More NZ stuff... food this time!

Ok so I still want to blog some stuff that happened in NZ before I forget too much of it. I'm sure there's a few more posts to go....

So this one is about some of the food we had. Below is what we had for the main course at the Shearer's Inn. Lamb and venison... two of the great products of having lush grazing on the west coast. The venison had a blueberry sauce I believe. It was delicious! And the accompanying Speight's wasn't too bad either.

In Able Tasman we had two lunches... this was lunch, part 2 at "The Anchorage". The delicious feast was purchased from a supermarket in Nelson, including Verker's salami, locally made cider and a cheesy bread roll with spectacular scenery while we waited for that ferry to turn up... it was a little late if I remember rightly.

Back at Kaiteri, we had dinner at what I think was called the blue whale. Or something. I'll correct that if I remember the name. Anyway, we were as close to be beach as we could be, and the food wasn't half bad despite the fact that we were almost the only people there (the locals apparently don't go out late at night on a Saturday before Anzac day). Despite all that, it was really quite good! They still cared. This is what my dessert looked like:

Lunch in Wanaka was a bit more disturbing. Wanaka is the slightly less touristy area where apparently you can do all the extreme sports but with less tourists. Still did seem very touristy. The road on the way after Haast gave us enough extreme driving, so it was time to eat some extreme food. Below is what was their pancake. We went to the pub as there seemed to be not much open, and what was open generally looked a bit wrong. We were also a little late. Anyway, after some trepidation I ordered the pancake. The bacon and banana pancake. I won't be doing that again. This is just proof that it was purchased. I did in fact eat it so I could say that yes I have done that once and won't be doing that again. I do not understand maple syrup on bacon and banana pancakes. I do not understand bacon in a sweet pancake.

Finally, some food that was art. In Christchurch, in a restaurant whose name escapes me entirely at the moment, we over indulged completely. This was one of the desserts.

Thank you everyone!

Dear everyone,

Thank you all for the lovely presents you gave us above and beyond your presence at our wedding. We had a had a lovely dinner this weekend where we got to use some of those delightful gifts! The following two books were instrumental:


The entree section looked a bit like this:
And the dinner itself looked like this:

Sadly, we aren't as good at this as we should be because we forgot to use the splayds. There were heaps of other gifts, all very much appreciated. This is just what I managed to photograph this time around. I'm still happy that so many of you made the time to come celebrate with us!

Cities around NZ

The larger cities we went to in New Zealand were Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch. Wellington was rather unique with a thriving sense of creativity. Nelson was also artistic but a bit different, and Christchurch looked like a little slice of Europe.

These first few photos are from Wellington:



This one is a view of Wellington from on top of Te Papa museum:

And this one is a panorama of Wellington from on top of Mount Victoria. We were very lucky with the weather on this one.

This is the main strip of Nelson:

This is Christchurch square from our Hotel room:
And a cute water wheel along the Avon River, which was apparently part of the early industry in Christchurch:

And here is part of the Arts Centre, near the Botanic gardens in Christchurch.
So... Christchurch is full of cute little parks and beautiful buildings, Nelson has a Cathedral (which gave it status as a City despite the lack of population) although the world of wearable art was also very cool, and Wellington is rather arty, vibrant and modern, with everything close by. I'd visit them all again.

In and around Twizel

So this was the corridor in the original workers accommodation in Twizel. Does look rather homely, doesn't it?

After staying in Twizel, we went for a drive around the hydro electric lakes. I really should look up the names of them to remember while I can, but whatever it was called, this one is full:

So here is where two of the lakes meet. One is river water, the other is glacial meltwater. They don't really like mixing straight away, and you can see the difference in colour.

Finally, here is some of the view on the way to lake Tekapo. We could finally see the snow capped mountains! Yay!

Abel Tasman national park

So, going backwards in the trip, here's some views in and around Abel Tasman national park.

Here's a view of Split Apple rock, just off the coast from Towers Bay in between Kaiteriteri and Marahau.

We were dropped off at Te Pukatea beach where we had a nice spot of lunch (part one), before taking a walk up to Pitt head. On the way up, you could get a full view of Te Pukatea:
After Pitt head, we made our way to "The Anchorage". This is the kind of view on the way.

Finally, after we were collected from the Anchorage after consuming Lunch (part two), we went for a drive back through Motueka and up Takaka Hill. This is the view from Takaka Hill back towards Motueka, with quite some zoom.
After this was back down the hill again and back to Kaiteri Lodge for the evening, including an attempt to wash clothes that ended up in quite a bit of damp clothing that became increasingly unpleasant through the rain we were going to face.

Some photos down the west coast

So what did we get to see despite the weather down the west coast? Here is a shot of Pancake Rocks in Punikiki. You can see the weird layering although I have a lot more photos of this area as well that show it a bit better.

Here is the main drag of Hokitika the next day before we went to check out the glaciers (and the vast amounts of rain!)

Somewhere in this photo is the terminal face of Franz Josef glacier. The big rock is Sentinel Rock.
Fox glacier, despite the main access road being closed due to the rain, was a little more visible.
That night we sought refuge in the "Hard Antler". We had some generous pub food and tasty beer, and were intrigued by the decor.

On the next day though, we decided to have breaky on the beach. This is Haast beach as we got to see it. A little colder, rainier and greyer than it could have been, but certianly an experience to enjoy.

It rained on the west coast

So let me set the scene. This was in between Franz Josef (the town) and the walking track to Sentinel Rock where we saw the glacier face. As you can see, it was raining a little.

The next day, on the way out of Haast, we could see it was an unusual amount of rain. A nice little land slip across the road to cross carefully in our Toyota Platz was interesting.

Then a second landslip.

A bit of water across the road.

We could tell it was raining more than usual near "The Gates of Haast"....

But the final thing that made me think about the weather was when we had to cross this:

This was between Haast Pass and Taras. The nice enormous vehicle with a giant brush swept a lot of mud and debris away and told us it would be fine now. It was still interesting to drive across.... We had another one later to cross as well but was nowhere near this size.

The next morning reading the newspaper in Twizel, apparently the river (Pepin creek?) burst its banks at around 11:30am, and State Highway 6 was closed at midday. We were quite lucky. Also looks like now the rain kept going up the coast and people have been evacuated from Greymouth, where we went through only a few days earlier.

Galavanting around New Zealand!

Well... we've just come back from our trip to New Zealand so I'm jotting down what we did, and I'll keep re-editing this, before I forget....

So we got in to Wellington airport quite late. Weather was a bit bad so we got in after midnight, and then checked in to the Duxton hotel. Next day we went to Te Papa, and then walked the length of Wellington city via Cuba Street, ending up at Omega Car rentals. We rented a Toyota Platz. No, I hadn't heard of one either. So what is it? 1.3L of raw power through an automatic gear box. New Zealand has a lot of hills. 1.3L doesn't give you much zoom up those hills.

So that night we checked in to the Shearer's Inn hotel, on the other side of Wellington. Possibly the swanky suburbs (the houses nearby were really quite pretty). Tasty venison and Speights on tap. Yum. So the next morning we drove through Mt Victoria tunnel down to Seatoun. We couldn't find the funky cafe that is supposed to be both sides of the road but hey... the scenery was great. We then drove up Mt Victoria to see the view. The weather was clear and the view was great! We then went for a drive up the Hutt River. Past the Lower and Upper Hutt all the way to Kaitoke regional park, and back again. That evening we looked at the Wellington Museum as well, before having some tasty tasty beer at the Mac's brewhouse. Best beer ever. We were at the same hotel that night so we could get up nice and early for the 8:25am Interislander.

So we spent as much time in Picton as it takes to get out of it. Nothing personal, just had other destinations in mind. We drove through Blenheim and on to Renwick. The checked in to the Wayfarers Way (something with too many w's) and hired their bikes to go wine tasting and riding. It's very flat in that region. I managed to get quite tired riding the bike, thinking I'm just way unfit, but turned out that the wheel was in fact digging in to the frame so it was like having the brakes on all the time. I ended up borrowing a spanner set from a nice winery (Nautilis) and we could ride home in comfort. We did stop on the way to pick up 2.5kg of locally grown apples and pears from a very nice man. Very tasty apples of a variety you can't get here.

Next day we went to Nelson where we walked around the town and went to the World of Wearable Art museum. We stayed at the Paradise Backpackers which was a little unexpected because the first couple of places we checked we actually (surprisingly) full. It wasn't supposed to be tourist season!

On the next day we went to Kai Teriteri and checked in to the Kaiteri lodge. We got a Sea Shuttle up to one of the bays (went past split apple rock on the way) and got to walk a little around the bottom end of the Able Tasman National Park. That afternoon we drove then up to Takaka Hill to check out the view and the local sinkholes.

Next day (Anzac Day; drove past quite a few ceremonies) we drove down to Hokitika via Greymouth, and stayed in the "Stumped" bar/accommodation. The other pub in town had a 21st birthday party so were out of everything except bunks. We wanted to stay in a pub this time because we could. The next morning we spent wandering around the crafts of Hokitika, but as it was Sunday there were no people carving greenstone (nephrite Jade), and a lot of the shops were manned by schoolkids. There was the artists collective shop which was staffed by the artists in the collective and had some cool stuff. Mind you, the greenstone stuff there was also quite good. That afternoon, we headed down the coast to check out Franz Josef and Fox glaciers which were hard to see in the weather, before we headed down to and stayed the night in Haast at the Wilderness Backpackers because sadly the Hard Antler didn't have accommodation.

From Haast we battled the elements to go stay in Twizel with a few scenic stops on the way including Wanaka. In Twizel we sayed in the huts (called "Twizel Lodge", High Country Lodge & Backpackers) that were part of the original shanty town to build the hydro-electric scheme.

The next day we drove around the lakes before gradually making our way down to Christchurch, staying in the Millenium hotel. Sadly, that was our last night, although was again very picturesque. Next day it was on a plane in the afternoon and back to Sydney.

There were a number of other townships we stopped at on the way that I should name at some point, but I can't remember them without a map in front of me so until next time, this is version one of my diary.....

In the Neighbourhood....

So this is just a shot of something I drive past every morning. Maybe it's the angles as I drive past it, but for some reason it just looks really intriguing to me. One day I might even go in there. It's like a weird portal disguised as a garage.

This, on the other hand, is something that makes me giggle when I go past:

Was Sunday today!

So I did stuff! I started trimming the tree that was brushing the power lines. I was hoping to trim it fairly savagely as the tree itself is (1) not a native tree and (2) mostly strangled by ivy and (3) brushing the power lines.

I ended up going for a much more subtle trim when I found this:

I'm sure breeding season will be over soon and I'll continue then.

I also had the delightful Mr Chen and his wife drop by today. They gave us housewarming pressies :-) In fact, these:



I have seen the lychee one but never tried it. Can't remember ever seeing the pear brandy one! We were told that the way to drink it was to soak a sugar cube in it and suck on the cube. I understand why. It's pretty concentrated. Was very tasty with some ice melted in it as well as the sugar!

Dredging through old photos for the panorama-ing

Hokay so there are some old photos that I meant to do this to years ago. I still need to learn to use an airbrushing tool to take care of the final bits of detail like the trimmed off sky, but apart from that they turned out okay. The first two are from my trip to Darwin in 2005. They are taken from the viewing platform of Fogg Dam. If I remember rightly Fogg Dam was built so they could harvest rice in Darwin. Only the torrential flooding and hungry native wildlife put an end to that.


The next two photos are from the Shoalhaven, taken in 2007. The first one is the view from the top of the hill at the Two Figs Vineyard.

I can't remember which vineyard the next one was. I suspect we didn't buy much wine there and only made a nuisance of ourselves (see small child in half wine barrel photo, wherever that may be...)


Well at least I did something I've been meaning to do (for a very long time) this weekend!

Chicken newsflash!

After two days ago with the first of our chicken-egg events, there was no chicken news yesterday. This morning was different. Megzzzz went in to have a look, and behold! A shiny, new, warm egg!


The one on the left is our first bit of real produce (the first one was broken and leaking so probably not a great idea to eat... good point there Mz Speedy). Aaaaanyway... the left was the fresh, shiny, new egg and the right is a normal 59g egg from shop-bought free range eggs.

The yolk was smaller than usual and quite tough, but after some convincing it contributed to the omelette for breakfast.

Space saving chickens!

No... not the kind that save outer space from aliens. More, the stackable kind:


on the bright side though... when their powers combine, they did make this:


which, as you can see from its condition, was laid fairly and squarely on the concrete. Go team chicken!

I made dinner and drank stuff

Been a while since I made salt and pepper chicken. So I did! Was also a good excuse to bowls and chopstick rests bought in Japan.

It was accompanied by the following drinks:

So what are the Taverners Honey Ales like? Well they both taste fairly strongly of Leatherwood honey. Good, bad or other, decide for yourself. The Strong Ale was lighter in colour than the Honey Ale, and sweeter. Overall that made the regular 4.0% one tastier than the 5.2% Strong Ale. While I'm drinking... we also tasted these:

They both had very strong tastes. In fact, the Wicked Elf had almost too much flavour as it warmed up, but I'd certainly drink either of them again!