Even though we're back home now I think I'll keep going and write up the rest of our New Zealand trip, it would be a shame to leave it uncompleted. So, taking up the story at Queenstown, I'll carry on.

From Queenstown we drove down to Te Anau on the edge of Fiordland, which was to be our base for a trip to Milford Sound. Everything that everyone says about Milford Sound is true. Out little boat sailed from dock at Milford Sound and out into the Tasman passing sheer cliffs diving straight into the sea, waterfalls and wildlife. We were lucky with the weather too, it was mainly overcast, but dry. The pictures will have to tell the story, I'm afraid.

So, (1) snow-capped mountains with waterfalls, (2) and (3) close-in to one of the waterfalls. The captain of the boat actually put the bowsprit under some of these falls.

Written back home in Caversham, well after the events described.

We left Franz-Joseph on 9th November, and arrived at Queenstown later that afternoon where we booked in to our B&B, a Swiss-chalet high up on a hill overlooking the town and Lake Wakatipu. They'd had snow overnight before we arrived, even down in the town, but this had all gone by the time we got there. Our hosts were Joe, Swiss by birth (car registration 'SWISSIE') and Maria, who was born in The Netherlands, nice people.

Our journey from Franz-Joseph, on a cold, cloudless, clear day, took us over the Haast Pass and beside Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, the most terrific scenery. We stopped at the mirror lake of Lake Matheson to see the views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman, at the Thunder Creek Falls, the Fantail Falls and the Blue Pools walk.

The pictures are (1) a view of Lake Hawea taken on the trip from Franz-Joseph to Queenstown, (2) the view over Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, taken from the balcony of our B&B, and (3) an old lake steamer, the TSS Earnshaw, tied up alongside at Queenstown.

Written back at Mission Bay, Auckland, still trying to catch up. I think I left off with us on our way to the Franz-Joseph glacier, so I'll pick up the threads from there.

We stopped at a decent little B&B at Franz-Joseph, after a very wet and windy drive. The next morning it had cleared and the sun was out, though still cold and we decided to do our walk up to the glacier. It's about a thirty-minute walk from the car park to the glacier, or as close as we were allowed to get to it, the whole thing is on the move all the time and huge lumps of ice and rock are constantly breaking off the leading edge. Snow falls up on the mountains and compresses under its own weight to form ice that moves downhill, behaving as a plastic solid and getting broken up and contorted in the process. At the leading edge melt-water pours out of an ice-cave, which can be seen in the picture. What the picture can't do, however, is give any idea of the scale of the glacier, it's immense. Just after we started the walk back to the car park it started to rain again, very heavily and we got soaked, but so what?

The pictures show Anne, on the path to the glacier and Anne at the Pancake Rocks.

Anne has just reminded me that on the way to Franz-Joseph we crossed two long, single-track bridges. Nothing strange about this; nothing except that the track is shared by railway trains, that is, you actually drive on the rails (which are close-boarded).

Nelson and onwards, written at Christchurch. At Nelson we stopped at a B&B called Sussex House, a pretty place by a river, nineteenth-century, white-boarding, verandahs and all very nice (see the first picture). Our main excursion from Nelson was to the Abel Tasman trail, we travelled by bus to Kaiteriteri, took a water taxi to Bark Bay and walked back along the coastal path to Torrent Bay where we were collected by the water taxi and taken back to Kaiteriteri. From here, back to Nelson, on the bus. A throughly enjoyable day. On the track from Bark Bay to Kaiteriteri there is what they call here a swing-bridge (it's actually a wire-rope bridge) that bounces when you walk on it (see the second picture, showing Anne on the bridge).

We left Nelson on 6th November and drove to Pancake Rocks, known to Maori as Punakaiki. Here we put up for the night in a cottage belonging to a motel. It was next to the beach and was, in fact, what New Zealanders call a bach (pronounced batch). More about baches later, but this was perfectly decent accommodation. The pancake rocks themselves were very impressive, strange water-worn things with layers. It was drizzling when we arrived and overnight the drizzle turned into a torrent. From Pancake Rocks we drove down the west coast to the village at the Franz Joseph glacier, in terrific rain all the way and without so much as a glimpse of the Southern Alps through the gloom.

All written well after the event again, I'm afraid and still trying to catch up. I'm writing this in a B&B at Christchurch on 19th November. Anyway, here goes, trying to pick up the story at Wellington.

Impressions of Wellington; much smaller than we'd expected, but nice, surrounded by steep hills, with some very pretty late Victorian and Edwardian houses, especially along the seafront, all timber with verandahs. We spent most of our stay here walking around the seafront and the museum. The weather was sunny in the main, but there was a wicked wind blowing from the south, a bit like the mistral, that throws dust in your eyes and makes your teeth ache. Had a not very good meal at a French restaurant which was also expensive, by NZ standards.

On the afternoon of the 3rd November we reported to the ferry terminal at Wellington for the crossing to the South Island, which took about three hours, less than a hour to leave the harbour behind, about another hour to cross the Cook Straights and about an hour steaming up the Queen Charlotte Sound (in the Tory Channel) to Picton. The scenery in the Queen Charlotte Sound is magnificent, with wooded hills dropping straight into the sea on boths sides. From Picton to our B&B in Nelson (by the quick route not the scenic one) arriving at about eight o'clock in the evening.

The pictures show (1) me, on the waterfront at Wellington, standing in front of an old steam floating crane and (2) the sun, detail from a modern Maori meeting-house built within the museum.

BELATED SOUTH ISLAND BLOG. Sunday, 12th November. I'm writing this on the laptop in a motel in Te Anau, Fiordland, in the deep south of the South Island. Some kind person nearby has left a wireless Internet connection open that I've managed to latch onto, many thanks to my anonymous benefactor. Picking up the story from where I left off:

We left Auckland on 31st October and headed south for about an hour. We were then obliged to head north again to where we started, because one of us had left our travel plans behind in Mission Bay (no names, no pack-drill). After this local difficulty had been put right we drove to Taupo, where we checked into a motel on the lakeside. It was from here that we saw our first snow-capped mountains.

1st November. Left Taupo and took the Desert Road across to Waiouru and then on to to Paraparaumu, where we checked-in to a motel. On the way across the desert we stopped at the NZ army museum, looked around and had a bite to eat in the restaurant there. Outside the museum, an old cannon with a Russian double-headed eagle mark, but with no words of explanation. At Paraparaumu (called by the locals 'Paraparam') ate at a fish restaurant called 'The Mussel Boys', on the wall a display showing the secret life of the mussel.

2nd November. Departed Paraparaumu for Wellington and checked-in to our hotel. There were activities in Wellington that had brought a lot of visitors into the city for the week-end, including a veterans' rugby tournament. We had to struggle to book anywhere, but in the event the hotel was just fine, if a little, er, unprepossessing.

I'll post this now, and do some more when I get the chance. Only one picture, Anne with the old Russian cannon.

Anne and I have just been down to the beach at Mission Bay. It's blowing an onshore gale and raining, but that wasn't stopping this chap. I think they call this kite-surfing and it looks enormous fun, but also looks to be hard work; they run across the wind at terrific speed.

Well, at least someone is finding the weather congenial.

It's Sunday morning and time to write up the blog, now, where was I? Sheila and Rosemary arrived back at Mission Bay on Wednesday evening from their trip to the Bay of Island. They had a very good time and also had much better weather there than we did here. Thursday and Friday were taking-it-easy days, wandering around Devonport, Auckland and St Heliers. Yesterday, Sheila and Rosemary left for Melbourne, we dropped them off at the airport for the afternoon flight. Before they went, we went down to the beach and I took some pictures of them, saying goodbye to Rangitoto (see photo). The Auckland marathon came through Mission Bay this morning, but by the time we'd managed to drag ourselves out of bed the serious competitors were long gone, they didn't have too bad a day for it, windy, with showers later, but not cold.

While she was here, Rosemary was anxious to get a really good picture of a nice, regularly-shaped Norfolk Island pine, but I don't think she had much luck in doing this. Never mind, we are off for our grand tour of the South Island tomorrow, so I'll keep my eyes open for one to photograph there (I'll blog it, if I find one). I'm not sure how I'll manage keeping the blog up to date while we're away, it will depend on Internet availability at the places where we'll be stopping.

On Friday, in St Heliers, I bought a book, Fatal Frontiers, by Paul Moon. It's a good, sensible history of the decade 1830 to 1840 and covers the run-up to the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi; necessarily, much of it is concerned what happened around the Bay of Islands.

Today, we sighted the first cruise ship of summer, in the harbour at Auckland, it's called The World. I remember reading about this chunk of marine hardware a year of so ago, it claims to be not so much a cruise ship as a floating community where the so-inclined can buy apartments, live their lives and never set foot on dry land, unless they want to. Leastways, I suppose they're allowed to get off if they want to, but who knows?

There is an article on Wikipedia about The World, click here.

Hey-ho, it takes all sorts...

Looking back to an earlier blog, at the picture of the chap about to throw himself off of the Sky Tower, reminded me of an old joke of Max Miller's concerning the options available to someone standing on the edge of a precipice.

It's Tuesday, 24th October and the weather is showing distinct signs of improvement. Yesterday was an enforced lazy-day, but this morning we walked along the sea-front to St Heliers and bought some steak for dinner. Later on we'll be popping up the the New World supermarket to do a big shop (it's always interesting to go to other peoples' supermarkets).

The picture is of a bowl that I bought from a shop in the arcade at St Heliers this morning; it was a most unexpected find. I have one similar to this, Chinese celadon, from Fujian province, Song-dynasty (about 800-years old), but this one has a stacking-ring: the glaze has been turned-off the bowl in a circle so that another bowl can stand inside it for firing, without the glaze welding the two together). I've wanted one of these for a long time. The bowl was found in Indonesia, which is bang-right for wares of this type. Now all I have to do is get it home in one piece.

It's Monday, 23rd October and Sheila and Rosemary got under way for their Bay of Islands tour at 6.30 this morning. The rain has been hammering down here pretty much since they left but here's hoping it is better than this up North. We've just been down to the Belgium beer establishment on the corner of Tamaki Drive for an espresso and a walk in the rain where we watched some Maori lads and their girl-friends playing rugby on the green by the sea-front. Even the Mövenpick isn't doing much business today, which is a rare thing.

Nothing much else to report, except that I've uploaded all of the pictures I took Wai-o-Tapu to Picasaweb. For those interested in boiling mud and steam, see:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nhopton

As usual, click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Sunday, 22nd October. Up early and caught the ten o'clock ferry from Auckland to Waiheke Island for a tour of some vineyards and an olive oilery (I'm struggling here, it's a place where they make olive oil). The two notable vineyards were Stonyridge and Mudbrick. Both produced excellent, crisp white wines and Mudbrick also produced a nice pink wine. None of the red wines sampled were of the best, however. At Mudbrick one vine produces enough grapes for only between one and two bottles of wine. The picture shows Anne, Rosemary and Sheila on top of the hill at the Mudbrick vineyard, sampling the wares. The olive oil facility was interesting, they no longer press olives to make the oil, the olives are mulched and the oil is separated in a centrifuge.

Rotorua

ROTORUA BLOG. Rosemary, Sheila, Anne and I left Mission Bay this morning, 16th October, for our trip to Rotorua. We arrived here in the mid-afternoon and booked into our motel, the Birchwood Spa in Fenton Street, a very nice place (and cheap as well. It has free Internet access, too). We've been to the local supermarket to stock up on food and plonk and just at the moment we're sitting down discussing our itinerary for the next few days. As expected, the place pongs strongly of H2S and I noticed that the trollys at the supermarket were all corroded and rusty; it evidently rains dilute sulphuric acid here.

Tuesday, 17th October, at Rotorua. After breakfast, walked about half a mile up the road to Te Puia, the Maori Cultural Centre in the Whakarewarewa Valley. This is the great Rotorua sight, with boiling mud, steaming vents and geysers, including the famous one, Pohutu, which was performing nicely during our visit.

Wednesday, 18th October, at Rotorua. Up early (for us) and drove south for about 30 km to Wai-o-Tapu, another thermal region. This one really does have everything, including a terrific thermal lake called the artist's palette. Later in the afternoon we returned to Rotorua and went to the museum there, a converted Edwardian spa with good exhibits on the history of the spa, the eruption of Tarawera in 1886 (which destroyed the famous pink terraces and white terraces nearby), local Maori and local people. The museum is set in a fine garden; oh-so-English the book says, quite rightly.

Thursday, 19th October. From Rotorua we headed up to the Coromandel Peninsula and found a place to stay on Buffalo Beach, Whitianga, with the most wonderful views of the bay. By the time we'd settled-in it was too late to do much more than walk around the town, very pleasant, and go for dinner at an Italian place around the corner, also very pleasant.

Friday, 20th October. From Whitianga to Auckland, spending some time at Hot Water Beach. This is a nice enough beach in its own right, but it also has hot springs that bubble up under the sand at low-tide. People dig baths in the sand and bask in the hot water, which is sometimes much too hot. We didn't do this, but we did stand up to our knees in the sea and wriggle our feet down into the hot sand, the very hot sand in fact, a few seconds was enough at any one time. From Hot Water Beach back to Auckland by the western coastal road, just too pretty to describe.

So, a terrific trip, with some longish drives over some highly interesting roads.

Now for the pictures, not in chronological order I'm afraid, Blogger has its own ideas about where things should go. (1) Rosemary digging for hot water at Hot Water Beach; (2) Anne with her feet in hot sand at Hot Water Beach; (3) Rosemary at Rotorua; (4) Sheila, Anne and Rosemary at Rotorua; (5) Rosemary and Anne at Wai-o-Tapu; (6) The old spa museum at Rotorua; (7) The Artist's Palette hot lake at Wai-o-Tapu.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

We collected Sheila and Rosemary from Auckland airport on Wednesday early evening and brought them here to Mission Bay for dinner and an early night; relatively early that is, they were still operating on Sydney time. Since then we've all been having a fairly restful time, recovering from our travels and wandering about locally around Mission Bay and St Heliers. The weather is improving all the time, the southerly wind has dropped in strength and it is getting much warmer. In Sydney we experienced what the locals call a 'southerly buster', a wicked wind that dropped the temperature from 30-degrees to 18-degrees between lunch time and tea time. Down here, of course, southerly winds are bad news, they blow straight from the south pole (or that's what it feels like). Sheila and Rosemary have both been cooking, which has improved to quality of our eating beyond measure.

Today, Saturday 14th October, we all took the bus into Auckland centre and spent some time looking around the shops in Queen Street (the main drag). After that we went for lunch at a restaurant in the Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. From here, the views over the harbour are tremendous and the food was good, too. The launching pad for the Sky Jump is on the same level as the restaurant and we were able to watch several apprehensive candidates for this experience throw themselves off of the tower, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The drop is something like 200-meters I think, and the descent is controlled by a fan, but the victims are held for a minute or so in front of a observation gallery on the floor below the launch pad, to dangle about while friends and family take pictures.

In the afternoon we took the ferry over to Devonport and rambled about the little streets doing nothing in particular, but fun for all that. Then back on the ferry and by bus to Mission Bay. This evening, Anne has been making booking on the Internet for our little tour of the central North Island, which will now begin on Monday.

The pictures show (1) a jumper about to take the plunge from the Sky Tower; (2) all of us on the boat to Devonport (I'm reflected in the window); and (3) at lunch in the Sky Tower restaurant.

FINAL SYDNEY BLOG.
Here are some more pictures, taken in Sydney and at the Blue Mountains. (1) Flying foxes hanging asleep in the trees at the botanical gardens; (2) Gwyneth, Robert and me, taken at Katoomba Park; (3) Gwyneth, Anne and Robert, also taken at Katoomba Park; and (4) Rosemary, Sheila and me, taken at Darling Harbour (I think!).

THE SYDNEY BLOG. We flew out of Auckland on Tuesday, 3rd October and arrived at Sydney three hours later, crossing three time zones on the way. I'd always talked about flying up to Sydney, but in fact it is pretty much due west of Auckland, about 1800 km due west (Anne says it was only two time-zones, plus an hour's difference for daylight saving, in force in NZ but not yet in New South Wales). We stopped at the Sir Stamford Hotel at Circular Quay, which is a decent sort of place in Macquarie Street and very convenient for most of the city-centre sights. Circular Quay is where the harbour ferries arrive and depart and is part of Sydney Cove. The opera house is sited on one little headland of the cove and the harbour bridge springs off of the headland opposite, from an area of very early English settlement called The Rocks. It seems that in days gone by The Rocks was another Hell-hole of the Pacific along the lines of Russell (see below) but redoubled in spades.

On the Thursday evening we went to see Handel's Julius Caesar at the opera house. After a shaky start things came together well and the performance was very enjoyable. Castratos are a bit thin on the ground nowadays, so the lead was sung by a counter-tenor, well enough, but on balance I'd have preferred a mezzo. The acoustics of the opera house are good, but the interior of the place is disappointing, pure 80s provincial performing arts centre in style. The opera house is due for an overhaul that should bring the interior into line with what the original designer of the place intended. This can't happen soon enough.

The week that we spent in Sydney was just about long enough to do the things that we wanted to do. On one hot day we took the ferry to Manly, which is a pretty little town with beaches on the harbour side and on the ocean side (the town is on an isthmus). The beaches on the harbour side are family-orientated and the ones on the ocean side are where the big breakers roll in from the Pacific and where the surfers go. We did a couple of very pleasant short walks here. As for museums, well, probably the best of them is the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This has a good collection of recent Aboriginal art, together with works from Europe (16th to 20th Century) and Australia (18th to 20th Century). A couple of good painting by Stanley Spencer too, including Christ at Cookham and a view of fields near Cookham, looking from what appears to be Strand Castle, towards Maidenhead. We dug these same fields for gravel not so long ago, I think. Also in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, some good Chinese and Korean ceramics. The Australian Museum has a good natural history collection, but it's a very run-down place that desperately need some money spending on it. The Nautical Museum had some exhibits of interest, including a full-scale replica of Cook's ship, the Endeavour; tiny and solid, it looks as if it would sail like a haystack. The botanic gardens, just round the corner from the opera house, are a fine introduction to Australian and Pacific flora and are not to be missed, especially the hot houses. In a large tree a colony of flying foxes are roosting, hanging upside down from the branches and sometimes squabbling over their places.

On Friday, Anne's cousin Robert and his wife, Gwyneth flew up from Tasmania for the week-end. We met them for dinner on Friday evening at a well-known fish restaurant at Darling Harbour, not far from their hotel. Food excellent and the (Tasmanian) white wine even better. It's good to see old friends again, they were at our wedding in nineteen-hundred-and-frozen-to-death (1968, to be precise) and even though we've seen them since then it was still good to ramble on about old times. Note to myself: send R&G copies of the wedding photos. I amazed myself by remembering what Gwyneth was wearing at our wedding; a willowy blond in a green corduroy dress, hey ho. On the Saturday, Gwyneth and Robert hired a car and took us up to Katoomba Park in the Blue Mountains, where we took a cable-car across a gorge with waterfalls and on to a little walk to a viewpoint overlooking a spectacular wooded valley, all beautiful, with a blue haze (said to be finely-dispersed oil from the eucalyptus trees) over everything. Oh, and on the way to Katoomba we passed through Penrith, home to the famous lakes. Had the old firm won the first prize on Busman's Holiday we would have gone here fifteen years ago, the lakes are water-filled gravel pits, now landscaped and made into Olympic standard rowing trenches. Never mind, we eventually made it under our own steam. On Saturday evening we had dinner at a restaurant on Sydney Cove, near to the opera house, and said goodbye to Robert and Gwyneth, who were flying-out on the next day.

On Sunday we met Sheila and Rosemary, who had just arrived from Brisbane, for dinner at Circular Quay, and had a jolly time. The next day we bumped into them on the Quay and we did a tour of the fish-market, very impressive. After that we split up and Anne and I took a tour of the Maritime Museum. In the evening we met again for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Paddington, near to their hotel. It was BYO, so we stocked-up with a couple of bottles of magic grape-juice before we went in. Food and wine very good, not to mention, also very cheap. Made arrangements with Sheila and Rosemary to collect them from the airport at Auckland on Wednesday, they'll be stopping with us at Mission Control for a couple of weeks, which will include a tour of the central North Island (the boiling-mud places, for example). We flew out of Sydney on Tuesday and had an uneventful trip back to Mission Bay, suffering a little from the three-hour time-shift again.

Now for the pictures, from top. (1) Standard picture of the opera house and part of the bridge; (2) Anne, with a couple of nuts (Dorman-Long's finest, these help to anchor the bridge to the sandstone bed-rock); (3) Nick and Anne in the gardens of the governor's house; and (4) Sheila at the fish-market. Anne has the decent pictures of Robert and Gwyneth, so I'll post a couple of these here, later.

Monday, 2nd October. Gosh, what a day! We've been confined to the house because of the weather, we are having torrential downpours with the odd bit of thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. So, perhaps not a bad time to do a little more blog-writing. Just now, during a short break in the rain I took a walk along the sea front, which I expected to find deserted, but no, the kids from Auckland (mainly East Asian) were there, on the beach, taking pictures of each other under umbrellas.

We are flying out of Auckland to Sydney tomorrow, for a week-long visit. While we're there we'll be meeting Anne's cousin Robert and his wife, who are flying up from Tasmania for a couple of days, going to the opera (Julius Caesar, by Handel) and also meeting my sister-in-law Sheila and her friend Rosemary, who will be coming back to stop with us at Mission Bay.

That's about it for now, but Anne says that every blog should have a picture, so the one at the top is one I took a couple of days ago during a visit to a Gannet colony at Muriwai, in the Waitakere Ranges.

Yesterday, Sunday, 1st October, was our Rangitoto day. We caught the nine-thirty ferry from Auckland and arrived on the island at about ten. From the jetty we walked west for a few hundred metres to have a look at the historic baches, chalet-style holiday homes built in the 20s and 30s (some of these are being preserved as little monuments to an older way of life). Then we walked back to the jetty and took the well-used footpath to the summit, a walk that took about an hour and that took us from sea-level to an elevation of about 260-metres. From the highest part of the rim of the crater (pay attention, you should know this by now, Rangitoto is a volcano) there are good views of Auckland, Devonport, the bridge, the harbour and the islands, not to mention Mission Bay. From the summit we walked east, towards the wharf at Islington Bay. Up to this point the weather had been fair, but from the slipway at Yankee Wharf back to the jetty used by the ferry it rained, quite hard at times. The first half of this part of the walk was also hard going, very rough underfoot and pushing through wet foliage too, so we were quite relieved to arrive back at the jetty, a bit tired and soaking wet to boot. Total distance walked, 13.2 km, nothing really, but over some rough ground. I kept a GPS track of the walk and plotted it on a 1:50,000 map, see the picture. Our track is the red line with the arrows showing the direction of travel. When we arrived back in Auckland the heavens opened, with thunder and lightning as well. According to the radio this morning there has been flooding and landslips in the Auckland region overnight, worse in the western parts. Anyway, the truth of it is that despite everything, including Anne falling over and cutting her knee on a lump of lava, we both enjoyed Rangitoto immensely.

We arrived back from Northland last Friday evening, 22nd September, 2006. Since then we've been taking things easy at Mission Control and making trips out around the local area. The last few days have been warm, even approaching hot, at times. This has been bringing large numbers of kids out from Auckland to Mission Bay to swim, sunbathe, play games and to consume vast amounts of ice-cream at the Mövenpick down on the corner of Tamaki Drive. Anne and I are working on strategies to take pictures of the queues without making it too obvious what we're about.

Last Sunday, we were picked up by some friends of Cathy and Laurie's, Rhonda and Barry, and taken for a highly enjoyable trip up into the Waitakere Ranges, one of Auckland's regional parks, west of the city. We had lunch up there, a cheerful little group comprising Rhonda, Barry, a jovial Australian computer whizz called Phil, Helen, who's American but lives in NZ, Anne and me. As always here, the food was good and the crisp, white NZ wine even better. We've arranged to meet Barry and his mother in Auckland on Friday evening for a concert.

On Tuesday evening, we were invited to dinner with Graham and Sue, who are also friends of Cathy and Laurie. They live high-up on one complete floor of a circular tower at Ponsonby, with the most tremendous views of everything, the harbour, the bridge, downtown Auckland and the Sky Tower, Rangitoto, Devonport, the inner harbour, everything. Like everyone we've met here, they're lovely people. The picture shows a view of downtown Auckland, taken from Graham and Sue's balcony. The camera was hand-held by me, after a couple of drinks, hence the camera-shake.

These have been the highlights of the week so far, but we have also walked down the road to St Heliers a couple of times (they have a very good butcher's shop there and I went to the barber's for a scalping). I've also be re-reading parts of the Penguin History of New Zealand, mainly about politics and relations between Pakeha and Maori, and also reading the papers trying to make some sort of sense of NZ politics. These are pretty bloody at the moment, the ruling party have been accused of fiddling election expenses and the prime minister's husband is gay, it has been said. There's a curious sub-text to this story, I think they're trying to hint that she is too. The leader of the opposition, one Brash by name, has been outed as having an extra-marital relationship with a high-profile businesswoman and he's also in trouble for having dealings with a religious-right organisation that hired a private detective to spy on the PM and her husband. In fact, it's all more complicated than this, the unfortunate Brash's affair was outed by one of his own colleagues, for example. Anyway, the New Zealand Herald is full of letters saying it's time to take personalities out of politics, et cetera, et cetera. They don't have horrible, UK-style, red-top tabloids here, but seem to manage quite well without them.

Oh, before I finish, I've started to upload pictures of our NZ trip, here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nhopton

just in case anyone requires a spot of therapy for insomnia.

We left here on Monday morning, drove up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands and checked into an apartment at Allegra House, a B&B high up above the town overlooking the bay. It would be difficult to praise this place too highly; perhaps it’s enough to say that a charming Swiss chap, Heinz, and his equally charming English wife Brita run it, and that everything, but everything, works like clockwork. The town itself is very pleasant, with two or three decent restaurants. The season was just getting under way so the town was still pretty quiet, but will be busier next week when the school holidays start. There were signs of this happening when we left on Thursday.

On Tuesday, we walked from Paihia round the headland to Waitangi. This is a famous place in New Zealand history, it was here that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed that ceded sovereignty of the islands to Her Britannic Majesty, in 1840. The house of the then British resident, now known as the Treaty House still stands, though much altered, overlooking the sea, in pretty parkland and with a flagpole on the lawn. The treaty has pretty much defined the relationship between Maori and Pakeha (that’s what the Maori call us, it’s not a derogatory term) ever since, even though from the legal point of view it never carried much weight (according to the Penguin History of New Zealand). From the Treaty Ground at Waitangi we walked to the Haruru waterfalls, along a path that leads through woodland and across a boardwalk through a tidal mangrove swamp. The mangroves are not to be missed; they grow in mud in the intertidal zone of the estuary.

On Wednesday we took the ferry from Paihia over to Russell, which was the first capital of NZ. It grew out of a settlement used by English and American whalers in the early nineteenth century, at which time it was described, possibly by Darwin, as ‘the hell-hole of the Pacific’. The place still has just a bit of the frontier about it. From the town, we walked up to the flagpole and took some pictures of the town and the bay. Even the flagpole has some history to it, having been chopped down by disaffected Maori on three occasions. Some time later the very people who chopped it down rebuilt it as an act of good faith.

On Thursday we started our drive back to Mission Control, staying overnight at a motel in Dargaville, on the west coast. On the way we took a walk into a Kauri forest of the sort that used to cover much of the land here at one time to look at some notable Kauri trees. These can live for two thousand years and grow to enormous sizes. They are beautiful, which is not a word I use, in general. It’s difficult to know what to say about Dargaville; the people there are nice and they do a superb fry-up for breakfast. On Friday, returning from Dargaville to Mission Control, we stopped at the Kauri museum. Don’t laugh, this is one of the best little museums we’ve ever visited. It is devoted in the main to the Kauri tree and the things made from it, including what was once a most valuable product, gum. Most of the exhibits, old engines and other machinery were given by the descendents of early European settlers, together with lots of family documents and other artefacts. It’s difficult to imagine how hard life must have been for the loggers, gum-tappers, gum-miners (lumps of buried fossil gum were found by probing the ground with gum-spears and then dug up) and farmers in the 1860s.

The pictures at the top are (1) Nick on a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp near to Waitangi; (2) A 30-metre long war canoe at Waitangi; (3) Nick standing in front of a venerable Kauri tree; and (4) Nick, reading a notice on a building on the sea front at Russell. This is terrible, all of these pictures are of me, some of Anne to follow, it's a promise.

View from the flagstaff at Russell.

Sunday. Pretty much a day of rest, some housekeeping and playing with the computer with a couple of walks down to the beach thrown in. I've lost track of the number of languages I've heard spoken here, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Dutch and Russian for starters, together with a bit of English. There are language schools in Auckland and the kids descend on Mission Bay in droves in their spare time. We've just come back from the cinema, Mrs Palfrey at the Clairmont, it was very good. I don't remember it being released at home. After the pictures, a walk down to the sea front to check the water between us and Rangitoto for signs of steam, but nothing yet. Tomorrow, we depart early for Northland.

Today we caught the bus into Auckland to have a look around the shops. After that, we had a bite to eat at a restaurant near the harbour (moules frites, with the most enormous green-lipped mussels) and then on to the Maritime Museum. This latter has everything you'd expect, plus one or two items you wouldn't, such as an anchor from the Bounty. I actually touched this, which is almost certainly more than William Bligh ever did.

Back at mission control a few minutes ago, I carried out the usual experiment of filling a sink with water to check which way it goes down the plug-hole. Everything they say is true, it really does go down the wrong way. Little things please little minds.

Tomorrow, we shall be planning our trip to the Northland, we're due to set off there on Monday. I've bought a 1:50,000-scale map of the area on a CD, which should help to make this task infinitely more difficult.

Yesterday, Friday, was a lazy sort of day. We drove up to the War Memorial Museum in Auckland and walked round the galleries that we missed during our visit earlier in the week. Three hours is about the limit of my ability to concentrate closely on anything. One slightly disturbing thing at the museum is a volcano exhibit in the form of a typical sitting room in a house near Mission Bay overlooking Rangitoto Island, about two miles away. By means of an imagined television news bulletin and the view through the patio windows the effects of a volcano erupting in the sea between Mission Bay and the island are examined, complete with shaking of the building and the near destruction of the Mission Bay waterfront area by pyroclastic flow across the water.

Here’s a picture of Rangitoto Island taken from the sea front at Mission Bay, just a couple of hundred yards from where we are stopping. The hypothetical volcano forms in the sea, about a mile out (hope it stays hypothetical, too). The island is itself a volcano, formed during an eruption about 600-years ago, but is now said the be extinct.

Also at the museum, a fine collection of Korean ceramics on loan from the National Museum at Seoul, many good celadons and some pieces made after the style of Song dynasty Ru-wares too.

Yesterday, Wednesday, we drove from Mission Bay along Tamaki Drive into Auckland and across the harbour bridge to Devonport. This is a very pleasant little place, just a mile or two across the water from Auckland centre. Everything here is very English and on the sea-front there is a splendid hotel called The Esplanade. We walked up Mount Victoria and looked at some old gun emplacements and took in the fantastic views of Auckland and the islands. It rained a bit while we were here, so we sat in a seaside café and listened to Abba on the wireless, what could be more English?

Added by Anne. We did have some difficulty finding our way through Auckland to Devonport, and back again to Mission Bay, partly because of my poor navigation and partly because the Auckland road signage is not very good. I’m sure it will get easier! Another beautiful day today, but showery. I’ve already learned never to go anywhere without sunscreen, sun glasses, and raingear, and we needed all of them today. No-one ever told me about the intensity of the light here – I suppose with all this water I should have known, but it has taken me by surprise. I burned in about five minutes on a not particularly nice day. Everything seems amazingly cheap here to us, we are constantly gasping at the prices, but in a good way!

From the menu at De Fontein I ordered a bottle of Duvel top-fermented beer, very strong, 8.5 per cent alcohol. ‘Oh, just off the shelf please, not from the chiller’ I told the barmaid. You know what’s coming next; they only do their beers chilled. Never mind, I managed to warm it up a bit with my hands and I’ll investigate the possibility of getting the management to leave a couple of bottles out on the shelf in future. In the meanwhile, a beautiful Finnish barmaid is convinced that I am a dangerous lunatic (which indeed I shall become if I have to continue to drink cold Belgian beer).

Yesterday we walked out along the seafront to St Heliers and then on to Achilles Point. The view from here is spectacular, Auckland, Rangitoto Island and lots of other islands. In the far distance it was possible to see what I think must have been the northern end of the Coromandel Peninsula, but I’m not sure about this. Near to Achilles Point we walked down to a little beach at Ladies Bay, which was warm and we both caught the sun. St Heliers is a pretty little place, with some decent shops, including a real, old-style hardware shop (I’m sure you could still buy nails by the pound here).

In the afternoon we walked up to the Savage Memorial, which is in a park overlooking Mission Bay. Savage was the first Labour prime minister of New Zealand, he died, if memory serves, in 1940. From here there are good views of Auckland centre, the harbour, Devonport and the islands.

We’ve arrived, and to prove it, here’s a picture of the fountain shown in the satellite image below.

We arrived here in Auckland at about 7.00 am on Thursday, having left Heathrow at about 4.00 pm on Tuesday. By some mechanism that I still don’t understand we managed to lose Wednesday altogether. Unfortunately, on arrival we found that our brains were still in transit, but they are now beginning to arrive bit-by-bit and with any luck the process should be reasonably complete in the next day or two. To be serious, in fact we arrived in much better condition than I thought we would, the flights were on time and our seats were comfortable. The shuttle from the airport to Mission Bay worked as it should and we were at the Phillips’ home about two hours after landing.

The major formalities at Auckland airport were concerned with bio-hazards to agriculture and we had to present our walking boots for inspection and possible decontamination (not necessary in our case because we’d cleaned them well before packing). But imagine the scene, opening cases to find the boots and packing them again after examination, with us falling about from the effects of jet-lag.

Mission Bay is as pretty as everyone says it is, north-facing (which is good, in this part of the world) and very green. Oliver stopped here, just round the corner from where we are, and loved it too. We won’t go into the reason why it’s green, beyond mentioning that they don’t have hose-pipe bans down here. Yesterday, Sunday, we took the bus up to Auckland centre for a walk round, most of the shops were open and cafes and restaurants in the harbour area were doing good business. We had a very good and by English standards, very cheap, lunch in one of them. In fact, it has to be said that almost everything here costs less than at home and quite a lot less too, in many cases.

Today, Monday, we drove down to the big museum in Auckland, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which houses a remarkable collection of Polynesian and Maori art and artefacts and also has an interesting section on colonial Auckland, with lots more still to see. In amongst Cathy and Laurie’s collection of books is the Penguin History of New Zealand, which I’ve been reading in an attempt to start making good my woeful ignorance about this extraordinary country. Everyone here knows about what’s happening in England, for example, it makes front-page news, but we know so little about this country. This afternoon I had my usual stroll along the sea front trying to get a grip of the topography with the help of map, it’s beginning to make some sort of sense I think. This evening I think I’ll have to nip down to the local pub, it’s called De Fontein and it serves a range of Belgian beers. But wait, they couldn’t, they wouldn’t, serve it chilled, would they? Wait for the next riveting episode to find out.

This is a satellite picture of Mission Bay, Auckland, we'll be stopping near to the centre of this picture. The little blue circle near the top left of the picture is a well-known Mission Bay landmark, a fountain that lights up at night. It's very odd to think that we'll be looking at this in a few days' time. It's a small world, as I write this in Caversham, England, I'm listening to Radio New Zealand, streamed off the Internet.

Click on the satellite image to make it larger.

Next week we'll be leaving for a three-month visit to New Zealand and I've started this blog to keep friends in touch with what we have been doing there. We'll be based in Mission Bay, Auckland, but intend to travel around both islands and fit-in a week-long visit to Sydney as well.