Hi again,

Sorry it's been so long, have been saving up the holidays to tell you about!

So we have indeed moved house since our last update - we now live in a classic Wellington house; wooden, no insulation, no central heating, no double glazing - i.e. damp and cold! It's like they think they live in Australia.....but in fact they have the climate of the UK. We shouldn't complain, it's a nice house, much bigger than the flat we were in, with outside space and at the end of a quiet street next to a reserve...and less than 20 minutes walk to the city centre!

It's been a typical winter here (apparently we were lucky with last winter and they're usually as wet and cold as we've had this time around!), so sadly we haven't got out walking much lately. A few week ago we did a good, long walk in the Tararua Range (in the snow at the top). In the forest on the way down we saw a morepork (a native NZ owl) - not quite sure what he was doind up and about at 3 in trhe afternoon, but he posed for photos for us!



















Although we haven't been out walking much we've been on a few weekends away skiing with various friends. Some weekends have been more successful than others! We've been stumped by the foul weather on several occasions now (going again this weekend so fingers crossed)!

Having said that, a couple of week ago we went down to the South Island for a week with our friends Mike and Jody and had glorious weather most of the week. We spent 4 nights in Wanaka and 4 nights in Queenstown and managed to ski every day. Much nicer snow than we're used to from skiing in the North Island, great views from the ski fields over the mountains, lakes and valleys...and much nicer weather! Often we were above the clouds in the valley. Had a beautiful drive down through the Southern Alps too, stopped at Lake Tekapo for the popular tourist photos at the Church of the Good Shepherd. Everything was going smoothly until the penultimate day when we had started to get a bit cocky and were trying to do little jumps...only Mike went one step further, tried to do a 180 turn, crash-landed and buggered his back right-royally! Poor Mike! Other than that a very successful week's skiing!









































Then we had 2 days back in Welly before jetting off to Sydney to meet our UK friends Nic and Jeff who had a few days there at the end of the Australian holiday. Had sunny weather there too (must just be something about Wellington!) so had a wonderful time catching up with them and wandering around the city. Realised how un-acclimatised to big cities we are now though - everywhere's so damn busy compared to little Welly! Saw all the classic sights, and were well wined and dined.





























On our last day we got the ferry out to Watson's Bay at the harbour entrance. Complete contrast between the calm beaches in Sydney Harbour, and a 2 minute walk up trhe hill the sheer cliffs overlooking the Pacific. But from the top off the cliffs we saw a whale! Kerry's always on the lookout for them (even when there's no hope of seeing them!) but this time we were in luck! We were actually straining our eyes to try and see if what looked like spouts from their blowholes a long way out to sea were indeed spouts (in hindsight they probably were), and then Ben spotted one (probably a humpback whale - barnacles and all - we think) right below us at the base of the cliffs. The poor thing got startled by an overeager tourist boat speeding up to it with the people screaming, so promptly dived down....to return to the surface about 20 seconds after the boat disappeared! Clever whale! And then he kindly stayed around long enough to get photographic proof!














Kerry started a new job this Monday as an Environmental Scientist at a Consultancy firm in Welly city centre. All seems to be going well so far!