17.05 Highlanders vs Crusaders

Our first Rugby match ever - the Highlanders verus the Crusaders! On a chilly evening we headed to the AAMI stadium in Christchurch, where queuing up for our tickets we were approached and offered FREE ones! Well, Sara was offered two to begin and once she said there were four of us another two tickets appeared! Result!!

Pre-game entertainment! The Crusaders send in the troops!!

The game in full swing!

To use the line from my favourite PaknSave advert 'Who's that' in the background? Answers on a postcard to the usual address!

06-09.05 Wellington

We had arranged a reconnaissance trip to Wellington for a couple of days to see if we'd like to live & work there.

We left cold & clear Christchurch for the unpredictable weather of Wellington.

The view across Wellington Harbour to the snow-capped mountain ranges in the distance.

No trip to Wellington can be complete without a ride on the Wellington Cable Car!

A short bus ride out from the city takes you to The Hutt. This is the view of Wellington from Petone Beach.

Installation Art - Fern Ball above Civic Square.


From the Waterfront - Panoramic of Wellington City & more installation art, Solace in the Wind.

Writing this post nine months down the line, I guess you can say that we loved the feel of Wellington and what it had to offer. In fact it felt very much like a mini-Melbourne, but not quite as warm!

20.04 Diamond Harbour

We had a little 'family' outing with Sara & Matt to Diamond Harbour for a picnic and a little stroll!

Digging in! Sara, Matt and myself enjoying a brew!

Look at the sky! Try and ignore the catalogue pose with the white china mug! Nice cup of tea though!

Across the bay.

Diamond Harbour. Boats moored up in the harbour. Looks quite tropical!!

18.04 New Country New Car!

Some new wheels were in order to explore the new country we've decided to call home for the year! After the moderate success with the Magna, with the added benefit/feature of car camping, a wagon was always going to be the order of the day.

After much time spent trawling the classifieds on TradeMe and walking the 'strip' in Christchurch looking for the perfect wagon, we decided to look at Turners Car Auctions.

We spent pretty much a whole day working our way through the catalogue looking at some potential transport/sleeping quarters:

A Toyota Previa - ideal as all the seats fold flat to produce a bed & picnics could be enjoyed in the rain while sat in the comfort of the captain's chairs! However it smelt of wet dog & the passenger seat was broken!
A Landrover Discovery - Great 4x4 vehicle, exactly what I wanted for runs into the snowfields and along unsealed roads! Unfortunately, it just wasn't big enough to sleep in, and the V8 might have been a little thirsty too! Others included a Mitsubishi Pajero, a Mazda Capella (626), and a couple of Golf's - been there, done that!

With the plan of heading back to the auction that night, we wanted to check the cheaper end of Moorhouse Avenue. And it just so happened that there was a Subaru specialist, Crowesport, with some cars within our budget! Joanna had always wanted a Subaru for as long as I could remember, especially a blue one with gold wheels! After a test drive and a little chat with Trevor the car was ours!?

So here it is, our 1996 Subaru Legacy GT (B-Spec) wagon, Lexie - Joanna's choice! It has a 2.0L twin-turbo (sequential) motor, which we thought would help us see the all of the country in the short time that we have here. The wheels & the suspension (Bilstein) are factory options, the exhaust perhaps isn't. Try and find a vehicle without a 4 inch exhaust in New Zealand?! I haven't been in a car this stiffly sprung since I was in a Ferrari 348! It certainly shows you where your wobbly bits are!

Crowesport provided us with a 3 month warranty on the car (included in the price), which was just as well, as the cooling system had a bit of a leak (did have to write a list of issues for the problem to be solved finally) & the rear washer spent a lot of time dribbling! We won't talk about the front washers!? Trevor & Linda were very understanding though.

Having had the rear washer sorted out I noticed that water was dripping on our boot cover. So I took a jug of water out and had a look around, it was at this point that I noticed that the rubbers for the washer pipes had not been put back. So I fitted them properly, closed the boot and went to pour the water only to hear the car lock itself! Hmm, I could clearly see the keys on the boot floor!?! Our immobiliser has a special feature that locks the doors if the car is open for a certian amount of time! I called a locksmith who took 3 minutes and 80 bucks and reunited me with the keys again! Lesson learnt!!

31.03 Christchurch & The Port Hills

Our first few days in Christchurch were spent getting ourselves orientated and settled in, along with looking after Mog!

After a bit of a late arrival, Joanna relaxes down and is joined by Mog, the house cat!

Surprise! Surprise! Nathan having a cup and a TRAM in the background!

Looking back over Christchurch and the Canterbury Plains, from then Sign of the Kiwi.

The view from the Summit Road looking over Rapaki Bay!

Christchurch & the Plains!

22-25.02 Weekend in Christchurch

We had a little trip to see Sara & Matt in Christchurch! We also had to activate our working holiday visas too, as we had a couple of weeks left on our apartment in Melbourne before we could move properly. To 'ease' the move over the 'ditch' we had packed up a load of bits so that we could max out our luggage allowance!

The Friday was set aside to do the stuff that you have to do when setting yourselves up; open bank accounts, get IRD numbers, and sort out a tourist visa for Australia. Sounds simple doesn't it? The bank account was opened on the second attempt, as we didn't have a proof of address for the first branch, but the second branch didn't worry about that! We didn't quite get to the IRD office...

Unfortunately the rest of the afternoon was spent with Markella from Flight Centre on Colombo Street! We wandered in and explained our situation: We wanted a tourist visa to run on from our working holiday so we could stay in Oz until the end the our rental agreement. We were told by the people at immi.gov.au that we could apply online offshore - we couldn't as we had a current visa. We phoned the helpline - no answer, so left a message. Tried another number - got an answer but the person wasn't in Australia and didn't speak English!

So we asked Markella whether she could sort the visa out for us, for which she replied 'we're not immigration agents'! After three hours, faxes, telephone calls and being questioned by someone at the Australian Consulate, and with a few minutes to go before they closed for the weekend we were granted the visa! One that would activate after our working holiday had expired! Poor Markella didn't know that it was going to be this much fun! She did sort out our flights from Melbourne to Brisbane (for Easter), then back to Christchurch!!

Now all of the above wouldn't have been so bad, had Joanna & I had been on our own, but we had met up with Matt (Pitts), and in fact this was his second time round of sitting in Flight Centre orgainising flights & visas in as many weeks! But all was sorted!

On Saturday we took a short trip to Sumner to enjoy the Sun, Sea & Surf!

Sunday - Day of Worship: A browse around the Christchurch Classic Car show, turned up some old favourites! You don't really need to go to these events, as you're able to see many of these as daily transport!

After enjoying a delicious lunch from one of the many takeaway vans! Slightly better surroundings to the one where we spent most of our time on Friday!

The afternoon was spent at the Lyttleton Festival! Before we had to leave for our return flight back to Oz.

After returning to Melbourne we expected a grilling from Customs over our visas, so we had all our documentation to prove our funds/onward travel/accommodation status, but we weren't asked a single question!

15.04 Update: Oz to Nz

Firstly I’d like to apologise to all our viewers for the lack of posts again! There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is that we’ve run out of space on the server, and I am waiting to get some work so I can pay for some more and then we can continue!!

As you may have guessed from the banner above we have now arrived in New Zealand! We spent our last days in Melbourne doing the things that tourist do, as well as being tourist guides ourselves for my friend Sarah!

Our final full day in Melbourne was spent packing the apartment up. There was a lot of weighing & re-weighing of the luggage, and no matter how many times it was checked we were still over! Parcels were also sent backwards and onwards! Did I also say that we had already taken 40kgs to New Zealand?!

We spent Easter in Brisbane (with no excess baggage charges), with Sam and Dan, and spent a wonderful week with them all – post to come with all the photos! A superb way to end our time in Australia, and a great distraction to our move across the ‘ditch’!

While we were at Brisbane Airport, we managed to check our suitcases in 20kgs over our allowance, so while Jo & I were smiling at each other an ‘air new zealand do-gooder’ stuck her beak in and asked for our hand luggage to weighed. They too were over weight by 10kg, so we were charged $100 excess baggage! Still we can’t complain after all the travelling we had done and it could have been $300 from Brisbane alone!

We are currently living in Christchurch with Sara & Matt. They are making full use of the live-in butler & housemaid service that is available during this time of job, car and accommodation hunting. We have signed up with a number of recruitment agencies between us, but we are yet to receive a single temporary assignment! Joanna does have two weeks youth work with the YMCA starting next week, which should be very good.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll be able to post the last days in Melbourne, our time in Brisbane, along with our first weeks in Christchurch very soon!!