Our annual visit took a little longer than expected this year, but more of that later. We arrived in Auckland on the 18th January after an horrendous flight. In Addis when we had tried to book our flight on Ethiopia Airways was unable to get confirmation from NZ Airways of connecting flights. So, in the end we had to fly from Addis to Johannesburg, wait about 7 hours and then fly on to Singapore, another long wait, before flying on to Auckland. In Singapore we had booked a room in the airport hotel where we were able to have a short sleep, so arrived, while not exactly bushy-tailed, at least bright-eyed.
We spent a couple of days in Auckland meeting with family and friends and just relaxing in their company. It was wonderful to be back in the warmth and summer greenery of NZ after the dust and smog of Addis.
After we had washed the dust of Addis out of hair and clothes we headed north to Whangarei and Franklin Road. It was great to be back in the house at last.
The view out toward the heads at sunset, a view we love
And we were greeted by the familiar harrier coursing over the neighbourhood
We immediately got down to work on the garden, and Ursula decided that this was the year in which we started to take back control of the garden from the flax plants.
The flax plants look like they might take over the garden, so Ursula was cutting them back
Chris’s sister Barbara was visiting from South Africa and was able to come up to Franklin Rd with Mike and Marg and we were able to test drive the wood-fired braai (or barbecue to non-South Africans)
Breaking in the new braai
And what is a beer but an excuse to share a beer with your brother…..
An excellent investment Mike!!
The weather was gorgeous for us, but most of North island was complaining about the drought and the lack of rain and scorching sun. We took advantage of New Zealand’s misfortune by spending time at the beach and enjoying the sunshine and open air.
Barbara and Ursula collecting tua tua for spaghetti vongole
The gorgeous weather meant that we were able to explore more of Northland and when Paul, Britta and son Luke came to visit we discovered a new, for us, of forest, Pukenui Forest. We had a good walk through some excellent forest. It was lovely being in the shadeof the trees on such a hot day.
Britta communing with nature
Lunch by a stream and Luke with his head in the water, it was very hot.
The two of us, Ursula and Chris, made a trip to Whananaki to see the longest footbridge in the southern hemisphere!! One of the tourist highlights of the north!
The full grandeur of Whananaki Footbridge.
And Ursula resting halfway along the footbridge
A highlight of this time was a visit to Tiritiri Matangi Island at the beginning of February. On the trip over I recognised one of the other passengers, Nigel Collar. We had spent a week or so together in 2011 / 12 in Ethiopia together with Claire Spottiswood trying to find Archer’s Lark. (We failed). He was visiting NZ from the UK doing a bit of birding and coincidently was doing a day trip to the island on the same ferry as us.!!!
The ferry at the terminal at Tiritiri Matangi Island
Nigel was only there on a day trip but we stayed overnight in the visitors hut. Fairly comfortable and a well-equipped kitchen. Tiritiri Matangi is one of the islands where all introduced predators have been eradicated and the bird life there has expanded accordingly. On the first day we did a long walk around the island. A lovely walk and the bird life is wonderful. I won’t bore you all with a library of the bird we saw, just a couple of examples.
New Zealand Pigeon
Spotless Crake
and the Red-crowned Parakeet
Overnight the two of us took an early evening walk, soon after dark, about 9 pm in the hope of seeing kiwi. We found the best way was to walk slowly and quietly listening for the sound of a kiwi scratching in the leaves as it foraged. Then stand still and just wait for it to arrive. Success – we saw 3 kiwis using this method, all really close. On two occasions kiwis crossed our path less than a metre from us, and almost bumped into my leg (Chris). The third was foraging alongside the path, so we had three excellent sightings.
On the way back to the mainland we passed this yacht having a great day’s sailing inthe stiffish wind
Back in Franklin Road we attended the annual kiwi release at the Community Centre in Parua Bay. Four kiwis were to be released and the staff gave an excellent introduction to the ecology and behaviour of kiwis. Two of the rangers took kiwis through the crowd of about 300 attendees so that everyone was able to get a close-up view of a kiwi.
Kiwi release day
Before Ursula left New Zealand to return to Addis after all too short a time, we spent a couple of days in Auckland and visited the waterfront and the excellent maritime museum
The swing bridge at the beautiful small boat harbour at the waterfront.
After Ursula left for Addis Ababa I went to work on our kitchen with Bernie. Before she left Ursula and I had laid out the cabinets we had inherited from Marg and Mike. This took a while as we experimented with different layouts and making sure they would fit into the available space in the existing kitchen. In the end it was completed with lots of advice from Bernie.
Before (with what appears to be a salad in my hands)
and after
The kitchen is a great improvement on what we had before, thank you Marg and Mike. It makes the kitchen a joy to work in.
After the kitchen Bernie and I went to work on the sleep-out. We thought there were some rotten fascia boards, but when we got up on the roof we discovered that much of the corrugated iron was pretty rotten as well, so there was much more work than we had anticipated. However, it did not take too long to make the repairs. Thanks to Bernie. I must point out that in both the kitchen and the sleep-out roof I was the unskilled labour working as an assistant to Bernie. So, thank you to Bernie for everything, I couldn’t have done it on my own.
Bernie balancing on the beams after the old iron had been stripped off.
Shortly after we had finished the roof of the sleepout I was supposed to be leaving New Zealand to join Ursula in Ethiopia. However, my airline cancelled my flights 2 days before I was supposed to leave – Covid to blame of course. And the day after I was supposed to leave, New Zealand went into lock-down and I was stuck in New Zealand. Before lockdown went into effect, I drove back from Auckland to Franklin Road to spend the lockdown there.
The chapel in Onerahi exhorting passers-by to take it all very seriously
The day before lock-down was due to come into force I was down at Parua Bay yacht club when a woman standing by her camper van said hello to me. We started chatting and it turned out that she was German on a world tour and now stuck outside the yacht club with only the most basic of facilities available. Her name is Annette, and I invited her to bring her camper and park it on our property. Neither of us expected lockdown to last very long, perhaps a couple of weeks we thought! After a couple of nights in her camper I suggested that Annette use the sleepout and she gratefully took up the offer. It seemed absurd to me that she should be sleeping in her little camper when there was the sleepout standing empty.
As the lockdown dragged on, we did things around the house, like painting all the window frames,
Making the most of lockdown
gardening and mulching. We hacked back at the “triffid” which opened up the gate to the paddock again.
At last we found the gate to the lower paddock.
It was very good to have someone else around I could talk with; lockdown would have been much harder had I been alone. We managed to get out a bit, particularly in the early days and we did the Peach Cove walk to Ocean Beach.
Annette on the way up the Peach Cove walk
and on the way down to Ocean Beach
The beaches were deserted of course and we did manage a couple of walks along Mt. Kauri and Ocean beaches. But as the lockdown became stricter, even these little excursions fell away.
Not a person as far as the eye can see.
Ocean Beach again, looking back, deserted.
However, the time did allow me to practice my baking and I made bread every few days. Also, with the wonderful “huggel” that Mike had built, we were well supplied with vegetables. Which was as well because Annette arrived as a vegetarian - although she left as carnivore. New Zealand meat is not to be denied.
Home baking suddenly became very popular during lockdown and it became quite difficult to find flour at one time. Early on the shops ran out of wholemeal flour.
Eventually lockdown was eased and Annette went on her way to explore New Zealand, although it was looking doubtful if she would ever get to Australia. However, she had made good friends with Bernie during the lockdown, so she will have somewhere to stay should she be stuck in New Zealand for even longer.
I was able to drive down to Auckland and fly out at last, and join Ursula, who had by now been withdrawn from Ethiopia to Switzerland.
Before I left Marg and Mike gave us another sumptuous meal for the family, under the extremely trying circumstances of having no kitchen, so all cooked on the outside barbecue. Thank you so much.
Farewell for another year
And thank you Heather, for your phone call to alert me to the presence of spoonbills at Karaka.
Royal Spoonbills feeding at Karaka
Many, many thanks and lots of love from both of us to all who made a wonderful holiday for us. We don’t know when we will be allowed back, Covid seems like it may never go away, but can New Zealand isolate itself forever. Whenever it is we look forward to seeing everyone again.
Love to all
Chris and Ursula