Matariki

Ash is really getting the hang of night photography – here’s me on the beach just down the road from our house on Friday night.

On Saturday morning we drove over to Kaitoke National Park, a bit down the road from Wellington. This was the location for Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings movies. There isn’t really anything left of the sets apart from this arch, which I posed under suavely. As always in New Zealand, the scenery was lovely.

We then headed back to the city for the Matariki (Maori new year) fireworks.

On Sunday morning our chest of drawers arrived, which was quite exciting because it meant that we finally have all the furniture we need – rented houses in New Zealand tend not to be furnished.

In the afternoon we went down to the City Gallery to see an exhibit called “This is New Zealand” about the way the country presents itself to the rest of the world. It was really interesting – we particularly enjoyed these old posters from the tourism board.

After the gallery we went for a wander around town so Ash could get some photos for her course – I got this shot of the business district from a little island in the harbour that you can walk over to.

Street art

Quite a lot has happened since the last time I wrote a post. We have found a house in Island Bay, which is about 3 miles out of the centre of town. It’s a 15-minute drive from here to my office, or a 35 minute cycle. While we were looking to be within easy walking distance of the centre, this is a nice enough place while we get ourselves settled in.

I’ve started work on the 9^th floor of the majestic centre, the tallest building in the city (this isn’t as exciting as it would be in London, as good views are so easy to access in Wellington). It’s pretty nice working in the centre though, because it is so compact that most things (places to eat, the waterfront, parks, the library, shops) are within a 5-minute walk.

We’ve been busy settling in to our new house, so we haven’t done many exciting things over the last couple of weekends. However, there is loads of good street art in Wellington, which we’ve been taking pictures of along the way.

I found this one where everyone looks a bit stoned quite entertaining.

Also, Ash went back to her parents’ house recently to pick up some bits for our house and got this cool shot of the stars.

Hopefully now that we have got ourselves established in Wellington we will have some more exciting things to tell you about next time.

Moving to Wellington

Ash is taking a photography course at the moment, for which the students have to complete an assignment each week (such as landscape or architecture photos). This has been a good way to get out and see places that we might not otherwise. For one of her landscape assignments, we went to McLaren Falls Park, in the hills outside Tauranga.

We also checked out the beach by Mount Maunganui.

We went to see Ash’s brother play football one weekend, in slightly nicer conditions than you would get for a winter-time football match in the UK.

As my I start work in Wellington on the 27^th, we drove down on the 19^th to give ourselves a bit of time to look for apartments. We are staying with Ash’s friend who has a house in Khandallah, a very hilly area of town. Here’s Pearl, the resident cat, looking unimpressed.

We went for a little wander on the waterfront to get some shots for Ash's course. There are some nice bits of public art in Wellington, including this series of installations with excerpts of writing about the city.

I also thought these beach huts were quite picturesque.

And ash got this cool view of the city at night from the same area.

In fact, because Wellington is so hilly, pretty much wherever you go you’ll get a good view.

Finally, we went over to the other side of the bay from the city for lunch. We saw these mosaics of New Zealand birds in a town called Eastbourne - I don’t think we do enough of this kind of street art in the UK.

Fieldays

In the spirit of truly immersing myself in New Zealand culture, we visited Fieldays, which is apparently the biggest agricultural trade show in the southern hemisphere. While that sounds really dull, it was actually a pretty fun day out! As well as all the farm machinery on sale, it was a kind of microcosm of the New Zealand way of life. One of the first things we saw was the tractor pulling drag race –

The police and the fire department also got involved:

We then checked out the “Timbersports” competition. This was a time trial that consisted of four tasks – cutting through a log with a chainsaw, standing on top of a log and chopping it in half with an axe, cutting a log with a traditional bow saw and chopping a log while standing on top of it!

The next stop was the performing sheep dogs – one of them had learned how to wrap himself in a blanket. We couldn't get a good shot of that unfortunately, so here he is standing on his trainer's back.

Toward the end of the day, the British Commission provided us with much needed free cups of tea (Twining’s no less!). As most of you will know, getting anything for free warms my heart, and all I had to do to claim it was pretend to be interested in investing in Cornwall. We also got plenty of food and booze samples, and ended up coming away with some cheese, beer and tea made in New Zealand.

There was a lot of charmingly agricultural prize draws to take part in, among which was “guess how many artificial cow teats are in the jar”. This is my personal favourite though – win one tonne of Magnesium Oxide!

We rounded off the day with a trip to the petting zoo, where we met a Kunekune pig (meaning “fat and round” in the Maori language, Te Reo).

Karangahake Gorge and Wellington

We started the week with a trip to Karangahake gorge, which was a mining area during the New Zealand gold rush. The path crosses over a couple of rivers and goes through an old train tunnel, which was about a kilometer long.

On the way home from Karangahake, we stopped at Owharoa falls. They seem to have more waterfalls than they know what to do with in this country.

The next trip was down to Wellington, where I had a job interview on Thursday. Tauranga to Wellington is a 7 hour drive; there aren’t any motorways in New Zealand, and the roads follow the terrain a lot more so they can get quite windy. However, this also means that road trips are a lot more scenic than they would be in the UK – all of the photos below were taken from the road. This is a lake we stopped at on the way:

The day after my interview, we climbed up Mount Kaukau, which at 445m is the tallest point in Wellington. On a nice day the view looks like this:

However, on the day we climbed it the mist closed in so we saw precisely nothing. 

It was still a nice walk though! We finished off the day with a boardgame night at Ash’s friend’s house.

On the way home, we drove past Mount Ruapehu in the central plateau. This is a sort of half desert, half heath area and probably one of my favourite in New Zealand so far. It’s also the New Zealand army’s firing range, so you’re not allowed off the road!

Right next to Ruapehu is Mount Nguaruhoe, which was used as the filming location for Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies.