March.

I won't be working for quite the whole time, though - Iain and I are taking ten days off work at the end of February to spend with Jane and Pete while they're on their 7-week tour of New Zealand. The weather here has been hot and dry for weeks and weeks *, so we're hoping it won't start bucketing it down as soon as Jane and Pete arrive. They touch down in Godzone this coming Saturday, but we have to wait for another three weeks before they make their way down to Wanganui. We're both very much looking forward to seeing them.

An interesting feature of the front garden!

The house building process is progressing as fast as can be expected before taking possession of the land. We've seen a draft house plan from one of the building companies we've been talking to, and the plan from the second lot should be ready by the end of this week. It's going to be very difficult making the final decision about who to build with, but it's so exciting to be in this position in the first place that we're not complaining! Building our own home on 8 1/2 acres of land is not something we could ever have contemplated back in the UK. Once we've made the final decision about who our builder is going to be, we'll post up the initial plans to give you an idea of what the house is going to look like.

Helen

*Phil and Sally - honestly, it has!

All done

2008-01-16T22:13:00.000+13:00

We're now installed in our new place. Thank gawd for that! I'm back at work too, which is good - I've got a gentle couple of weeks before the new students start, so it all feels very relaxed. The weather is stunning at the moment - it's perhaps a bit too toasty for my tastes, and we could do with a spot of rain before the garden turns completely to dust.

We've just been to see another builder (number 3) to get another concept done, sounded pretty promising although we're no further forward as to the land title being issued - I'll be suprised if we see any progress there before April TBH. The vendor has done most of the stuff he was supposed to, it'll be down to the local council to do their bit now. (groan)

I'll grab some piccies of our new place at the weekend (including one of the concrete stag on the front lawn.... seriously! Gnomes just don't cut it out in the colonies, don't cha know.)

Moving sucks

2008-01-08T08:12:00.001+13:00

We started moving stuff across to our rental yesterday. We're shifting all the small fiddly stuff bit by bit over two days, then shifting the furniture and ourselves on Wednesday. Fortunately the new place is only about 5 minutes drive from our current house, which makes life easier.

I'm totally over the whole moving thing. This will be our 6th move in less than 3 years, and we have one more to do later on this year (hopefully). I don't want to move again for a very long time!!

Season's Greetings

2007-12-27T11:44:00.000+13:00

I hope you all had a jolly Christmas and Santa brought everything you wanted. We spent Christmas morning having a champagne breakfast with my boss and her family, which was very pleasant and tonight we're off out to friends for a meal. Other than that, we've been taking it easy - although Helen is having to work on a new contract, which sucks a bit.

We've got a rental place sorted for the 11th January. It's a small 2 bed unit in town. It's tidy, but small and very sixties. The landlady is a friend of our estate agent and lives next door. (Always handy having the landlord on hand!), it's not great but it'll tide us over until the house is finished.

On the house front, we've had meetings with 2 building companies so far, who've both gone away to produce concept plans and quotes and we've got a third builder to talk to in the new year. The title to the land isn't sorted yet, and realistically it'll be late Jan or Feb before we expect any news on that. By the time it comes through, I'm hoping we'll have chosen the builder and got the final plans ready for building consent approval.

Being a rural build, things won't be as straightforward as a normal town build. The section has power & phone to the boundary and that's pretty much it. We've got to take the power line from the boundary to the build site (which is 200m +), build an access road of 350m (some of which is steep incline), put in water storage tanks (the house is going to have a roof collection & purification system) and a waste treatment system (can't get away with a simple septic system, it has to be a fancy thing according to the local authority). We're also going for solar water heating - we did think about going completely off-grid, but unless we win Lotto, that's not happening.

By the time we've done all that lot, we'll be skint and living in a shed. However, it'll be a very nice shed, with an amazing toilet and lots of pure hot water!

One unfortunate effect of moving to a tiddly rental (and subsequently moving to our eco-shed) will be the loss of my "man cave".

I'm deeply upset.

Here's a couple of photos of the current (somewhat untidy) version:

On a positive note, I'm trying to wangle a major upgrade to the sound system into the budget, so not only will our 6x4 foot shed have hot pure water and a deluxe bog, it will also have a kick ass home theatre with a high end surround sound system.
It'll probably get axed in favour of having posher door handles and double glazing, but I can always dream.....

Sold!

2007-12-11T07:51:00.000+13:00

We finally went unconditional on our house yesterday. Thank goodness for that! It's been a bit stressful because we can't start to do anything to the land until after we've sold - and it would appear that property markets everywhere, including NZ, have taken a serious turn for the worse. We move out on January 11th, so the next step is to get a rental and wait for the land subdivision to be approved by council. Hopefully that will all happen by Jan/Feb next year at which point we can then begin the whole planning & building process.

In other news, our gorgeous little kitty - Smudge - was run over on Friday. We were absolutely gutted. We both thought she was the best pet we've ever had. Such a lovely, bouncy and affectionate thing.

Cracking weather, Grommit

2007-11-21T19:23:00.000+13:00

We've had a glorious few weeks weather-wise across the whole of NZ. Blue skies, heaps of sunshine and toasty temperatures. We've been doing a fair bit of sneaking off to the beach and chilling out in garden - but we're also working on grabbing a few piccies for a video blog. Last year was a bit naff weather wise, while you lot in the UK had a scorcher, it was pretty mediocre here - summer was very late in coming. No such problems this year!

A change in direction?

2007-10-30T11:15:00.000+13:00

I'm currently mulling over a change in the blog (while sitting on the porch, soaking up the sun - I'm off work with a lergie, so mulling is all I feel like doing at the moment!). Keeping momentum on a blog is pretty difficult, our entries have tailed off to one or two a month and I suspect people don't visit as much without the regular updates.

A change is as good as a rest, so one way of getting a bit of enthusiasm back would be to switch to doing a monthly video diary or podcast, backed up with a photo gallery and website. We'd set it up so that you could subscribe via a newsfeed or iTunes and have a set date each month when we published. Whaddya think?

A new video

2007-10-28T23:17:00.000+13:00

Finally, after a lot of faffing about, I've uploaded a video of our new section at Turakina. It's a bit hefty at 152mb and so it's probably best to download it before watching. Not of interest to the casual viewer - just those interested in seeing a drive along a kiwi road and a tour of a muddy field.

The link is http://gallery.mac.com/technohippies#100070

A quick update

2007-09-28T22:41:00.001+12:00

We finally went unconditional on the land today - the geotech surveyor gave everything the thumbs up. The only thing we need to do is plant some erosion control trees on the slope above the access road, when we put the road in. It'll cost us $3-4k extra, but nothing show stopping. The house site itself (i.e. the hill) is basically on solid rock, so isn't going anywhere in a hurry. Always good to know!

Other NZ news of note is Ruapehu erupted last week. Completely without warning, it just went bang and shot a load of boulders, lava, ash & mud out of the top. Not so great for the people in the climbers hut near the summit, or the skiers enjoying a holiday break!

More info and cool pics here

Cool School

2007-09-07T21:49:00.001+12:00

Ngamatapouri School

As part of my job, I have to travel to schools around the region to observe and assess teacher aides in the classroom. The other day I visited Ngamatapouri school to carry out an assessment. Wow, what an amazing place.

It's about 80kms from Wanganui, 50kms down a single track, no exit road. The school has a grand total of 6 students, ranging from 5-12 years old. 1 teaching principal and 1 TA.

Inside the one and only classroom

What a gig! Great staff & great kids. Beats the crap out of town schools. Fair old commute though. On my trip out there, I didn't see a single other vehicle on the track - and the round trip took 1 1/2 hours!!

The Playground

The Playing Fields

A new toy

2007-08-18T21:10:00.000+12:00

Yesterday we splashed out on a video camera! We've never had one before, and we've managed to justify the expense because of two events coming up in 2008 - Jane and Pete's visit and our house build. The idea is that if we get one now and practise a lot, we stand a chance of being half competent in using it by next year.

This morning we were keen to try it out and put together our first film, but the day dawned wet and blustery - hardly the best weather for an outdoor shoot.

We looked around inside the house for something interesting, and the only thing moving was our cat, Smudge, so we shot her. It's hardly an arthouse movie, but it is one minute twenty seconds of madcap (or madcat) action - check it out here.

Next time we go on a day trip we'll take the video camera with us and have a go at capturing some views of beautiful NZ.

Helen

Famous Kitties

2007-08-17T22:08:00.000+12:00

If you're not into cats, you'll probably want to go and do something else now, like cutting your toenails.

If you are into cats, then a website you really ought to check out if you haven't already is Kittenwar. The general public send in photos of their kittens, which are then pitted head to head in photo duels. Two adorable kitties flash up on the screen and you click on whichever one you think is cuter. Then another two kitties flash up, and so on, until your tea break is over or you reach cat-induced catatonia, whichever is the sooner. Cats' scores are converted into percentages and you can view the rankings from 'winningest' to 'losingest'. Cuter than a cute thing.

Anyway, about eighteen months ago we uploaded photos of our then kittens Pookie and Mo and some time ago I received an e-mail asking my permission to use the photos in a Kittenwar book they were planning on putting together.

Well, 'Kittenwar: the book' has now been released. Here's the page featuring Mo. I shall definitely be buying a copy. :-)

A bit more progress

2007-08-08T17:07:00.001+12:00

The council have approved the sub-division, subject to a few standard conditions. Horay! The contract has also now been signed by all the appropriate peeps involved, so it's all systems go. The last piece of the jigsaw for us is getting a geo-tech survey done to make sure the land isn't likely to slip or otherwise fall apart during an earthquake or flood event. This can take a while to sort out, so it'll be the end of September before we're completely sorted. After that it's just the time it takes to sort the final conditions and for the consent and title to be issued. Looking good for the end of December then!

Now we just have to decorate our house and sell it. :(

That's proving to be a bit of a pain in the bum. Having gone through that particular painful process just before we emigrated, it's a bit difficult to get motivated again. We'll get there by mid-September I hope - it'll be good to get the house on the market in early Spring.

The next big decision to be made is the house. Do we go for the bigger house/fat mortgage option, or opt for the simple rural 'cabin' style thing, with a tiddly mortgage and more scope to go down the self sufficiency route?

This week the latter option is favourite, as the other option entails selling my soul to the bank for the next 10 years and is bit too mainstream for my liking! However every time I look at a house magazine or brochure I get tempted by all the posh kitchens, designer tapware and the latest in Italian marble toilet seats. I must be brave and resist. All that designer stuff is soooo last year, I reckon the next big thing will be long drop toilets & en-suite goat sheds. In which case I shall be at the cutting edge of architectural thinking.

An early concept model of the new Whittaker residence

Happy People

2007-07-08T10:50:00.001+12:00

A quick update - the vendor of the land has agreed in principle to our offer!!

Obviously the blood sucking lawyers have to review the fine print, but it's looking good. As the land still has to go through the various council subdivision consultation processes, it'll be a while before we get our hands on it - I'm guessing around December if we're lucky, more likely early next year.

Now we have to tart our current place up a bit and sell it, so we can afford to build something other than a yurt to live in :)

For us, this represents a big step closer towards 'living the dream' and we're more than a bit chuffed. It's been a stressful few days waiting to see if we'd bagged our own personal corner of paradise. Still a long way to go, but we've started the wagon rolling now, no going back!

Dusting off the cobwebs

2007-07-01T17:35:00.001+12:00

We thought it was about time to dust off the cobwebs on the blog, because we have some exciting news to share. We've made the decision to buy a plot of land and build a house, and we've found a plot (or a 'section' as they call them here) which we really, really like.

It's about half an hour out of Wanganui, in a lovely area called the Turakina Valley. The section is roughly 8 and a half acres. There is an elevated, flat building site of between two and three acres, and the rest is a mixture of flat pasture and hillside suitable for grazing sheep (someone else's!) and/or for growing trees for firewood.

The potential building site gives 360-degree views, with the best view being to the north, which is the favoured orientation for houses in the southern hemisphere (like facing south in the northern hemisphere, because you get all day sun).

We've already got loan approval from the bank, so we're going to go ahead and put in an offer this week (subject to all the usual inspections, of course) and see what happens.

This first photo shows a view of the section from the boundary at the road. The track going upwards from left to right is the probable line of the driveway. The ridge line is where the house will go.

The rest of the photos show the views from the flat building site on top of the ridge; two views from the front of the house...

...and two views out the back.

These snaps really don't do the place justice. The camera can't convey what a special spot it is. Even on a grey winter's afternoon, it blew us away. Huge vistas and not another house in sight!

There's going to be an enormous amount of time, effort, stress and money expended before we move into our new home, and that's if everything goes smoothly - there are an awful lot of things that can go wrong. However, it's very exciting, as well as being more than a little scary. We're keeping our fingers crossed! Wish us luck.

Only in New Zealand!

2007-05-25T11:45:00.000+12:00

Possum knocks out entire region's power

7:55AM Friday May 25, 2007

A possum on a Wairarapa powerline knocked out electricity to Masterton, Carterton, Greytown and Featherston last night, police said.

The possum exploded after touching powerlines on Masterton's Ngaumutawa Road, causing electricity to arc metres through the air to blow up a nearby water main.

Police said technicians were rushing to return power to the region, and hoped to have it on by midnight.

A police spokeswoman was unsure how many people were affected, or how widespread the blackout was.

- NZPA

We're still here!

2007-05-24T21:06:00.000+12:00

It's been a while since our last post, but we haven't disappeared off the face of the planet just yet. We've both been fairly busy of late - Helen with her writing work and me with lecturing and such like. We've not been up to anything especially exciting, just the usual day to day stuff. I'm plugging away at an adult ed. qualification in my spare time and Helen is still hammering away at her novel.

Two events of note:

1) Jane (my sister) & Pete are coming for an extended trip early next year - they're doing a 7 week tour of NZ and we're going to hook up for a week or so while they are on North Island. I'm really looking forward to that - it's cool showing people around this place and it'll be great to catch up with the old foggies! :P

2) We got up and running on a web cam. Had a nice chat to Jane & Pete using Skype, which worked really well - even with our temperamental net connection. If anyone else fancies hooking up via Skype, my user name is fnarrfnarr.

I'm off to watch Liverpool loose the Champions League now, with the next door neighbour. He's been avoiding the result all day, so I've got to pretend I don't know either. I lasted about 30 seconds at work before someone blabbed the result! Odd that 12,000 miles away from the UK I work in an office with 2 other Liverpool supporters (in fact we're the only blokes in the office and the only footy fans - all the women prefer rugby!) The replay starts at 10pm tonight, we've got a case of beer to get through and I've got to give a 3 hour lecture on the NZ Curriculum Framework at 9am tomorrow morning. I'm glad I'm not one of my students!!

Mo' Piccies

2007-04-09T17:51:00.000+12:00

This week: More pixelated goodness, less waffle. I will say one thing, though. Iain is very handy for shoving in a photo when you want to get an idea of scale.

our enormous log pile

Bason Botanic Reserve

Iain and an avenue of palms

I never get tired of views like this!

me in the orchid house

the toilets (???!!!)

a hole on the frisbee golfcourse - we'll have to take a frisbee next time

one of the lakes

Iain and storybook toadstool

beautiful autumn colours

Iain and triffid (or maybe it's just a giant aloe-type thing)

Helen

Seizing the day

2007-04-01T14:41:00.000+12:00

Both of us have been incredibly busy with work over the last two or three weeks, so when we drew the curtains this morning and saw blue sky, we decided to escape to the beach for a couple of hours.

We went to Waiinu Beach, (pronounced 'why EE noo') whose name means 'drinking water' in Maori, referring to the dozens of fresh-water streams that trickle down to the surf.

one of the fresh water streams on Waiinu Beach

It's a typical west coast beach - big breakers, black volcanic sand,huge piles of driftwood left by the high tide, and an expanse of sand dunes. There's a small settlement there consisting mainly of ramshackle 'baches' or holiday homes, and there's also a rough and ready camp ground frequented by travellers. There's a sign welcoming travelling visitors, pointing out that regulations only allow stays of up to two months at a time. Many of the caravans and build-it-yourself-from-a-truck campervans looked as though they'd been there much longer than that! One of the things we love about New Zealand, (and one of the things many other ex-pat Brits find very difficult to stomach), is this laid back attitude to rules and regulations.

nature's sculpture

I wandered off to take some photos and to do a bit of beach combing (you never know what treasures you might find on a beach) while Iain sat and soaked up the sunshine.

Iain, chillin'

An hour or so and several finds later (including a pebble that has the same markings as Smudge) we set off back home, lungs and minds blown clean. Within sixty seconds of starting the car it started raining. We were very pleased to have made the most of the fine weather.

Our old PC, which was a cannibalisation of the still-functioning bits of the two machines we bought when we first arrived in New Zealand, finally packed up last week. Iain has a theory to explain this alarmingly high attrition rate. He thinks it might be due to electricity spikes causing damage to the hardware. Apparently the NZ power supply is very variable, with huge peaks and troughs in voltage. We've had everything connected to a surge protector, but Iain's beginning to think that that may not have been enough protection, and we should have invested in a UPS (uninterruptable power supply).

The upshot of all this is that we've bought ourselves a new computer - a 24" iMac. It arrived on Friday and most of Iain's time this weekend has been spent in setting it up. He did let me have a go on it yesterday, though, and in just two and a half hours I managed to put together a swish new website, using 'iWeb', the Mac's 'instant website for idiots' program, which wipes the floor with the Microsoft equivalent, Front Page. Check out my website here.

Iain and our new iMac

Well, it's the first of April, the equivalent of the first of October in the Northern Hemisphere, and the weather is still warm enough to sit on the beach in a t-shirt. In two years we've got used to an awful lot about our new home, but I hope I never stop appreciating the mildness of the weather here. A stroll on a UK beach on October 1st would only ever be described as 'brisk and bracing!'

Must sign off now and write a post for the other blog.
Catch you later.

Helen

Mount Ruapehu Lahar

2007-03-18T22:12:00.000+12:00

The crater lake on Mount Ruapehu, one of the nearby volcanoes (the mountain we went skiing on in July) broke its sides today, releasing a lahar.

You can read the full story and see some cool photos here.

Helen

New blog

2007-03-12T18:50:00.000+13:00

We've got a new blog, Technohippies.

We're not abandoning this blog, because the new blog has a very specific remit, but from now on our inane wibbling will be spread between the two blogs. There's only so much inane wibbling one couple can do, even us, so we'll probably be making fewer posts on here. However, next Saturday we're off to Wellington (the country's capital and the home of Peter Jackson for those of you not au fait with NZ geography), so that'll probably get a write-up on here.

Helen

Ten Reasons

2007-03-03T09:23:00.000+13:00

Ten Reasons why New Zealand is better than Australia

1. There are no snakes.
None at all. Not even small, shy, vegetarian ones. St. Patrick must have gone the long way round on his way to Ireland.

2. There are no poisonous spiders.
Apart from one, which isn't very poisonous, and is only found in the sand dunes on one particular beach near New Plymouth. It's so rare that there might actually only be one individual spider left.

3. It doesn't get too hot in the summer.
In many parts of Oz summer highs are in the mid 40s for months on end. It's exceptional here if the temperature hits 30 degrees. The average maximum daytime temperature in summer is 23 degrees - just about perfick!

4. We don't have droughts.
It rains a lot. Another thing we have in common with Ireland.

5. The indigenous people are treated much better.
While the relationship between the white European settlers and the Maori has had its fair share of problems over the years, the Maori have fared way, way better than the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.

6. NZ is a nuclear-free zone.
This means no US nuclear submarines in our waters, and no nuclear reactors just itching to go into meltdown.

7. New Zealand is not involved in the conflict in Iraq.
Nuff said.

8. You can see the whole country in a four-week road trip.
It would probably take four years of driving around Australia to see it all. Who could be arsed?

9. The All Blacks have a much cooler strip than the Wallabies.
No contest.

10. There are almost no Australians in New Zealand.

Helen

Square Foot Gardening

2007-03-02T14:06:00.000+13:00

Having noticed that everything in our garden grows like stink for most of the year, we've decided to try growing some herbs and vegetables.

Iain did some online research, and discovered a method called Square Foot Gardening (SFG), invented by American gardener Mel Bartholomew in the late 1970s. We'd never heard of it before, but his original book was the best-selling gardening book ever in the USA. He brought out a new, improved edition last year. We've bought a copy, and it's very informative.

The principles of the square foot gardening method are pretty simple. Here's a rundown, taken from the official SFG website:

The Ten Basics Of
Square Foot Gardening

1 - LAYOUT
Arrange you garden in squares, not rows.
Lay it out in 4 by 4 areas.

2 - BOXES
Build boxes to hold a new soil mix above ground.

3 - AISLES
Space boxes 3 apart to form walking aisles.

4 - SOIL
Fill boxes with Mels special soil mix:
1/3 compost. 1/3 peat moss,
and 1/3 coarse vermiculite.

5 - GRID
Make a square foot grid for the top of each box.
A MUST!

6 - CARE
NEVER WALK ON YOUR GROWING SOIL.
Tend your garden from the aisles.

7 - SELECT
Plant a different flower, vegetable, or herb crop in each square foot, using 1, 4, 9, or 16 plants per square foot.

8 - PLANT
Conserve seeds. Plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) per hole.

9 - WATER
Water by hand from a bucket of sun-warmed water.

10 - HARVEST
When you finish harvesting a square foot, add compost and replant it with a new and different crop.

Last weekend we constructed a couple of bottomless 4' by 2' boxes from rough, untreated wood planks, screwed together with decking screws.

We rubbed the finished boxes inside and out with linseed oil to give them some protection from the rain.

We lined the boxes with weed matting to stop weeds coming up from below, and to help prevent the soil creeping out from the gaps underneath the boxes caused by the wonkiness of our patio.

We made 300 litres of 'Mel's Mix' by mixing 1 part peat moss with 1 part vermiculite and 1 part mixed organic compost, and plenty of water to damp down the dust.

We put the 'Mel's Mix' in the boxes and added a square foot grid by threading plastic washing line through eye screws.

Finally, we planted our seeds, a different type in each square foot.
We've got 1 square foot each of broccoli, leeks, chives, basil, beetroot, sage, parsley and spinach, and 2 square feet (one in each container) of peas, carrots, lettuce and marigold (which is supposed to repel insect pests).

Yesterday, just four days after planting, the broccoli and marigold shoots were showing, and this morning they were joined by the peas and lettuce.

It's exciting to think that in a couple of months' time we should be sitting down to eat what we've grown (unless the slugs, caterpillars and birds get to it first of course!)

Helen

A feline interlude

2007-02-10T19:40:00.001+13:00

If you're not cat-mad, don't bother reading this post!

Smudge has been with us a month now, and has settled down really well. The relationship between her and Pookie is gradually becoming less strained, and Pookie is even starting to 'play' with Smudge, by chasing her about and when she catches up with her, giving her a swift bat around the ears.

Smudge dares to jump up on the bed when Pookie's already there...

...she gradually inches her way towards Pookie...

...got her! A split second after I took this shot Pookie got her own back.

Smudge in hunting mode

Helen

Home on the Range

2007-01-29T19:53:00.000+13:00

Howdy, folks.

After our mighty excitin' travels, we bin done settled back into the old routine here at Whittaker Ranch. Both of us are fair run off our feet with mighty big amounts of work right now, so we ain't got much time for gallivantin'. Consequently, I ain't got nothin' to write about. Be that as it may, that's never stopped me before, and I sure ain't gonna let it stop me now.

Now that I think on it, there was somethin' pretty durn exciting that happened today. Iain moseyed on into town and found out the local stationer's store is selling its merchandise at a discount, what with the schoolhouse opening its doors again real soon - most everythin' is goin' for a song. When he got back home he was staggerin' under the weight of three dozen lever arch files and several hundredweight of poly pockets - that's them thar A4 poly-something-lene filin' pockets, not them pocket-size dressin' up dollies little girls are so fond of. Obviously.

There goes another big ball of tumbleweed, blowin' down Mainstreet.
I like to sit here on the porch, rockin' back and forth in the rockin' chair, twiddlin' my thumbs and watchin' it tumble.

Cousin Helen

South Island Trip - The final chapter

2007-01-20T17:24:00.000+13:00

Here, at last, is the final instalment of our trip account. I'm relieved about that, because writing in a time warp like this does my head in.

some of the Moeraki boulders

Day 11 – Dunedin to Christchurch
On day eleven we drove from Dunedin to Christchurch. En route we went to see the ‘world-famous-in-New Zealand’ Moeraki boulders on the Pacific coast, because everyone we know who’s been to South Island said they were worth a look. However, when I first caught sight of the boulders from the other end of the beach, looking like … well, any old ordinary boulders, and besieged by dozens of clambering tourists, my initial impulse was to turn around and get back in the car. I’m glad I didn’t, because when you get up close, the boulders are fascinating. Click here for information about the boulders and the story of their formation.

coastal erosion is revealing still more boulders

a close-up of a couple of the boulders - the one at the back resembles a turtle shell

the action of the sea is slowly breaking the boulders open...

...to reveal their inner structure

We arrived in Christchurch late in the afternoon and spent the evening chilling out. Really decent curry houses aren’t that easy to find in New Zealand, so we were delighted to find one with an excellent menu at a very reasonable price just two minutes’ walk from the motel.

Day 12 Christchurch to Nelson via the Lewis Pass and Murchison
Another day spent driving. Neither of us took a single shot with the camera. Photographic lethargy was beginning to set in.

Days 13, 14 & 15 – in Nelson and home again
Almost as soon as we arrived in Nelson I was struck down with a mystery bug, and spent most of the time sleeping. Because I felt so ill, we ended up doing very little in Nelson, although we did manage to get in a visit to the WOW museum. WOW stands for World Of Wearable Art, which is an annual event which now takes place in Wellington, but which originated in Nelson in the late 80s. To keep the blokes happy, the WOW complex also comprises a vintage car museum.

The WOW collections are well worth a look. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted in the wearable art gallery, so I couldn't take any piccies. Here’s a link to their website.

We had hoped to get some better shots of the Marlborough Sounds on the return ferry journey, but the weather was even greyer and murkier than the first time round, so we didn’t take any photos at all. We were more than ready to get home; in fact, the holiday could have done with being three or four days shorter. Our stamina level where travel is concerned is pretty pathetic. It does make me wonder how we're going to manage on the epic, several-months-long adventure trip Iain wants us to take in the next couple of years.

Helen

A new concept in male grooming

2007-01-20T15:25:00.000+13:00

personal hygiene services from 'La Maison du Chat'

South Island Trip - Days 9 & 10 - around Dunedin

2007-01-13T15:19:00.000+13:00

spotted in Dunedin - a jolly student wheeze, or the world's most expensive can of Pepsi?

Day 9 - Te Anau to Dunedin

We spent a very long day driving, and I'm ashamed to say we took no photos at all. I think our trip to Fiordland spoilt us, as far as appreciating attractive scenery's concerned. Our favourite part was the Clutha district of southern Otago between the towns of Gore and Clinton. The road is called 'The Presidential Highway', presumably a tongue-in-cheek reference to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. It was pleasant, rolling farmland - mainly given over to sheep of course, but there was also some cattle and arable farming. It reminded us of the Derbyshire Dales, although without the dry stone walls. One reason the landscape looked so familiar was because the first European settlers replaced the native trees with oaks, willows, ashes, poplars and even some hawthorn hedges – the first hedges we’ve seen in New Zealand.

Day 10 - Dunedin

Dunedin was planned by Scottish settlers, with the express intention of becoming 'the Edinburgh of the South'. The name of the city is an anglicisation of Dùn Èideann, the Gaelic name for Edinburgh. Not surprisingly, given its origins, the city's laid out on a rather grand street plan, and there are a lot of ornate late Victorian and Edwardian public buildings – although most of them are built in brick rather than in the granite of its namesake. Being a major student town, it manages to be both bustling and laid back, which is a pretty neat trick if you can pull it off.

In the morning we visited the Otago Settlers Museum, and saw some fascinating displays about the impact the European settlement had on the local Maori tribes, the sea voyages taken by the European migrants in the nineteenth century, and the history of Chinese migration to the area.

a mock-up of a typical cabin on a vessel that transported immigrants

A box this size was all a migrating British family was allowed to take with them to New Zealand in the 19th century. It makes our 14 teachests seem highly extravagant.

Hands up if you thought the world’s steepest street was in California. Me too, but all the guidebooks maintain that Baldwin Street in Dunedin is the record breaker, so we went to have a look. The road is so steep there are steps where the pavement would normally be, and on the way up we had to keep on stopping to take a breather.

Baldwin Street, Dunedin, the world's steepest street (allegedly)

Whenever I stopped I would hear faint rolling noises getting gradually louder and then fading away again. On closer inspection of the tarmac, I found the culprits hop-skip-jumping along in the gutter - dozens of jaffas, (little balls of orange flavoured chocolate covered in an orange sugar shell), which someone presumably had let go at the top of the street.

Look, no ropes!

One of the annual events held in Baldwin Street involves Jaffas. It's a Jaffa race, where competitors pay a couple of dollars to sponsor a jaffa. The winner gets a cash prize and the rest of the money raised goes to chairty. The event regularly attracts up to 10,000 entrants. Another yearly event is the Baldwin Street Gustbuster, in which athletes test their stamina and balance by racing up the street and back down again.

In the evening we went to visit a colony of yellow eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula, at a privately-owned conservation project called Penguin Place. A series of tunnels and hides allowed us to view the penguins at close quarters, and our guide was very knowledgable.

an adult yellow-eyed penguin, showing the first signs of moulting

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, taking about a hundred photos (although only two or three were any good). Even though the visit lasted an hour and a half, I could happily have stayed twice as long. Here's a link to the website of the NZ Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust.

Helen

Say hello to Smudge!

2007-01-13T11:28:00.000+13:00

Here are the first photos of our new kitten, Smudge.
First impressions of her character:

conclusion drawn _____supporting evidence

placid __________________Neither the car journey, the change of scene, nor the absence of her mother and siblings seem to have disturbed her equilibrium.

a keen climber____________She's been shinning up the back of the chair and has been looking for curtains to climb up so that she can see out of the window; fortunately, we've got a blind.

very vocal (oh dear!)________Smudge seems to have a meow for all occasions.

contented________________She purrs loudly and frequently.

a potential lap cat__________She keeps clambering up onto me and going to sleep. Of all the cats I've owned I've never had a lap cat before, and it would be very nice to share a home with one at last!

not overly intelligent________Smudge has a penchant for sleeping in her litter tray. I've had to remove her four times already.

Helen

South Island Trip - Day 8 - day trip to Milford Sound

2007-01-12T16:20:00.000+13:00

The day of our Milford Sound trip dawned cloudy with only a few tiny chinks of blue, and it was difficult to judge which way the weather would go.

The two-hour drive from the town of Te Anau, where we were staying, to Milford Sound was one of the most scenic sections of the entire trip. First of all the road skirts the shores of Lake Te Anau – the largest lake in South Island - and then it enters the Fiordland National Park – the largest National Park in New Zealand. Fiordland is a fascinating vista of jagged mountain peaks, beech forest clinging to near-vertical cliff faces, and countless waterfalls, some of which are many hundreds of metres tall.

a view of Milford Sound from the shore

By the time we reached Milford Sound the cloud had cleared completely. The staff at the visitor centre said we were very lucky with the weather, as blue sky days are pretty rare. On average it rains heavily two days out of three, and most of the days when it doesn't rain, it's overcast. Milford Sound is one of the wettest spots in New Zealand, with an average of between 6 and 7 METRES of rain per year.

a couple of Milford Sound's many waterfalls
After rain, the volume of water increases enormously.

We took a boat trip around the sound, lasting 1 ¾ hours. When we got back we wanted to stay on the boat and do it again! There are overnight cruises available, which would be a wonderful thing to do if you had a little more time and money.

Harrison Cove

Milford Sound is absolutely stunning. We sailed beneath a cliff that's twice the height of the Empire State Building, and a waterfall that's three times the height of Niagara Falls, but the scale was far too big to be able to judge it without the help of our friendly cruise captain.

some tourist

Milford Sound does suffer a bit from being a 'honeypot' site. As the most accessible of Fiordland's many fiords, (being the only one with road access), it's by far the most visited, and there's a constant procession of cruise ships leaving every few minutes. There must have been at least ten of them on the water at the same time as us. But by far the most intrusive visitors are the dozens of light aircraft and helicopters, whose engines buzz loudly as they swing in low over the cliffs. However, all this hustle and bustle means that the other fiords remain relatively wild and untouched, and even the constant whining of the aircraft engines couldn't spoil the experience for us.

a group of fur seals taking a siesta

I know I'm fond of saying this, but you really must believe me this time when I say that our photos in no way do the place justice. The visit to Milford Sound was definitely the highlight of our South Island trip.

Helen

Real time interlude

2007-01-11T22:00:00.000+13:00

I know we've only got as far as day 7 on the blog, but yesterday was day 15 of our South Island trip, and we arrived home last night.

Our first job this morning was to bail Pookie out of prison. We were delighted to find her not in the slightest bit stir crazy, and we got the impression she'd been very well looked after. Apparently it's traditional to treat the cats to a special meal to mark their final night at the cattery, and Pookie had been given red meat, eggs and vegetables, which she'd polished off with gusto. Tom, the owner of the cattery, and by far the most cat-dotty person I've ever met, said Pookie was delightful and had made it into his 'top five cats of all time' list. It was nice to hear, but the cynical side of me couldn't help thinking, 'I bet he says this to all the owners!' As a parting gift he gave us some photos of Pookie which his wife had taken. Despite howling all the way home in the car, (a journey that thankfully lasts only ten minutes) she soon settled down (after giving the house and garden an inspection first, of course.) Poor Pookie - she's in for a shock tomorrow when we go and collect Smudge!

We've spent most of the day today unpacking (having taken an uncharacteristically huge pile of stuff with us) and trying to wrestle the rampant garden back into shape. Always keen to enliven boring domestic chores through the use of power tools, Iain weeded the patio using our high pressure waterblaster, and ended up absolutely caked in mud. I really, really wish I'd taken a photo.

Helen

Day 7 - Haast to Te Anau

2007-01-09T17:46:00.000+13:00

Lake Wanaka

After a very relaxing time strolling around Haast beach we set off on a pretty long drive today - passing through some of the best scenery NZ has to offer. Being New Year, the honey pot sites of Queenstown & Wanaka were overloaded with tourists and so we headed on through to the lakeside town of Te Anau - gateway to the northern part of Fijordland.

Lake Wanaka was utterly stunning, as were the surrounding mountains, but the towns of Wanaka & Queenstown were uber touristy and nothing special - we stopped for lunch at Arrowtown, an old goldmining town in the mountains - Old West style architecture on the Main Street – very trippery though.

We weren't expecting much of Te Anau as it's completely in the back of beyond, but it was pretty bustling and a very pleasant place. The lake there is beautiful and marks the start of several well known tramping trails. We've booked a two-hour cruise on Milford Sound tomorrow – it’s a 240 kilometre round trip, but should be worth it, providing the dry weather holds. As this area gets 7000 mm of rain a year, the odds aren’t looking too good! The weather so far has been superb - other than the first day & the day in Christchurch, it's been blue skies all the way! Not so in the rest of NZ according to the reports, but we've been following the sun about -hopefully it'll keep up for tomorrow.

South Island Trip - Day 6 - Greymouth to Haast

2007-01-07T15:50:00.000+13:00

crossing a road/rail bridge

A rather disconcerting feature of the road between Greymouth and Haast is the number of bridges which are shared by the road and the railway line. There are no barriers across the road. (There are none of these anywhere in New Zealand, though). There aren't any friendly red flashing lights to warn you of an approaching train. In fact, on only a couple of the bridges were there any road signs warning that the road and the railway were about cross, let alone merge. We'd be driving along, enjoying the scenery, when suddenly we'd find ourselves driving along railway tracks, sometimes for up to half a kilometre. We felt like Wile E. Coyote trying to outrun an express locomotive on a jigger, his arms pumping up and down so fast they're just a blur.

One of the villages we passed through was HariHari, whose claim to fame is as the landing site (albeit accidental) of the first solo flight across the Tasman Sea. Australian aviator Guy Menzies took off from Sydney on 7th January 1931. He meant to land in Blenheim, further to the north and on the opposite coast, but bad weather forced him off course, and he ended up crash-landing in a swamp just outside Harihari. Not exactly a glorious end to his adventure, but he did succeed in his goal and was lucky enough to walk away uninjured.

Guy Menzies and his aeroplane after crash-landing near HariHari

Just over halfway between Greymouth and Haast is an area known as Glacier Country. This area of the Southern Alps contains the glaciers which covered a broad swathe of the South Island during the last ice age. Two of the most famous, due to their easy accessibility, are Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier. There's some interesting information about the glaciers here.

Franz Josef Glacier - note the people in the foreground!

Haast is only a tiny village. The primordial rainforest that surrounds it is so rare that the whole area has been designated a world heritage site. Haast is by far the most remote of the places we visited on our trip, and still has the feel of a true frontier settlement. For example, it's not connected to the national power grid, the whole village relying instead on a couple of generators. The lights in our hotel room were really dingy and there were no fridges in any of the rooms, all in an effort to conserve power. According to the hotel information leaflet, the electricity can be cut off for days at a time, especially in the winter. Until about forty-five years ago there were no roads at all into or out of Haast; there were just tracks through the bush. Overland travel of any kind was very hard and slow because of the terrain. Boats were used instead.

The first road connecting Haast to the rest of New Zealand (to Hokitika – currently a 4-hour drive away) was only completed in 1960. The road south to Wanaka, two hours’ drive away, wasn’t completed until 1965!

The people of Haast used to look forward to the supply boat that arrived once every three months. When it arrived there was always a huge party, and if it was late - delayed by storms for example - people would go hungry. If anyone was ill and needed medical treatment they would be carried out on a stretcher along the bush tracks by a team of volunteers. The journey took several days.

After we'd dumped off all our stuff at the hotel, Iain and I went to Haast beach for a bit of R & R. It was a shame we didn't take a camera with us, because it was the most spectacular beach I've ever seen. Miles and miles of sweeping golden sand, turquoise blue sea, a stunning bush and mountain backdrop, and it was utterly deserted. While beachcombing I found a green pebble which I think might be a piece of jade. The area around Haast was on the ancient pounamu (greenstone) trail taken by the Maori, so it's not too fanciful a notion. I'm planning on polishing the stone up and making it into a piece of jewellery when I get home.

Helen

the beautiful landscape around Haast - The Haast River

South Island Trip - Day 5 - Christchurch to Greymouth

2007-01-05T23:40:00.000+13:00

the Southern Alps

When we turned on the laptop this evening to download the photos we'd taken today, we discovered we were in range of an unsecured wireless network. So we've taken a cheeky piggyback to make this post!

We're now five days behind in our trip report, but I'm going to post just one day at a time rather than trying to catch up all at once.

On day 5 of our South Island trip we drove right across the country from Christchurch on the east coast to Greymouth on the west. We really must put together a map showing our route, and add it to our posts, but I think that's a job that's best left until we get home.

It was day 5 that we got our first glimpse of the Southern Alps, the mountain range that runs almost the whole length of the South Island. We took the road that goes over Arthur's Pass. There's an interesting history behind the pass, which you can read here.

Part of the way down the west side of the Alps we stopped to take some photographs, and our car was attacked by a cheeky kea, or alpine parrot. It made two holes in the cover of our spare tyre and had started work on the piece of rubber securing our back window before Iain managed to chase it off. I think 'flying monkeys' would be a better description for these birds!

Who's a cheeky boy, then?

On the road to Greymouth we went past the old Brunner coal mine, the site of New Zealand’s biggest ever mining disaster, in 1896, in which 65 people died. There's an interesting account of events here.

After we'd checked into the hotel at Greymouth we took a short drive up the coast to see the pancake rocks and blowholes at Punakaiki. Here's a description from the official Punakaiki website:

The Pancake Rocks that Punakaiki is famous for, are limestone formations that began forming 30 million years ago, when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the seabed, then overlaid by weaker layers of soft mud and clay.

The seabed was raised above sealevel by earthquakes to form the coastal cliffs and coastline. The sea, wind and rain have since etched out the soft layers to form the unusual rock formations we see today.

When conditions are right, heavy ocean swells thunder into the caverns beneath the rocks and huge water spouts blast skywards through the blowholes in a truly spectacular sight.

some of the 'pancake rocks' at Punakaiki

the beautiful West Coast - we thought this bit looked more like the Caribbean than New Zealand!

Greymouth seemed a bit of a dump, to be perfectly frank. When we arrived it was New Year’s Eve and everywhere was shut - including most of the pubs and all of the restaurants. The streets were deserted apart from the occasional small group of bewildered tourists, looking in desperation for somewhere that was open where they could spend the evening. Eventually we found a cafe that was open, and despite the seedy decor, the food wasn't bad, and the waitress pointed us in the direction of the place where the party was - an Irish bar. In distinctly un-Irish fashion we left before midnight, making a New Year's resolution not to bother coming back to Greymouth again.

Helen

A rapid hello

2007-01-04T16:35:00.000+13:00

Hi there - we're in Dunedin, spending fifteen minutes at an internet cafe. So far, none of the places we've stayed in have had internet access, so we've not been able to upload our photos and trip report, but I've been keeping notes about what we've been up to, so you can expect a long entry some time soon! So far the highlight of the trip has to be our boat trip along Milford Sound yesterday. Can't wait to tell you all about it.
Bye for now,

Helen