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Hmmm, so Tuesday was my last entry eh… well quite a lot has happened since then. So it has.

We got a car… that was probably the most important thing really, as it meant we could get out and see and do things at the weekend. It’s a pretty stylish Toyota Corona. 2L engine, massive boot, 1986.. we’ll see how this goes. I kinda hope it passes it’s W.O.F. (Warranty Of Fitness) every car over 5 years old, I think, has to have this done every 6 months.. It’s something like that anyway.

So if we pass that it’ll be plain sailing until May, which would really be nice, may have to get it fixed up a little first, not for anything major mind! but the steering feels a little loose sometimes and taking it over 90kmph it gets a little hot, it seems.

But sure twill be grand.

Oh, so we got that on Tuesday evening.. rest of the week… well job hunting again, I really ought to get a little more serious about it all really, I’m being slightly lazy and hoping something magical will fall into my lap. Could happen ;)

But just not yet. Maeve has landed herself a pretty excellent – experience wise- job implementing (inflicting? ;) ISO-9000 on a department in a hospital… they’re going to just *love* computers (which they don’t use!) still.. going to be awesome experience anyway.

As you can see from this pic, looking for jobs is damn stressful sometimes.

Mind you, my friend Keith in Oz was telling me to keep the labouring up, that it’s totally casual and you learn loads… hmmmm still not super sure about that one (though it’s entirely possible I may be left with little alternative) see what you can do with an honours degree these days – opens doors I tell you – Opens Doors..

So yes, I am now the only unemployed bum left in the house.. still, could be worse! do get the chance to see the place and chill out reading a little, writing a little, it’s kinda cool – heading off during the day for a bitta’ bouldering in town.. defiantly has it’s ups…

What else… yes, so no job as of yet for me, and on Saturday then we took our car

up to the mountains. It was kinda funny, for a long time it seemed like we were driving through Irish countryside… (well except that we knew we were in New Zealand – we weren’t actually confused at all ;)

and then we came round a corner in the road and saw this :

Which reminded us that we definatly weren’t in Ireland.

So on we went up to a place called castle hill. Apparently according to this page, the Dalai Lama said that Castle Hill was “The energy centre of the Universe”

So there, I was at the energy centre of the universe at the weekend.

Which was nice.

And I really do have to put lots more pics up sometime… but this is one pic (really did not take enough – too busy experiencing the energy which seemed to be coursing through my body.. the DL was dead right, I can now stop traffic with a mere thought. Very Strange Altogether. But that’s what happens when you go to the energy centre of the Universe.

The whole Universe.

ok, enough of that… so yes. looks a little like this :

So that was Saturday during the day. Takes an hour door to door, which is fine really, almost makes it practical if you can get out of work early to head off for the evening… we’ll have to see how it goes.

Then for the evening we headed off to a bar-b-q with some friends that friends of my sisters had made when they were over here ( which we met at a bar on friday ) (convoluted sentence or what).

Which was lovely… really lovely.. it’s in an awesome part of ChCh called Redcliffs, right up on the side of the hill overlooking the whole bay. To get to the house you have to basically walk up a garden path (well lots of them as the hillside has quite a few of these houses on them) it’s quite steep, but the walkway is lovely, one big mass of flowers and colours, it’s deadly. Complete pain hauling dishwashers etc. up no doubt… but worth it I guess! Wish I had a pic to put here, if I go back I’ll get one.. Ingenious ppl a bit further away ran a pulley system down to the road (the house is about 100m zigzag up from the road) to haul up groceries etc… it’s really very cool.

So yes, bar-b-q. Met a few climbery folk which we may head out with on Tuesday, but we did manage to get a guide book that another Irish climber (Peter O Farrell) left here when he was here before.. so we’re going to keep that until we leave the South Island I guess..

So the food was yum (incl boysenberry ice-cream with passion fruit syrup – damn fine) watched the Pommes beat the Ozzies (they all call the British Pommes over here) and home. Tis nice having a voluntary designated driver (Glynn) for the evening.

Oh – apparently two guesses for where the nickname Pomme comes from are

a) POHM (Property of Her Majesty) was printed on their clothing.

b) They were so red they looked like a Pomegranate.

Who knows? not me anyway..

—Sunday–

And then today – well earlier in the week I’d got in contact with a tramping club and decided to head out with them… I wasn’t expecting too much, as I kinda expected it to be a bunch of Sunday Strollers out for an airing. Which it kinda was, but they were lovely.. really friendly and interesting people, who I think really enjoyed having an excuse to talk about the wonders of NZ to. But it really was good. I’d say of the 9 people 2 of us were under 30 (and one of us only just) and the others, well one mid thirty – and the other 5 60ish..

All quite fit though… So the walk was up on Banks Peninsula, again I’ll get a map sometime and show you, but the views

were quite nice really…

but also I did learn quite a few things about the area… like this pic here

This is a pic of indigenous NZ Bush. Pretty old a lot of it, some of the trees we saw were (apparently) over 1400 years old… which is old. Hmmm, wonder if I’m remembering that correctly – called totara

(this from google)



The totara grows to be a very large tree and it can have lots and lots of red fruits for birds to eat. Its wood is very durable and so it has been popular for making furniture and fence posts. The wood is so tough that trees from forests that were burnt hundreds of years ago are still sometimes found today. Totara was a very important tree for Maori, who used it to make huge war canoes (waka taua) and for carving and medicine. Maori also used the stringy bark to make things like bags lined with dried kelp to keep their mutton birds in.



The part that they were pointing out was that the wood is damn hard, and the stumps really do stay on the land for a long time.

The slightly ironic thing here is that it was Scottish settlers who were kicked off their land by greedy sheep farmers that then came over here, burned a lot of the

Bush away and then started grazing their sheep on what was left..

The only other thing which I took a pic of was this –

Which is a leaf of a plant called the Bush Lawyer… ‘cos it has nasty spikes which once they get into you rip you apart and never let go.. hehehe, poor old Lawyers :D

Let alone Bush. Mind you, bet he has some great lawyers, have to have to get away with the st…. sorry. I’ll stop.

So yes, where was I – so the Tramp was fun, and followed up by a pretty gigantic ice-cream for $2.50 (it was about 7 inches of scooped ice-cream)

Oh – finally, ChCh does get a lot of wind. Most of it off the coast I guess… as you can see from this pic (It was *not* windy (well that windy) when this was taken.