Ow

The mother in law dropped her on the bath. Luckily she has a hard head so did not break any bones.

Iain and Emily's wedding

It was the only day of really good weather on the entire trip and luckily it was also the day of the wedding. It started off with a beautiful frosty morning and with it being autumn Arrowtown was looking its best.



The church was also very nice, I was most impressed with the two very large redwoods out the front of it.





The wedding itself was very good and the bride and groom did a great job remembering their vows. The reception was also a top notch affair as it was in millbrook resort.

Ben Lomond

The day after going over sugarloaf pass, Gemma was in town and up for a walk. I was undecided on what to do, but since I was in Queenstown and had not done a lot of walks in the area as I had always considered it an overcrowded, tourist riddled hellhole, though it might be time to try some of them out. One of the longer day walks there id the trip up to the summit of Ben Lomond and since the start of the track was right next to Gemmas hotel we decided to give that a go. I was soon regreeting it though as the track initially goes through a lot of really ugly douglas fir forest. It then opens out on to a very well worn track above the forest, but since sheep are grased on this land in the summer it is also pretty ugly. There were also quite a fer goats around to add to the ugliness. To make things worse it was cold with a lot of low cloud and we could not see anything, and I was starting to worry that I would be wasting Gemmas only free day in NZ by taking her on a horrifically ugly walk. Luckily though a bit higher up we broke through the clouds and were greeted with a lovely vista of mountains, which made it all worthwhile. It is so much nicer when you are on the top of the mountain with cloud below you and all you can see is other peaks sticking out.


Speargrass, a plant that lives up to it's name.


Schist


Above the clouds.


Bit chillier than Sydney, a lot prettier too.


The summit was a nice place to have lunch.


A friendly guest on top of the summit.




Filthy animals


Filthy trees

Sugarloaf Pass

This is a pass that I have always wanted to do but had never had the opportunity. We skipped it on the way to the Olivine Ice plateau many years ago as the weather was atrocious and we wanted to avoid some river crossings. Having now done it in the rain we probably would have been alright but going up the rockburn instead that time we managed to see some blue ducks and that is the only time I have been lucky enough to see them so it was a good decision in the end. None the less it meant that it was something that was certainly outstanding on my list of things to do and since I had a day to myself even though the weather was bad it was well worth it. The DOC website has some more information on it if you want to do the walk although I would caution that there are a lot of beach roots to scramble over on the walk. Also I would like to thank the two lovely ladies from DOC who gave me a lift up the road from the lake sylvan carpark to the routeburn carpark when I was throughly drenched after walking in the rain for 8 hours.


South Island Robin (Petroica australis australis)

The wildlife is a lot better than I remember it and certainly there were plenty of traps about to kill off any mustelids that might be about, which was great to see.


I'd missed my mossy nothofagus.


There was not a lot to see on top of the pass unless you have a fascination for wet tussock.


Pretty waterfall.


More moss and lichen.


Lake sylvan


You could just about see some mountains.

Pesky critter

Along with magpies, noisy miners, kookaburras and the odd pied butcher bird these are the most common visitors to our garden. This one wanted a few grapes that I was eating.




Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus)

A little home maintenence

Have been very slowly getting the garden into shape. There is a little bit of bush at the back with a few nice blackbutt trees and a few manky wattles, which was infested with camphor laurel, loquat, privet, cassia, cotoneaster, Ochna serrulata and oleander and many other weeds particularly small groundcovers, grasses and vines. I have mostly got on top of the weeds now but it was a spectacular collection. I have also finally put in a few garden beds and a compost heap that took an embarrassingly long time to build.



There was also a hideous large gymnosperm outside the front of the house which while it provided a nice screen of the neighbours house was very large and for some reason I had always hated it. Mostly because it was not native and did not provide overly good habitat for the local fauna. Anyway after 4 days of sawing with my little handsaw I have finally managed to reduce it to a rather large stump.





The hard part was getting it to fall in the right direction as I did not want to squish the neighbours house. The top was easy enough as you could cut sections of the many trunks down and push them in the right direction as long as they were small enough. However it got considerably harder closer to the ground.


Finally mostly gone.

Mail

This horrid creature had set up shop in our letter box. Nothing half a can of fly spray couldn't take care of.

Citizenship

It only took just over 5 years from the submitting my PR application to getting citizenship. Admittedly 2 years of that was a standard waiting period from getting PR till when you can apply for citizenship. The rest was government incompetence and the complete sham that is university education being sold as PR.


A small terror at the ceremony.


Phillip Ruddock (white hair) trying to scab some votes before the next election.

Settling in and Christmas

Well we have pretty much settled in now although there is still plenty of work to do in the garden.


Claire had her birthday, which was nice although due to the horrible summer we had it was a little to warm.


Finally had Christmas in my own house and for such a momentous occasion only a real tree would be sufficient. People were rather scathing of the glorious specimen above but at least Claire liked it.

We have been for a few walks in the bush at the back of the house although there is still a lot more I need to do once the leeches settle down for the winter. Mind you I have been leeched at least half a dozen times just walking around my lawn so I am starting to get used to it.

Debt

Things have been a little quiet here of late as I did something rather foolish and brought a house. Hopefully it will be paid off in a decade or so, but it is still an unsettling amount of debt to get into.

On the other hand though at least I am not trapped in a small concrete box with nothing to do on weekends. If anything I have too much to do, with a large garden which was a tribute to the noxious weeds of Australia. I made a series of compost bins with a volume of approximately 3.6 cubic meters and they are already full and I could have filled them three times over. The garden is also fulling up with tree trunks from all the ones that I have cut down, might have to mulch them up one of these days.


On the other hand though it does have a nice selection of wildlife with numerous species of lizards including at least one bluetongue, as well of plenty of birds including a wonga pigeon one day by the back gate.



Broad-tailed gecko

This post was edited on the 13/03/2013 due to people whinging about the grammar and spelling.