We have been travelling again now for about a week. We left Rangiora after 4 weeks. We made a list of the things that we did in our time there, for those of you who wonder what we have been doing, remember this is on a lifestyle block in the middle of nowhere so everything is on a bigger scale than at home (and yes i did work on the digger too!):
Dug out part of the driveway with a minidigger and laid 6 ton of hardcore. Built a front wall and gate for an existing llama shed. Fixed a broken door on the chicken shed and cut a sliding hatch in it. Levelled 20 ton of driveway gravel. Dug out a firepit about 12ftx6ft and levelled out ground in the top of the front garden with the minidigger. Dug out half of the vege garden and turned all the soil over with the digger. Built walls for a compost heap in the veg garden. Put up a weather vane on a tall post dug into the ground. Fixed fencing around the veg garden. Widended and cleaned the stream up to the pond with the digger. Weeded a 50m path and laid bark down along it. Made a big wooden table as a base for a clay oven. Fixed the sliding door of the barn and draught proofed it, made a pen and hung a gate inside the barn for llamas. Laid hardcore in the pen in the barn. Tidied one half of the barn and burned waste wood on bonfire. Built a clay oven from clay dug out of the veg garden. Weeded both rose gardens and put fertiliser down and pea straw on top of the beds. Painted door frames, window boards and skirtings throughout the house. Weeded the ground around 20 olive trees. Used the pooh hoover to clean llama poohs from the paddocks. Fed chickens everyday and collected eggs. fed daily and walked llamas. Dug paths out in the veg garden. Siliconed holes in the garage roof. Pest proofed the airing cupboard and under the stairs. Painted half the walls of a bathroom and skirtings. Put up a shower rail. Built a wooden workhorse. Built a wooden door and fixed it on for the fruit tree reserve. Built a llama shed - wooden frame and corrugated sides and roof. Cleaned llama drinking troughs. Made 6 nest boxes for an existing shelf in the chicken shed. Put up a new shelf and put 6 more nest boxes on in the chicken shed. Put up 2 roosting perches and 2 more perching branches. Put up post and rail fencing in the top paddock around the trees. We worked 6 days a week for about 6-8 hours a day in all weathers.
Comments from our hosts about us not working hard were taken offensively so we made a sharp exit. I thought it was quite amusing that on our last day putting up post and rail the bloke asked rich to show him how to use the circular saw that he owned! I think that says it all.....
Its good to be on the move again and seeing new places. We got a hire car in ChCh for the next 4 weeks and drove south down to Oamaru where we saw some yellow eyed penguins. We then went to Dunedin - not much happening there considering its the south islands 2nd city. We went on Speights brewery tour which was good as at the end you get to do the beer tasting and help yourself from their bar. Oh yeah and we drove up and down the steepest street in the world - Baldwin St.
After Dunedin we drove down to the Catlins Forest National Park to a really really really small town called Owaka. E stayed here for 3 days while the weather was bad.We visited some more remote areas from here in the hope of seeing some more wildlife. We saw the 160million year old fossil trees in Curio Bay. And saw more penguins. We also saw a sealion right next to us on the beach. It looked like a big log! I got a scared as i thought it was going to chase us, they can be pretty vicious. But fortunately it didnt and we got some good photos. That has been the highlight on NZ so far.
Now we are in Queenstown. Its really pretty and busy for the ski season. Rich is immersing himself in all the xtreme sports....off doing the Nevis bungy about now. From some tiny platform suspened above a gorge at 100+m. Im holding onto what money i have left for zorbing on the north island!
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