The Great Bush Adventure!!

Ok now this will not surprise too many of you but it will give you that memory of times shared where I Sarah, have gotten myself or you and me into 'another fine mess' as Ollie Hardy would say.

Indiana Jones, MOVE OVER, we are here!!!!

Now in our defense we were only going to have a recee and not actually go for a wander as it was dinner time and we had 10 mins before dinner would be ready. So I in my infinite wisdom suggested we go check out the top of our 2nd section to see if there is a navigable pathway to Signal Hill Reserve on our boundary. Well it looked promising, after I had gathered my breath once reaching the top of our section, Paul scoots off while instructing me to stay there as he checks out an animal track to see if usable. Well anyone who knows me also knows that following instructions is not one of my strong points, so Simba and i wander off to another part of our top section where we can get over the fence (me) under the fence (Simba)and off we trot the fearless adventurers. Eventually after about 10 mins we meet up with Paul who warns me that there is 'Bush Lawyer' around, 'where?' says i expecting some gun carrying official! Now this is a plant I am informed, a particularly anti social plant that makes razor wire look like 'silly' string!. Man, it is lethal!

Anyway now we are a complete unit Simba leads the expedition and we gain height, breaking through the bush following what is probably possum tracks, Simba is casting something but we were kinda hoping that we were not going in a large circle and as we were progressing uphill we felt relatively positive that we were on the right course. I will now interrupt this little recount by advising you of the great adventurers apparel, me in thin material 3/4 length trousers with parachute silk material hoodie SK8 top (top = as seen in picture 'time for reflection')and trainers, Paul in jeans, tshirt and trainers, oh and the very important 'Indiana Jones' style leather hat!! (you starting to see one of my fetishes here???)

OK, breathe! oh the images LOL!!

Anyway back to the story. Well we reach another point where the bush gets ridiculously thick so Paul tells me to stay put and he and Simba will go through to see if we are in fact where we wish to be as we can hear voices now.

Well I get bored don't i!!

So I start to wander down a way, Simba reappears

And then we are joined by Paul and No we are not where we wanted to be and we have no idea exactly in the scheme of things where we are as the bush is very dense.

Well we continue to wander, I fall spectacularly over by slipping on an exposed root, and on several occasions we reach sheer drops and unnavigable terrain.

At this point in time I mention to Paul that I am so glad I have never watched 'The Blair Witch Project' (we had hired it out from the library for the weekend) to which Paul mentions that he was thinking that it had striking similarities and he was glad it wasn't dark.

I was beginning to think that we might still be here in the dark.

I also was concerned as we had left Wolfie behind as he was chomping on a bone and wasn't too minded in following us on our adventure, but by now he may have gotton bored and may be concerned that we have left him behind.

So on we wondered and eventually saw the horizon and I could see the monument that is on the hill opposite our house over the other side of the harbour, Paul shins up a tree to get a better look and claims that the boat shed opposite us in the harbour is directly opposite as is the new build of Rotary Park. This means at least we were still roughly in the right direction for home, but still no where near finding out where we were or getting onto more easy to navigate possum tracks.

On we march, me the fearless adventurer in the lead!! ouch! I get well and truly wrapped up in some Bush Lawyer! I am beginning to want to be home now! So Paul begins the process of untangling me! And I let him take the lead!! LOL

Well to cut a long story very short eventually we manage to find the track we headed up on and this led us to our field! yahooooo!!

Well we wander down the field to the house and Wolf is on the lawn still chewing his bone!! So we couldn't of relied on him to raise the alarm if we had been truly lost for good!!

He looks up as if to say, 'oh you been somewhere have you?'

We go in and rescue dinner to find that we had been out for an hour and three quarters and it was starting to get dusk!

Anyway we have now decided to wait for our next adventure until we have the following

1) GPS unit to mark the coordinates of start and destination point
2) Spray paint to mark trees on the route
3) Proper walking boots
4) Sensible clothes

and i am steering towards food and drink too!!

So the moral of this story is

Never listen to my bright ideas!!!!


Oh Oh Oh

Forgot to tell you about our trip to the tip (this is becomming one of our favourite places!!)

Wicked!!

Managed to purchase two compact ovens one for our kitchen, very in keeping with our 50s style theme and the other to sell on for a quick buck all being well. So tested both out and working well, cleaned them up and now we have on in place and one advertised for sale!! We paid $2 each around 75p in UK pounds! Advertising the one we are selling for $40 so not a bad POR!!(profit on return)

The one we are selling



The one we are keeping





Yesterday was spent in a much more sensible manner.

We got up around 10am then went to Vino Vena for a full english breakfasts (the best!!!) it was soooo nice!!

Then went for a wander around the university buildings as it is Freshers Week next week so best time while no students about!!

Then off to both of the tips to check out the stuff for sale and we picked up 2 books that may be of value as they are possibly first editions. I got a really cool set of scales for the kitchen that go on the wall and fold down to use!! (very 50's in theme), an egg poacher (for our eggs benedict!!) a couple of tube spanners and all this for the princly sum of $4 ......like..... COOL!!!

The scales i am so proud of!!





We then decided to check out some potential dog walk areas, so went up over Three Mile Hill to check out Silver Peaks forest, The Pineapple Track and Ross Creek. So this gives us some really nice walking areas to do in an evening after work and at weekends.

Then back to do some work, Me strimming and Paul erecting shelves for the dogs room and utility.

I now have a shelf purely for the bread maker and its related stuff and one for all the bottles of stuff in the utility!!







So a good day full of fun and achievements. Finished off nicely with Lamb Shanks in mint and rosemary stock, roast tatties, broccoli and yummy gravy!!

Then we watched The Mancurian Candidate (not bad!) and went to bed.

Oh well it is now almost 11am and i need to get a move on as have to get into town by 12 ish. I will post photos of the great bush adventure later!!

Till laters

Well arent I the sucker for punishment?

1) I mowed the lawns - now dont forget this is no nice flat little postage stamp, this is huge and nasty gradients. The Japanese Zen garden idea is still appealing! Failing that once we get our sheep, they will have weekend run of the garden as well as the field!

Remind me that i shall not plant any thing that sheep may eat in the garden otherwise this will be counterproductive!!

Anyway i raised a bit of a sweat.

It started raining as soon as i finished

2) Paul gets home from work and we eat dinner, Simba starts wingeing about Doggy Boot Camp training and i take a hasty look outside and note that it has stop chucking it down. So i stupidly (i could slap myself about with a wet salmon for this!) mention to paul that we could go for a wander up to Signal Hill as he hasnt been there.

Note: Signal Hill is the bush reserve that starts immediatly above our 2nd section/field. Just before we moved here a lot of it was destroyed by a bush fire but they are starting to replant etc. I found out yesterday from the Animal Control Officer that it was a great doggy walking area, so thats where we had a look yesterday if you remember yesterdays post.

So as we dont know the distance from our section to the walking track we pack the dogs in the car and drive off to the walking track about 1 mile around and up above us. So on goes Simbas rucksack and off we march.

Well several gasps of breath later, containment of my heart within the chest wall, Paul helping me, and fierce negotiations with my calf muscles we reach the top, see the remains of the bush and walk further onto the quarry blasting area. Then about turn and start back down after checking out the view over Dunedin. Once we reach the area that is directly above our place I send Paul in to see how far down it is, so we can beat a trail from our section onto the reserve, which would be great. So as you can probably guess, a mission is evolving in my mind!
Pauls weekend job!! make a track through!

Well Wolfie bless him did probably better than me on this little wander!

I do however now wonder why i gave up smoking as i could breathe better then, and i was certainly healthier and fitter. But being on the boat maintained my fitness, which i dont have now. No water to collect, no shopping to lug half a mile down a towpath, no shit tank to empty, no routine maintenance. Life is easy here, compared, but i do miss the old girl!

Anyway i digress

So yes hopefully we will make a little trail up to the reserve.

Oh yes and yesterday the Animal Control Officer visited and we now have our 'kennel license'

Animal Control Laws

1)Over here all dogs have to be registered and wear a special coloured tag, and if seen without them you are given a fine.

2)To own more than one dog you have to get a 'kennel license' which means an Animal Control Officer comes out and examines your property for secure fenced areas, welfare of the animals and temperament etc.

These are really good ways of ensuring a better level of animal control and if a dog strays they can reunite with the owner. Dogs unlicensed are impounded for 7 days, each day a list is put in the local paper, and to get your pet out you have a fine and to get a license for them before they will be released. The down side is that these animals are usually destroyed if not claimed after the 7 days.

Basically the system is very good and the animal control officers helpful and efficient. This is probably why dogs have their own designated play parks. See Simbas blog for all the exciting info about those!!

Well tommorrow is Friday and my housework day, when Paul gets home we are having Fondue followed by a good wallow for hours in the 'fire bath' and a few glasses of Vino! I cannot wait, my aching muscles are pleading with me as i speak now.

Well it is almost 11.30pm and i guess we have to brave going to bed with the Demon Monster, he has been absolutely horrendous all night so can only hope he is tired now.






Bye for now x

A Time For Reflection

Ok are you sitting comfortably as this is a long one, and you will recognise exerts from various emails i have sent around, but stay with this as there are extras added in and it is not the same after all!!

Well I have to say I don’t know where the time goes; I cannot believe I have been here 4 months already! I finally got all my stuff arrive over from the UK so I have a few of my knick knacks around!! Poor Paul though (Double standards are my specialty!!) I made him get rid of so much of his ‘toot’ and then mine arrives, so he innocently asks ‘What is the difference?’ I replied (LOL) that this is mine and that was his! Mine isn’t toot, his was!

Ah and bless him he also had another shock over the xmas break, he saw a photo of himself and identified the fact he has a receding hairline and that his hair style (which hadn’t changed in 35 years) made it look like a 'comb over' LOL, so instead of off to his normal trusty barber he decided to see my 'creative' hair stylist!! LOL. So he is now sporting a very funky 'mussed up' short cropped look. I have created a monster now who is more vain than me, has more funkier clothes than me, and is very fit and trim! Not fair!



Anyway what have I been up to well job hunting (most tedious!!) I remember now how much I hated it before, and believe me it hasn’t changed!!! Only plus point is over here they tend to still do CVs rather than horrible application forms, so a bit easier.

Anyway what else we been up to???

Oh yes I did an Advanced First Aid course last week with the Red Cross as I felt it would be useful to have it for other jobs etc, and I have been doing a Marketing Development Proposal for them so it also allowed me to give some feedback to them on how I felt the course could be improved.

Been working hard finishing all the ‘little niggly’ jobs that need doing around the house and garden. And it is looking really good I have to say. Got Paul to work on a couple of my ‘visions’...............ah yes of course I left you with that little cliffhanger last time didn’t I???

Anyway we finally managed to get the guest room (complete with all Pauls books!!!)finished before Bruce and Ann came to stay.



Our office (note the 'his and hers' respective desks!! LOL)



Oh and my beloved mail box arrived from the UK!



And we bought this well wicked chest that was an old shipping chest from London so it has the port stamp on it, so as you can see now is a lovely ottoman chest affair in the living room, and of course my old faithfull chest arrived so that also is in place in the living room. They are great as we can stash the unsightly stuff like dvds etc in them.

So that leads me nicely onto my 'Visions!!!' yes they sort of became more than just the one!! LOL

Sarah’s Vision 1

Well in all honesty this vision did not appear until our trip to the tip which was to offload all the rubbish we had accumulated during the move. While Paul was doing the ‘mans work’ of unloading the Ute - I have my hands to protect after all!! (And believe me baby soft hands I have not had for many years as a boater and I am enjoying the whole soft hands and good nails experience!!) Anyway to cut a meandering story short I was wandering around all the toot, as one does and there I saw it and it was love at first sight!

A cast iron claw foot bath (without its claw feet mind you)

Visions of a ‘fire bath’ in the courtyard sprung to mind, the vision was unfolding before my eyes and in my brain it was completed and I was already soaking in it under the star lit sky!

Ok back to reality

So I raced and I mean ‘raced’ (I haven’t moved that fast since I was in the senior school athletics team) across to Paul and panted out what I had found, then I sauntered across to the guarder of other peoples rubbish to find out how much of an investment this may prove to be.

Well you had to pick me up off the floor!

$10 (that is about three pounds in the UK)

And so then the fun of trying to get the monster on the back of the Ute began, it took 4 of us, me and the female guarder of the tip to oversee and Paul and some other hapless trash browser to lift it on.

And there she stayed until Bruce and Ann’s last evening when in a blind panic as my dream was disappearing if we couldn’t lift it into the courtyard Bruce and Paul lugged it into its new home.

Prior to Bruce and Ann’s arrival we also needed to find feet for the ‘Vision’ to be complete. So off to the reclamation yard to find some and luckily they had many, but what type did we need that was the question!!

So off Paul trots to get the UTE so we can try out the different types of feet, and bingo! We find some. Can of WD40 later and some strategic filing and grinding, they fitted!

Well this is where I had to actually do some manual labour as the feet were not put on until after Bruce had gone so this meant I had to help Paul to right it, and bloody hell it is heavy!

But now it is happily in its place and we are regularly enjoying a nice hot fire bath of an evening. We have to keep adding loads of cold water as it gets so hot you feel you are being boiled alive!





Sarah’s Vision 2

We had this really ugly bit of the courtyard that needed some serious attention, once upon a time it was obviously a washhouse. Well being as it really was not aesetically pleasing I felt with a little creativity a more attractive option could be achieved.

And so Paul set to work and he has created a masterpiece I have to say. I however had to mow the lawn instead, and I am swaying now towards a Japanese Zen garden as dislike grass intently, especially when you have so much to mow and on stupidly abnormal gradients!

The master at work!



The end result










And so that brings me nicely onto the Demon Monster!

Doesnt he just look so cute!!



Don't be deceived!

The black demon (Merlin the Kitten) is still demonic; we had got to a stage last week where we had to look up for professional help online, we have discovered that

a) This is normal kitten behaviour! – Really? The fact that he is a greater threat to mankind than the average pit-bull terrier is normal behaviour is it?

b) That we were not playing with him enough – pleaseee there is only so many hours in the day and night

c) He needs to play with ‘arms length’ toys that you have on a stick and he can chase and pretend to kill – Fine! If it saves my face being launched at and him attaching himself to my ears whenever I walk past wherever he happens to be lying in wait, then fine that is what I will do

d) If he was still with his litter mates then the rough and tumble play would be more disciplined as he would get his just desserts from them – Ok so this is why they are rehomed at 8 weeks of age is it! Instead we have to go through all this pain!

So this meant a shopping trip to purchase the following

Several ‘arms length toys’ – in case he doesn’t like one or gets bored, or of course shreds it into a million pieces as soon as he is introduced to it. (By the way did I tell you I think he is related to ‘Freddie Kruger’ Nightmare on Elm Street. We did originally think he was from the Omen as there was black bird following us everywhere and the way he studies the fire is scary!!)

Several other ‘killable’ items such as rabbit tails and possum tails

A couple of glittery balls that rattle and such

A couple of cuddly toys about his size that he can play rough and tumble with. His favourite is the Kangaroo (good choice!!) and that gets ‘killed’ several times a day!

Poor Skippy!



Water pistols – essential ‘in bed’ weaponry! Because when he wants blood, he wants blood!! And if the toys and the cuddly toys are not working then it is time to resort to a shot with the water pistol.

The Weapon





So anyway to cut a long story short Paul and I go to bed ‘armed’ on each side of the bed with

An ‘arms length’ toy
A cuddly toy
A water pistol

This is no word of a lie!

And also to add insult to injury, he manages to crawl into bed between us in the night, and ‘watch out flick knives about’ if you try to move him!



Remember i still have claws!!!!



Oh I forgot what joy kittens were!

Ah yes and he is still winding the other cat up huge amounts, and we keep begging her to give him a good beating, but she won’t! He has won his way around Wolf and Simba and is often asleep with them.

Ah yes and you can’t get to eat anything unless you lock him out, then he hollers like anything, thank god we don’t have neighbours!

And this little angel is only 12 weeks old! And I gather it only gets worse until they are around 6 months old!

Deep joy and pleasure!

Moving swiftly onto the boys! Well what can I say about those lazy specimens of canine kind!

We took them for a nice trip to Aramoana it was a calm day and we had the beach to ourselves, but of course the lazy gits could not be bothered to go for a swim!

So off I trotted into the water to coax them in

Then I tried more direct action in the way of pulling Simba in with his ball

And so it went on






Suffice to say Paul had to drive the car home as I was sitting in the passenger seat half naked with only my t-shirt on! Hoping we dont get pulled over by the 'old bill'!

My trainers are still drying

But we have started our own doggy boot camp at home now, and for the present time he seems to enjoy it. This activity ensures Simba has maximum energy expenditure and us minimal. What is this cunning tactic I bet you want to know?

Dead simple, I stand on the top terrace, and Paul on the bottom one and we throw Simbas ball between us and Simba runs back and forth until one of us doesn’t catch it or drops it. Excellent!

Doggy Boot Camp



So what else is new, well I am unsure, ah yes we went to Larnach Castle and to the Penguin Colony a couple of weeks back which was really good.

Heres a pic of us at Larnach and what a fantastic view





And here is a pic of the seals we saw at the penguin colony one is an adult basking the other if you look carefully show some pups playing in a rock pool.




And of course a penguin and their little hides




Apart from all this the weather here is being pretty rotten I have to say, I expect summer will come once I go to work!

Oh and we are surrounded by huge and I mean huge arachnids! Fortunately I gather they dont hurt but man they are big, but they catch the horrible insects so I leave them in peace but you dont want to have one of these mothers in your hair I can tell you.....

Here is one of them that had just caught a blue bottle, and I have to say it was facinating to watch the whole 'packaging and transporting' process. Most companies could learn a lot about logistics from the common spider!



Anyway must go to bed now, oh hang on, message from Simba and the Demon Monster 'they are working on their blogs so check them out tommorrow, as they have a different point of view on things!' Cant see why myself but hey ho!! Oh hang on again Dessie wants you to know she has already published her blog and nobody has bothered looking since she did it yesterday!!

Ok please check out their blogs as it only makes my life more traumatic! take care xx

http://merlinsmovements.blogspot.com

http://simbaandwolfie.blogspot.com

http://dessiesantiblog.blogspot.com






And...... dont have nightmares!!