Boxing Day at Queen Elizabeth Park

The extended Christmas weekend has been a period of stunning weather in Wellington. I’ve been forgetting what wind is like, no doubt I’ll be reminded soon enough. We took advantage on Boxing Day and took a walk up the coast at the Mackays Crossing end of Queen Elizabeth Park, specifically the Wetland Walk and the […]

Mum’s birthday and driving north

Our final day in Timaru and the main reason we’d come down, Mum’s birthday. The morning was spent preparing food and getting everything ready for brunch as a bevy of family arrived. There were copious pancakes and croissants, fruit and Christmas mince pies. And then it was time for a birthday cake to be presented. […]

Strawberry Fare

Our trip down south coincided with the Waimate Strawberry Fare, a celebration of the local crop that has become a well known event. We parked at the home of Waimate legendary teacher Mary Firth (also fantastic Aunty) and headed inside for a chat. Mary produced a suitcase full of interesting things for Alayna to play […]

Steampunk Oamaru

Oamaru was on the list of places to visit while we were down south so one morning we drove south to check out the steampunk capital of New Zealand. Our first stop, naturally enough, was at Steampunk HQ. It was simple enough to recognise where we were going, there aren’t many buildings with a strange […]

Timaru for a few days

From Hanmer Springs we continued on towards Timaru with a couple of stops in Christchurch, one to pick up some duplo we’d bid for on TradeMe and a second stop at Riccarton Mall to stretch the legs. We were looking for some new shoes for Alayna and found a pair on big discount at Rebel […]

The kiwifruit incident

We left St Arnaud in the morning with a plan to do a morning walk before lunch. This worked out quite well other than a couple of incidents, one during the walk and one afterwards. Lake Rotoroa was the first stop and we had lovely views from the pier and got to watch a swan […]

St Arnaud, Lake Rotoiti, Mount Robert and a fire alarm

Day two of our holiday and more walking in store. We again took the Black Valley walk and had a look around the lake shore. This morning’s destination was the Brunner Peninsula Nature Walk and as we neared the start point we could see a group of people congregated at the lake side taking in […]

A big boat, driving and a forest walk

Our December family holiday saw us take an early morning ferry from Wellington heading to the South Island. Earlier in the year I had won a return sailing with Bluebridge and our first journey across Cook Strait was taken on the Strait Feronia. We spent a lot of time in the family room which we […]

The summer had to end sometime

It has been a glorious summer of warm weather, lots of sunshine and little wind. It would appear that this has ended today with the advent of heavy rain and high winds, normal service resuming. That all said some rain will be welcome in the garden. Over the last month we’ve been out visiting a […]

The St Patricks Day Aural Storm

On the evening of 17th March 2015 there was a largely unexpected solar storm. The Aurora Australis facebook group was full of hopeful chatter that their might be a show as night fell so I took a chance and drove to Wellington to see what I might find. I found an aurora display that was […]

February highlights

It’s been a busy February so far with lots of things happening including my 40th birthday. Rather than go into any detail here’s a few photographic highlights instead. Walking at Zealandia: Camping at Kaitoke: Chinese New Year: Plimmerton fish and chips: Walking in Wellington on my birthday: Back to Zealandia: Night time at the Pauatahanui […]

Chasing the Aurora Australis

I had an idea last week that it’d be nice to try and get a photo of the Robin Hut (of Miniature Hikes fame) at night with a good star filled sky. The weather this last week has been amazing, proper summer heat with little wind and clear skies, so I kept intending to head […]

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