Local celebrity.

Well my major life goal of appearing on the front page of a community newspaper has at long last been realized.

And no, I wasn't fined for a drunken invasion (for some reason the 'new teachers' headline seems to printed in the smallest font possible).

The first week and a bit of work so far has been neither here nor there. Kids are as expected - no better or worse than the average kid. Senior kids are good, with behaviour deteriorating steadily until hitting the Yr 9 threshold, before a moderate increase in teacher respect shown by Yr 8.

The ice-cream sampling goes on unabated. Double Chocolate wasn't bad (6/10), but didn't really stand up to the better stuff you'd find in a Sera Lee or Connoisseur punnet. Boysenberry was disappointing (not enough boysenberry, 4/10), but this week I have taken the bold step of sampling Blue Lagoon. The aqua colour is quite beautiful, but the flavour itself is nowhere near as distinct or exciting. I think it’s supposed to be a bubblegum flavour, but it’s actually closer to the banana flavour I sampled in week one. Still, it's not without its charm. 6/10

I have now played my first game at Hokitika Golf Course. Green fees are a reasonable $20, and hire a half set of clubs added a further $15 to the cost. The course is well kept, and most importantly, quiet. There was not a single other golfer on the course during my round of 18.

Both Mount Cook and Mt Tasman are supposed to be clearly visible from the course, providing a spectacular backdrop to the round. Unfortunately low cloud obscured the mountains (which it has the majority of days I've been in Hokitika).

The rather fierce westerly blowing across the course proved problematic. Whilst the wind, which was compounded by the open, links style course effected ball flight severely, the more troublesome problem was that every flag on the course had been blown over. This added the dimension of where is the green on this hole? Most holes the green wasn't visible/obvious from the tee, and often not even obvious from the 2nd shot. Local knowledge of the course would appear to be essential. All in all a good round though, especially since after watching numerous youtube videos I hit a few straight drives today – gone, at least sometimes, was the horrible slice.

Culinary delights

So the all important food update... Firstly, meat is expensive here,

really expensive – guess we will be eating more of the green stuff.

Another possibility is taking up hunting, which seems to be very popular

– lots of deer, wild goat etc to be shot and eaten (all of which are
pests). I'm not really sure I want to shoot things though.

There seems to be a distinct lack of diet soft drinks, the only diet
variety available is diet coke and coke zero. The kiwis still cant do a
potato chip, but bizarrely enough produce decent corn chips, in every
imaginable flavour, except plain.

Ice cream is promising, with the local 'Deep South' brand offering
Vanilla, French Vanilla, Banana, Berry Banana, Hokey Pokey, Chocolate
Éclair, Kiwi Fruit, Double Chocolate, Jaffa, Boysenberry, Orange, Raspberry, Fruit Salad, Peaches and Cream, Boysenberry Apple, Blackcurrant, Strawberry, Banana Chip, Choc Chip, Orange Chip, Strawberry Chip, and Blue Lagoon
(I think I got all of them). The plan will be to try them
sequentially. This week : Banana.

Initial impressions are positive – the ice cream presents with an
aesthetically pleasing pastel, yet somehow slightly fluoro yellow
colour. This colour, found nowhere in nature, is a good clue that the
ice cream doesn't actually contain any real banana as an ingredient.
The ice cream itself is smooth and creamy. The taste can be described
as exactly like a banana milkshake made from banana flavouring, with the
addition of faint woody overtones. A solid 7/10

Local takeaway is almost non-existent, though we are expecting to
partake in Indian takeaway soon. Asides from that, there is the
obligatory fish and chip shop and a bakery that becomes a pizza store by
night. Half an hour north there is the dread trio of subway, maccas and
KFC. The local bakeries are OK, though do not offer a massive selection
and pale in comparison to the small town bakeries you might find in Vic
such as Yea or Mansfield. Coffee is promising, I have had several
coffees from local establishments and all have been of good quality.

Unfortunately the kiwis really don't do a good donut. There is some
intangible quality about all the donuts I've tried that is just slightly
off. Still, they make up for it with quality pies. The venison pie I
had for lunch yesterday was particularly good. In our previous travels
to NZ we have passed a shop about half an hour south of here that does
Possum and Kumara pie – we will make the pilgrimage soon.

One other annoyance - the supermarket is only open to 9pm, so that 11pm
ice cream and junk food run will be a thing of the past tragically.

Just a couple more photos to round out the post - one more from another sunset walk along the beach and the others are from Franz Joseph Glacier which we drove to the other day (about 2 hours drive). You can walk a lot closer than this view point (which we've done before), but we hadn't done the walk to this viewpoint before and it's a short (but steep) walk from the car park.

    

Local attractions

Today we took a drive out to Hokitika Gorge, about 30kms or so south and inland from where we are. The water, as can be seen, is very blue. Apparently it is caused by glacial action, with the blue being fine particles of rock.

We also took a drive around the local lake, Kaniere, which is about halfway to the Gorge.

There's gold in them hills...

Well the updates continue thick and fast... I start work on Friday, so things should dry up around then.

I have taken a drive out to the local golf course. I was surprised (and pleased) to find only one car in the car park and the whole place looking deserted. I will give them a call and see if they hire clubs (clubhouse looked deserted when I was there). I might get a round in before work starts.

Hokitika is known for its greenstone, and after checking out the golf course we took a walk along the beach. We discovered many 'green stones' that may or not be greenstone. After some buggering round with some sand paper (not much too do here – internet still not connected, and xbox360 et al has yet to arrive from Oz) I produced the following result:

Also found this guy here, which has some sparkly bits of unknown origin. I choose to believe they are gold.

Some pictures to round out the post – this is the beach, about 5 minutes away from our house.

The Neighbours

We have now heard our fair share of puns about living in the dead quiet part of town, and having quiet neighbours. Here is a picture taken out of the back window:

As yet, no hauntings or occurrences of poltergeists. I do however have some concern given that this area's heritage is in gold mining that we may be living on top of the unmarked graves of Chinese gold seekers. The Mausoleum in particular is rather cool. Looks like something out of Buffy, perhaps Spike is in residence.

The graveyard is nice for a sunset walk, as besides being quiet it also is on a cliff overlooking the ocean and setting sun.

Pleasant sea breezes also abide, although last time we took a wander a rather unearthly and unnerving fog rolled in. Julie was not too impressed with my cry of 'there's something in the fog'.

Christchurch, then on to our new house.

It has been nearly a week since my last update. Internet connection has been almost non existent with the exception of internet cafés etc. We are expecting broadband in the house soon. The modem has arrived, but the internet connection will not be happening till Tuesday, give or take.

Also of great annoyance is that Julie's laptop doesn't have Photoshop so I've had to download a dodgy free RAW converter for my camera and use Paintshop Pro. Although at this stage I've only been taking snapshots, it's still annoying not being able to do simple edits. I will post and persevere though.

As you'd expect, we have made a lot of discoveries in the last week since arriving in Hoki, but I will stagger their delivery over the next few days rather than including one really really long post.

After buying the car, we still had 3 days in Christchurch to relax. Christchurch I think is the garden city. I may be making it up though. Adelaide is it's sister city, so perhaps it is in fact another city of churches. It does have a big church in the centre of town, and a 'church' in its name so the evidence seems damning. Some pictures taken from a wander around (including aforementioned church in the centre of town).

We headed across Arthur's Pass to Hokitika last Monday. The road was a great drive in summer, though given that it climbs to around 1000m in places the possibility of being cut off from Christchurch in winter seems a real possibility (at least for short durations.) On the upside it seems that there will be some ski fields within an hour and half drive from Hokitika (assuming favourable road conditions)

Our house, described in an email as 'reasonably well presented' is actually just as advertised – reasonably well presented. It looks to be a 50's brick veneer. The kitchen is relatively modern, with good bench space and a newish oven/stove. Also included are a nice size lounge, 3 bedrooms, laundry, bathroom and study. Plenty of empty space as at the time we had no possessions. As of a couple of days later we now have a cheap TV, second hand couch, bar stools (but no table). The main bedroom has nice views – both the ocean and the mountains (although the mountains, as pictured, have only been spotted by us on one occasion for about an hour – they seemed to remained permanently blanketed in cloud.)

Julie's main disappointment has been the lack of a 'kiwi letterbox', which seem to be in abundant supply around here - every second house has one. They're the ones with the little flag on the side:

New Car

So we've arrived in Christchurch ok. Yesterday we set about the task of opening bank accounts, getting NZ licences, tax file numbers, insurance etc. Our first hurdle was that our Aus licences don't have issue dates on them. So we have to write to VicRoads to get a letter saying how long we've held our licences or the AA wont give us NZ licences. On the upside we can drive on our Australian licences for a year without needing to get an NZ licence.

After setting up home and contents insurance with the bank, Julie seems to feel that insurance here seems to be somewhat less regulated than Australia... Still it's dirt cheap (assuming we're actually covered for anything) I'll let Julie read the product disclosure statement and figure it out.

The car search has finished and we have purchased a 2004 Mitsubishi Colt Plus. It wasn't on our original list, but fitted the bill. It's sort of a wagon type version of the normal Colt - not available in Oz (our car is a Japanese import, which seems to be the standard thing here).

We had to adjust our original list after realising their just isn't much boot space in a small car like a Toyota Yaris/Echo or a Mazda 2. Their also seems to be a massive shortage of manuals here (I think we saw about half a dozen across several lots). So my original ambition of reaquainting myself with actually driving a car seems has been short lived. It came down to the Colt and a Mazda 323 SP20. The Sp20 was 5 years older and done a lot more kms, so we went with the Colt. The Colt is a 1.5L CVT auto. It should be nice and fuel effiecent. It drives ok too, the 1.5 engine seeming to be relatively zippy for what it is (a small, Japanese city car). We took it for a 3 hour drive on the highway today out to Methven and back. It was much better than the Suburu Impreza we had as a hire care 3 months ago, particularly up hills and above 80km/h.

I'm not sure how I did with negotating myself a good deal. The car already had $2000 marked off the original sticker price, but was still $2000 out of our price range. We did a test drive and then left telling the salesman we wanted to test drive some other vechiles. Upon returning we informed the salesman we were interested in a cheaper Mazda down the road. We then told him how much we had in our bank account ($2000 lower than what he wanted) and asked him what he could do. This was met with a stoney face and the reply 'we could give you some more time to get the rest of the cash'. Not a good start. Eventuallly we managed to wrangle a further $500ish off and 2 years of roadside assistance. So I'm calling it a $2500 saving... He did assure me that they were basically making no money on it (I of course trust the used cars salesman). It was a Mitsubishi dealership so at least we can get warranty services over on the west coast and wont have to drive back to Christchurch. Either or, we now have the following:

Oh I just saw this on the National News - sums up NZ really.