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Hi Chumz,

Here’s a type of tree which we often see here, but I don’t know what it’s called.

This week the girls are having a swimming lesson every morning. This is going very well so far. This evening we have had the bizarre experience of our landlords visiting the house! They are living in Perth now and this is their first trip back to NZ in 2 years. They had had the house built and wanted to come back and see it. We felt a mixture of being defensive and wanting to point out potential problems. Anyway they were very nice and very happy for us to get fixed the things that need sorting. We also dared to ask them what their intentions are in Oz and they think they will be there for several more years if not for ever, which is good news for us.

Everyone is very tired this evening, owing to our late night last night. Everyone else is already in bed at 8.48 pm and I will follow shortly.

Toodle pip

Hi, I know that you’ve all been wondering about waste disposal here. These are some bin bags. The rubbish collection system is very complicated here. You can buy these orange bags from a supermarket and some of the money goes to the council, who will come and take them away. If however, you don’t want bags and you’d rather have a wheelie bin, you can hire one from various companies, who will then come and empty it for you. I had to go out on bin day and copy the phone number off someone’s bin to get started. You can use a combo of both systems if you like, and I sometimes do.

Wheelie bins have to be placed very precisely, the correct way round next to the kerb. We have a free recycling bin – collected every 2 weeks. Also, I have just sent off for a garden rubbish bin – also hired on a yearly basis.

What about the dump I hear you cry! Well, at $35 dollars a pop it’s quite expensive.

After extensive research I have found a company who are going to take our Christmas tree away tomorrow – for a small fee. We might go back to our artificial one next year.

The day started with jane going off for a long run and me promising myself to get out of bed before 7am to get myself in the rhythm for work.  jane’s run was successful.  i got up at 8.30.

church was good this morning with the talk being an overview of the chronological ‘story’ of the Bible and why that’s relevant for our understanding of scripture as we read it.  excellent stuff.  watch out for it on the church podcast in the next few days.

It was our first sunday serving too as jane helped at the kids club which is in holiday mode at the moment.  And another first for us was taking along friends to church – the Dunning were coming round for lunch and afternoon fun, so decided to come along to our church too.  Although Buzz (aka Big Nosed Ugly Guy – BNUG) has been along to Shore a number of times, Wendy and the kids haven’t been along as they go a church local to where they live. 

After church we all came back to ours for lunch on the deck, but not before Buzz and I had spent a happy hour comparing notes on Canon cameras.  Buzz has just bought a camera similar to mine so i was able to share some of the tips and tricks i’d learnt from courses i’ve been on.

after lunch we headed out for a walk round the neighbourhood having decided that the botanical garden was too ambitious a destination on a hot afternoon where all the people under 35ish were very tired (and those over 35ish were too)

we did a couple of geocaches on the way and generally had an excellent time

 

after they’d gone we had steaks off the barby and then watched what looked like a very very early episode of The Goodies.  Kezia decided she didn’t want to watch Piha Rescue (documentary series about life saving at a local surfing beach) so she and I read a story instead.  This turned out to be a good plan as it was a particularly gruesome episode.  And i don’t think esther or jane will ever put a toe in the waters at piha beach again !

sadly that’s the end of the summer holidays for me. there’s a bank holiday in a couple of weekends time though i think.  and the summer weather should stick around for a couple more months so we can enjoy going to the beach in the evenings etc.

this week the girls are doing an intensive swimming course thing, so more on that tomorrow from jane.  toodle pipkins for now though.

YOU CAN SEE MORE AND BIGGER PHOTOS OF THE DAY IN THE GALLERY HERE

As planned we got up early this morning to join three other families we know for a visit to Tiritiri Matangi nature research.

we got a special boat from a harbour about half an hour’s drive away which whizzed us over to the island

 

there’s strict controls about what you can take on to the island as it’s completely predator free and they want to keep it that way. 

and they also don’t want you feeding the birds they’ve introduced so everything has to be dirt free, pest free and sealed.

you were allowed to take your food in a cool box (or ‘chilly bin’ as they are known here).  and they had a fantastic service where you dropped any bags you didn’t want to carry, including your chilly bin, on to the back of a little truck which carried them up to the top of the island so it was up there when you needed it.  such a good plan.

this is our friends james and john carrying their chilly bin back to the drop off point after lunch.

the island itself is only a few kilometres long, and has been replanted over the last 50 years or so to try to bring it back the native bush and enable the reintroduction of endangered species.

there were 19 of us in our party made up of 4 families – 4 Simpson poms, 4 native kiwis who live on our street, 6 native kiwis whose house we went to on new year’s eve, and 3 south africans, plus their south african parents (not shown on the picture below).  i think that adds up to 19.

we then split in to three groups to be taken on a guided tour of some of the island.  we managed to end up with kezia, esther and their parents (jane and me!) in different groups.  but that was all good.

 

the scenery was stunning as ever, but of course it was the birds we were after.

 

here’s a robin (they are black and cuddly here)

and this is a north island saddleback.  as worn by our guide.  she didn’t have a t-shirt for every bird we saw unfortunately.

the tour ended at the lighthouse where we sheltered in its shadow and had our picnic

 

however, we had to watch out for greg a very hungry bird (not to be confused with old greg from the mighty boosh, although perhaps just as dangerous).

this greg thinks nothing of barging in to groups of people and stealing their food from them, hence his enormous girth.  he’s also got sharp claws so such behaviour is to be discouraged.

and there were plenty of pukekos about, also after some free food.

we all had a great time

here’s a house with a fog horn attached

 

and here’s the group looking for birds in the undergrowth (which we found)

i think the lighthouse is now solar powered

and claims to be a construction of simpson and co

 

after lunch we all walked down to the beach for a swim

the beach looked great and really welcome after a long day of walking in the sun.  however, if we’d looked carefully from this distance we’d have seen there was doing to be a problem ..

 

because when we got down to the beach there were half a dozen stingrays floating around. steve irwin is a hallowed name down here so there was a sudden reluctance to go swimming.

but a few people went in up to their angles

in fact there were a few people snorkelling and swimming in the beach – they were just being very careful where they stood !

here’s janine who organised the tickets etc getting everyone together for a group photo

 

and here’s james and john admiring the fishing boats in a biblical way

 

before we knew it, it was time to board the boat and head back to the main land and where we’d left the car

    

after all that fun we did a quick geocache with our geocaching neighbours.  they then suggested we stopped at Wendy’s on the way back home for tea. 

I liked this poster which says “we’ll always do it Dave’s way”.  He’s holding a meat cleaver.  esther said afterwards “i like wendy’s better than mcdonalds or burger king because they serve a better quality of burger”.

tomorrow we’re at church then have our friends the dunnings round for lunch, then we’re off to the botanical garden to look at some botanicals.  Buzz has a new camera so i suspect us blokes will be photo-bores for the ladies.  so at least they can look at the pretty flowers whilst we get on with our man things.

YOU CAN SEE MORE AND BIGGER PHOTOS OF THE DAY IN THE GALLERY HERE

see ya

 

not much to show for today really.  a day of domestic doings which started with kezia and me picking up some flat pack bed side tables which took us the rest of the morning to construct.  every piece of flat pack furniture we’ve bought in NZ has been more challenging than in the UK, and every item has included a few extra pieces in the box – for our outside chairs there was an extra screw per seat.  And for the bedside tables we had an extra piece of wood each.  i suspect the wood was just used for packing (they don’t tend to use polystyrene here which is good), but still very confusing to begin with.

this afternoon i’ve been trying to catch up on our finances after our recent spendathon.  Jane did the lawns between rain showers again and the girls sat round an watched their old school christmas performance thanks to the miracle of the internet.

i also spent an hour or two trying to get the main funkypancake blog working properly, but the mended solution seems to be slower than the current falling apart version, so i’m not really sure what to do there.

anyway, that’s us.  tomorrow should be more exciting as we’re off to the local bird sanctuary.

oh, and another exciting thing is that the owners of our house are in the country next week and are coming round to see the house next tuesday evening.  cue general panic and tidying …

we had our first encounter with dolphins today at a beach.  read on for the full exciting facts

a number of people have recommended we go to the beach at Tawharanui so we finally did it today.  it’s an hour’s scenic drive, with the last 15 minutes over ‘metal road’ which is just a rough gravel windy road.  we’ve been wondering why they call these ‘metal’ roads.  it’s apparently because the gravel chips are called ‘metal chips’.  so now we know.  although there’s an obvious follow up question to ask …

anyway, this place is a nature reserve.  think Dinton Pasture on natural organic super charged steroids and you get the idea.

it’s taken three stages to get the park up and running.  stage one was to create a massive fence round the protected area.  stage two was to eradicate all the predators in the park (rats, cats, weasels, hedgehogs etc) and once they were sure they were all gone, and couldn’t get in again, re-introduce native plants and animals to get the place going again.

we’ve arrived at stage 3 which means the park already contains kiwis and various other strange creatures.  the picture above is of a strange hippy like chap holding a kiwi

and you can really see that it’s working.  one little area of rocks was ropped off with a little sign saying it contained Nth Island Variable Oyster Catchers (which i think must have been named by a maths teacher).  We looked up above the sign and there was one sitting on a nest just to prove the sign was correct.

at the end of the beach was this little natural tunnel worn out by the sea crashing through the rocks

there was a smaller tunnel after this which the girls squeezed through.

anyway, we spent most of the day at the beach boogie boarding on the largest waves we’ve seen yet on the east coast.  there were some really nice metre high type ones which gave the kids and jane and i some thrills (yes, i went in again).  jane also got to road test her new wet suit.

 

however, the absolutely coolest thing of the day was seeing some actual dolphins come up and play with the boogie boards just a little further out than esther, jane and kezia.  Kezia thought she saw a fin a few minutes before the dolphins moved in, but jane dismissed it as her over-active imagination. 

And a few minutes later there were some big animals with fins playing with the group of boarders you can see in the middle of the photo above.  sadly it was also the first time i’ve left my big camera in the car since i didn’t want to get it sandy/wet as i was also going boogie boarding, so no photos of the beasts i’m afraid.

the dolphins (i think that’s what they were) circled about for around 5 minutes then did a few show off funky back flips (to reveal their white bellies) and splashed off round the coast.

 

there was a little information kiosk nearby which suggested they might be hector dolphins

all in all another fab day.  rain is forecast for tomorrow so we might have a quiet day tomorrow before a day trip to a bird island on Saturday and church/friends on Sunday. Then back to work for me.  boo hoo !

i had a really good evening last night catching up on the UK snow situation via BBC Radio Berkshire.  And thanks for the photos you’ve been sending of UK snow.  we’ve been really enjoying looking at them.

take care if you are in a slippery cold place

today was a naturey day.  we started with a little skyping before heading off for a walk in our local nature reserve (and doing a few geocaches along the way)

we saw plenty of birds.  here’s a pukeko

and this is an Australasian Magpie

 

 

the walk took us along the coast, and along the way we passed Grannies Bay.  isn’t it great that they encourage you to ‘explore and wander’ rather than stick to the paths ?  And it’s also great to see the word ‘revegetated’ on a sign.

this (below) is looking back along Long Bay, which is our nearest beach

here’s a tui – easily identified by it’s white dangly neck thing.  it also has a fantastic song which you can hear here (over on the right hand side of the page)

 

there was an amazing flowering pohutukawa which seemed to be glowing bright red it was so loaded with flowers

 

and we saw this fantastic bird with a little dangly feather over its face

no idea what it is, but it looks great. and wasn’t that bothered as we went by

after our walk we went and bought another boogie board so the supervising adult can board with esther and kezia.  And i got some special water t-shirt thing.  So i amazed everyone by going in to the sea with esther and kezia this evening for an hour before we had a picnic tea at Long Bay.

Oh, and in other news we also spent an hour in a local bank getting all four of us set up on the government pension scheme.  It’s funny all four of us having tax codes, but even funnier setting up kezia and esther’s pension accounts.  esther and i had a good conversation about compound interest.

tomorrow we’re planning on going up north to another nature reserve which has a lovely beach.  i think the girls are trying to cash in on my new improved attitude to the beach before i go back to work on monday …

today was our second and final day in the Coromandel and started with the girls trying out their new snorkels and flippers in the motel pool.

And of course we couldn’t resist a quick trip to Simpsons beach in the next bay along.

And there on Simpson beach was this fantastic dog sign.  not only is the illustration of the dog fantastic, but if you read the small print you are allowed to walk your dog on the beach on the Queen’s birthday.  hoorah.

we then drove a windy hour south to see a friend from work in his bach.  A bach is a traditional kiwi holiday shack in some fantastic location.  And this was the genuine article.

i had expected we’d sit around for a bit and drink tea, but the day turned in to an outdoor adventure theme park.

we did drink tea (‘gumboot’ tea rather than earl grey this time).  but then peer pressure ‘forced’ me to get togged up and join Simon and our girls on a kayak voyage.

here’s simon. he’s a lawyer

directly opposite their bach is a giant lagoon (i think that’s what it is).  it fills up with sea water as the tide comes in to create this shallow lake which is perfect for swimming and kayaking etc

the girls got on so well that esther went solo in my canoe whilst i stood in the water and waited for them to return

then we went back up to the house before being offered the chance to float down the lake as the tide was now starting to go out.  the girls jumped at the chance.  jane and i didn’t.

so esther and kezia borrowed wet suites and got togged up.

on the way to the going in point they had a go on some rope swings which whizzed over the water

then they went in to the water with Simon and his wife (who writes scripts for a number of famous kiwi TV shows)

 

and then the 4 of them swam/floated down the jetty where we met them

   

then it was time for banana cake and more tea, before heading to the local beach which was totally idyllic.  i only took a couple of photos on the beach as i was worried about sand in my bits.  i need to work out a strategy for that.  once again the girls went back in the sea and spent at least an hour body boarding on some great waves with simon, his wife and their two lads (both a older than esther and kezia)

and then it was time to head back home to auckland where we grabbed fish and chips, and fell in to bed (but not before spending an hour sorting photos for the family blog !)   

(Simon has leant the girls the wet suits so i guess there’s going to be plenty more swimming/snorkelling over the next few weeks).

we’re back from our quick two day jaunt to the coromandel – a popular holiday location for aucklanders.  we did a 2 day taster trip as we were too late to book anywhere to stay this year.  however, we did manage to find a motel which would have us for one night, so we set off on a very wet bank holiday monday in search of fun.

after driving down wiggly roads for a couple of hours we got to Cathedral Cove which is a bit like durdle door for those who known their Dorset in the UK.  And similarly it required an hour long walk through native bush (Dorset has cliff edges instead)

here’s kezia doing a hat trick whilst the rest of us found a geocache

there’s been a lot of hoo hah down at cathedral cove as a local entrepreneur has been driving a boat round to it and running a little sweet shop (or ‘lolly’ shop)

 

he wasn’t there when we arrived, but it’s been front page news of the national paper.  which probably says more about NZ journalism than the significant of a pirate lolly man

anyway it was jolly nice

as we made our way back up the hill the weather started to improve and we were all pretty hot by the time we got to the top carpark where a shuttle bus took us to the remote field which acted as the overflow carpark.  that’s what happens if you visit on a bank holiday.

 

after that we had a picnic on a nearby beach before heading to hot water beach

hot water beach is a bit special as there’s a hot water spring right under the beach.  which means you can dig your own hot pool an hour before or after low tide (when the water is low enough so you can get to the spring water)

we arrived late by which time people had dug their own pools in the flow of the spring.  however, as we stood attempting to dig our own hole in the face of the returning tide, the people on the front left of this picture left and we got to stand in their space.  the water was really warm, in fact too warm if you digged a little bit lower. 

a very strange experience, and one we’ll repeat on a less busy day sometime !

after that we headed up north to whitianga (pronounced ‘fitty-anger’) and checked in to our ‘bargain’ very expensive motel for the night.  after swimming in the pool we went to a local restaurant which was excellent.  although the night lasted a lot longer than we expected because the food took ages coming.  but that didn’t matter as it was a really nice place and we played silly games.

we’re away for the night tonight, so here, as a special treat, is a tour of our house by esther and kezia.

I didn’t want to upload it to youtube etc so it’s a bit trickier than i’d like to get to i’m afraid.

to play it you’ll need to click on one of the files HERE.

to listen you’ll need to have something like itunes or realplayer or vlc installed on your computer (all of which are free and maybe already installed)