Calm...

My head has been too full to write in the past week... too full I think of the awful tragedy in Christchurch.  We are all glued to the news with the slightly unreal feeling that it really must be unfolding somewhere very far from here.

Normal life goes on for most of us and that vague sense of guilt that goes with it. In our house our heads are very full of the sort of cross-roads-of-life stuff that comes around all too frequently in the lives of serial movers. Do we stay or go or stay a little longer and then go or just never go or should we never have come at all?!  I am channelling calm as you can see by the picture above.

I am also trying to pin down my children in the search for one of my rings that has mysteriously disappeared off a high shelf in the kitchen. Two year olds are not reliable sources. He has sent me rifling through the lego box and into the vegetable drawer of the fridge.

Driving across Auckland's bridge an hour ago I was daydreaming about inventing a diamond detector (so handy) and then saw the flags at half mast overhead.  That brought me right back to the real world.

Image from here

Christchurch...

I write a lot about family, friends and my sense of place on this blog. Today I feel very much a part of New Zealand.

Auckland though is a very long way from Christchurch and it's hard to know just how the people of that  shattered city are dealing with the day ahead let alone how they will deal with the weeks to come.

There are dozens still missing. Here in my city it's all anyone is talking about. A cousin, aunt, uncle, elderly mother, sister or friend whose house is destroyed, who's sleeping in a park, who miraculously left the now collapsed car park fifteen minutes earlier.  The houses destroyed, the injured elderly neighbours, the children whose parents didn't come to pick them up from school.

Our own little school has reminded us of its disaster plan. All the classroom buildings are earthquake proof, the children would move to higher ground in a tsunami. We're urged to have a family plan in case of disaster.

I don't know how the people of Christchurch have carried on since September 4. More than four thousand aftershocks, big and small and now this. How do you leave your child at school? How do you head off to work? How do you tell yourself it will all be alright again one day?

Picture from here

Island life...

We spent the weekend at Kawau Island... a little less than an hour north of Auckland and a thirty minute trip across the water from the mainland. It's a little private patch of paradise, coves lined with jetties that lead up to the baches built up on the hills. Our friend's family has had theirs for thirty years.  

 

The weather was not on our side - it was wet but warm enough. We swam a little, kayaked a little, ate a lot and all in all had a lovely weekend. Life on Kawau (Cow-wow) revolves around the jetty...

This is our two year old 'bombing'  - about a two metre drop off the jetty into the water. 

I did spend a few seconds wondering whether we should let him try it but he popped up out of the water like a cork with a big smile on his face, then jumped again and again shouting with glee. The kid is crazy.

We'll have to go back one day when the sun is shining.

Summer in the Sounds...

My thoughts today are with Queensland. For the families who have already lost so much and the city folk preparing for a pretty tough couple of days. It puts my whining about our wet Queensland holiday well and truly in perspective. Australia is a pretty tough old place to live sometimes.

I thought I'd press on and show you a little patch of Kiwi paradise...

We've just spent a lovely week away.. most of it in the Marlborough Sounds on the tip of New Zealand's South Island. We've returned feeling refreshed and relaxed and as though we've been away for weeks. I think you only ever feel like that when water is involved.

We stayed in Queen Charlotte Sound with friends who have a family bach you can only reach by boat - a privilege for us to be invited to stay. They built their holiday home themselves twenty years ago, digging out the site mostly by hand and then bringing in all the building materials by barge and lugging every piece up a steep winding path. Incredible. Even the sofas we sat on would have been a job and half to haul up there. This is the view from the deck...

Much of the Sounds is inaccessible by road and of course that's what makes it such an incredibly beautiful spot.  Lush thick native bush sweeps down steep mountains straight to the water. Much of the more accessible bays were farmland fifty years ago, now the bush has taken over and in between are baches and boathouses.

We went to visit friends staying a little further out. It's hard to believe that some of this was ever farmland. Their bach is one of only four in the bay and has no power - just gas and solar panels for the lights. A simple delicious lunch, stone skimming, swimming, kayaks and cricket on the shingle beach. A day to remember.

Actually, all in all, a week to remember. 

Oh and it may look warm and inviting but the water is pretty refreshing (as in pretty damn cold) - if it wasn't the place would be overrun.

Mourning...

New Zealand feels quiet today. Flags at half mast, sombre voices on the radio and  tired, grey faces on the television.

Of course for most of us the day is just like yesterday. Getting the kids off to school, wading through a few loads of washing, worrying about the meeting you've done nothing to prepare for, buying Christmas gifts. Auckland city life is a million miles from the mine.

For those coasters, as the West coast community call themselves, it's a completely different sort of day. No miracle rescue, no jubilant scenes just shock and the sort of raw grief that makes you want to look away.

They're mourning for 29 men - their grandfathers, sons and brothers. A very sad day indeed.

Guy Fawkes remembered...

This is a post that should be filled with wonderful photographs. It's not. I forgot to take my camera so just try and picture it in your head: Guy Fawkes night for an Australian who'd quite forgotten the joy of fireworks.

We went to a school fireworks display - first sugar, bouncing castles, face painting, sausages, cake stalls and hordes of children lost and found. When it got dark out came the glow sticks and sparklers. Helping my son with his sparkler I smelt my own childhood.

Fireworks came in May. I know it was May because I went to the local park with our neighbours for cracker night when my mother went off to hospital to have my brother. I was nine.

Perhaps the following year we went to family friends who lived in a big old mansion house with a gracious wooden verandah and huge front lawn. It was divided into flats for the medical staff at the hospital. A bunch of well paid, exuberant young doctors and fireworks? I remember the show going on and on and the next day combing the rambling garden for the paper parachutes that floated down with spent rockets.

I've just looked it up and apparently May 24 was Empire Day established in 1905 in far more patriotic times. We knew it as Cracker Night. Sky rockets, poh-hahs, Roman candles, Catherine wheels.

Fireworks are tightly controlled in Australia  - banned from sale or controlled by permit  in all but the far Northern Territory. They'll catch up and eventually ban them too I suppose.  I always thought that was a good idea and as the mother of two boys who will grow up to be foolhardy young men I should think that even more.

But big stylish expensive New Year's displays are not the same. After sitting with a couple of hundred families sighing in unison at the sight above and watching the smoke drift across the sky as the last spark went out, I felt sad the tradition's been lost.

In New Zealand they've limited the sale period to four days. A firework shopping frenzy. Apparently Wah Lee in the city is THE place to shop.  No doubt people set things on fire, burn themselves and scare cats and dogs into corners.

I only hope that nobody ignored the fire service warning.

"Read and understand the instructions before use.
Read them by torchlight, not a naked flame."

Good advice indeed...

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By the way if your child is one that asks questions then go here - the image is from there too. A lot of their questions answered at the click of a mouse. I love the www.

A quiet green land...

I have been reading and reading and reading this week - not books but about the earthquake. Auckland is a long way from Christchurch and I am a long way from my comfort zone. It's a little hard to process that this quiet, green land also rumbles and roars.

I guess it's a little like bushfires in southern Australia. If you live in or near the bush you've probably been caught up in one or at least know what you should do. Or we thought we knew until Black Saturday.

Perhaps that's how the people of Christchurch are feeling. Also feeling lucky but a little taken by surprise. It wasn't supposed to be them but more likely Wellington or Hawkes Bay. They sound a little over it now but there's no let up. I guess they're finding out now why the aftershocks are called just that.

I have just read this from Christchurch blogger Mike Dickison, the thirteen things he's learned about earthquakes. He's also in today's paper, here. I like his approach. Very Kiwi.

And fellow blogger Rachel from The Far Side of the World has written about what's she's learned too.  Interesting, have a look here.

I have been grilling everyone I meet (subtly though so they don't think I am a nancy-girl Australian) and trying to find out whether I need to be prepared for anything in Auckland. Oh just the ring of fire I am told. All those sweet, green volcanoes we climb with the kids.

The Civil Defence website offers little comfort.... "due to the wide range and severity of potential hazards, volcanoes can cause the biggest loss of life." Lava flows, ballistics and tephra (the stuff that's thrown out the top) and pyroclastic flows, hot clouds of material thrown quickly across land. Mmmm. I am not one to panic or even listen to warnings. I'm a journalist. We give them out, not act on them. We're stupid like that.

Here's my youngest are sitting on Mt Victoria looking across to Rangitoto, the big daddy of our volcanoes. It's not extinct, just dormant, in fact none of them are done really. This greatly excites my five year old but I am buying some batteries for the torch.

One thing perhaps we've all learned is how very lucky we are to live in the first world, not the third. The Christchurch volcano was on a par with Haiti. Life or loss of it, is just not fair.

(First picture from NZ Herald)

A weekend away...

Omaha Beach, on the Matakana coast about an hour north of Auckland... our mid-winter, mid-school holidays long weekend away.

Beautiful sunny weather. Basking in the sun on the deck of our rented bach, reading, playing lego, hunting for crabs in the rockpools, playing football on the sand, chasing seagulls, drinking red and toasting marshmallows on the open fire, grazing at the farmer's market, marvelling at the Kiwi countryside, revelling in the clear, cool air and sleeping, quite a lot of sleeping.

Beautiful isn't it?

Going native...

A barefoot childhood is something Kiwis are proud of. For me bare feet were reserved for the beach - and having no shoes on in a shop or on the road was on a level with eating in the street - an absolute no no. I still furtively bite into an apple if I'm walking in public (I am lying about the apple - it's a chocolate bar or it was until the late New Year resolutions)

Kiwi kids tend to kick off their shoes anywhere. I was a little taken aback to see children walking to and from school barefoot... my kids of course have gone native quickly and the shoes (and jumper) are dumped along with the school bag as as soon as we get to the classroom.

We got this note home from school about this week's cross country race. Along with the usual instructions to bring a drink etc was the sort of advice I've never seen before...

It did make me laugh... like seeing the "no dogs allowed" signs in English pubs. I remember thinking 'well of course no dogs are allowed'. Well, likewise 'of course you wear shoes in a race.' 

Apparently we Australians are more uptight than we'd like to think... My kids are going to get wide flat feet and soles like shoe leather but they look pretty happy about it. 

Day tripping...

I wanted to take you back to Piha - our day trip last Sunday.  It was truly stunning... helped by a gorgeous, sunny and warm May day.

Piha is about a 45 minute drive from Auckland - longer if you like to navigate from a map printed at the last minute from the internet which could have been zoomed in a little more... We did an extended tour of the western suburbs on our way to the Waitakere Ranges.

The west coast is wild, the sand is black and sticks to everything - it apparently gets baking hot underfoot in the summer.

We spent our time on North Piha - there is another smaller beach to the south of the majestic Lion Rock.

We've decided it's the perfect autumn and winter beach for us. Way too wild for swimming with children... the littlest was dunked by a very strong rogue wave and we could see more rips than we could count.

There are lots of great walks to go back to and we'd like to climb the rock without a toddler in tow.

Kiwi books for kids...

Last night our five year old got a new book to add to his kiwi collection... apparently a best seller here. Perky is an orphaned pukeko taken in and cared for by a farmer who looks very Wal Footrot - remember Footrot Flats?

A Pukeko is a purple swamp hen. Pukeko is a much, much nicer name. Perky the Purple Swamp Hen doesn't shout "read me".

If course we've long been fans of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy -  My brother used to read them (he's ten years younger than me so I remember quite a lot about his childhood) and I liked them way back then. 

Oh to write like Lynley Dodd.

With tails in the air 

they trotted on down

past the shops and the park 

to the far end of town.

They sniffed at the smells

and snooped at each door,

And the characters - Bottomley Pots all covered in spots, Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony... it's fabulous!

It did take me a while to realise Hairy hailed from these parts... and now I know that the Dairy you see the corner of as he leaves for his walk is not a farm with loads of cows but a corner store or milk bar. AND  it's pronounced "deery" - rather than dare-ee as we Australians would say. Very confusing for our five year old when we arrived and his first friend kept talking about going to the dairy for a treat. "Mum," he said to me, "what's a deery?" 

Of course nine months on he says deery too.  

Our weekend...

Piha on the wild west coast. Simply stunning on a bright Sunday in May.

I'll tell you more when I have a little time to spare.

Day tripping...

We headed north on Easter Saturday to Matakana.

It's only an hour's drive from Auckland and within ten minutes of leaving home you hit the countryside.

We had lots of eye spy in the car spotting cows and sheep and trees and clouds. Eye spy with a learning- to-read five year old can be a little hit and miss!

First stop Matakana Market it was so crowded we didn't take any pictures... trying to keep pace with an agile toddler in a packed market is a full time job.  It's worth a visit. Great food, classy set-up and lovely shops.

I was also pleased to see a country of just four million people can pack out a small country farmers' market.  I love a good crowd - a legacy of my seven years in London.  I know that would give most people a life-long crowd phobia but it makes me feel like I'm in the right place. (The big exception is Boxing Day sales - loathe them)

We spent the rest of the day at Tawharanui Regional Park which is at the tip of a peninsula on the east coast.  I'm not really up to giving pronunciation tips (as an Australian probably won't ever be) but the "wh" is an F so think Tafa-ran-oo-i...

It's an open sanctuary, fenced to keep predators out (sounds threatening but this is NZ so we're talking dogs and possums not lions and bandits!)

There are lots of amazing birds, lovely views and of course great beaches - the best known is Anchor Bay.

Balls + Beach + Boys = Bliss.