Christmas 2009

In a break from the tradition of the past 2 years, Christmas 2009 was spent at home in Queenstown, with Andrea's family visiting.

It was great to catch up with the Jarvis clan via Skype just before lunch and we're really looking forward to seeing them for a very belated Christmas catch up in February. It's great to be able to see everyone "in person" even if it does sometimes take a while to get both our videos working!

It was an interesting experience hosting Christmas, as not only were we hosting the meal but also providing the accommodation. A very full house eventuated, including tents on the back lawn and beds in the landing upstairs.

The full house consisted of Andrea's Mum and Dad, Step-Grandfather John, sister Rachael, her husband Dave, their toddler Jeremy (JJ), aged 18 months, Andrea's brother Stephen and other sister Jen. 9 adults plus a toddler and a cat all up.

Naturally JJ dominated most of the photos as the adults preferred to take photos of him and stay in the background. It was his first Christmas that he could actively participate in and present unwrapping had been mastered before he got to Queenstown (complete with sound effects of "Wowee!") thanks to other family gatherings.

We (together with Jen) bought JJ some skis for Christmas, the type that have velcro bindings and are used with gumboots. Jen is a ski and snowboard instructor up at Snowplanet and has offered lessons as soon as he turns 2. He seemed pretty impressed with the gift (although not really sure what to do with them as yet), and from the looks of this photo won't have too many problems getting into the right position for the giant slalom or maybe even some ski jumping in no time.

Greg unfortunately had to work for much of the time that everyone was here but did manage to take a few days off to head into the bush with Dave. They ended up coming out a day early when the weather packed in and delivered on the Christmas snow we keep hearing so much about. This photo is the day before the snow arrived, looking across at the Mt Earnslaw glacier fields from the top of Sugarloaf pass (1200m above sea level).

And one of the waterfalls on the other side. These were trickles the last time we saw them but there has been a lot of rain for this time of year and apparently water wasn't hard to come by!

And since he's by far the most photogenic of the lot, here are a few more photos of the little guy.

One of a little poser on the stairs

And one in his natural state: running and giggling

We're dreaming of a white Christmas......

We've woken up to snow on the hills three times this week already. Just on the tops, but that still means overnight lows well down in the single digits! Not such a problem for those of us with nice warm beds, but we're a little concerned for Rachael, Dave and Stephen who will all be in tents in our back yard in a week's time. Especially considering there's more snow in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday. We're doing our best guys, but no promises on the weather! Might pay to bring your winter PJs!



On a mostly unrelated note, we put up the Christmas tree the other day...

Sprung!!

"It wasn't me.... it must have been another cat that knocked off that decoration! Besides, playing with Christmas trees is for kittens and I'm FIVE now."

A view worth preserving

Last Saturday (the 28th), I (Andrea) volunteered to join in the effort to rid Ben Lomond of Wilding Pines. "Wilding pines" is the general term given to various pine trees that self-sow on the wind, covering the hills around here and squeezing out all the natives. The worst offenders are the Douglas Fir trees, but the list is quite long and includes pretty much every introduced conifer.

It was a nice day, and the thought was that I wanted to do some exercise anyway, so I may as well meet some new people and do a bit of good at the same time!

In this first photo you can see the two types of forest up on the hill. The bushier stuff in the foreground is native beech forest, with the obviously pointy pines in the distance. It's a bit of a losing battle but the efforts at the moment are on preventing the spread of the pines, rather than trying to rid the hills of all the pines. The dead brown trees in the centre of the picture are the ones felled last year, if you can see those!


This is the sort of countryside I was working on. The downside to being a bit fitter is that the group automatically delegated the steeper bits to me! You can see a few of the Douglas Fir seedlings in the foreground.




And here's a view up towards the summit - that's mostly Beech forest on the left of the photo.

It was a very rewarding day - they estimate that over the weekend about 11 thousand seedlings were removed. I'd believe that easily, I think I removed over 250 in my 5 hours, and there were about 50 volunteers on each of the two days. It was hard work though, and my arm muscles are pleased I only did one day!

No words needed

Here 'Tis!

Up on the ridge! Now you can all understand how it can be a little difficult to firstly spot the deer and secondly get to them to take a clean safe shot. This one was particularly clever - he spotted us in one direction and once we'd gone through the valley a bit further and turned back to look he'd come over the ridge to watch us go. The second we turned around he scampered back over the ridge and down into an inaccessible gully. They're not stupid!

Hunting Trip

We've just got back from a couple of days hunting in an undisclosed location (not wanting to give away our secrets to internet surfers!) and had quite a bit of fun. We saw deer, Chamois, Tahr and LOADS of wild goats. These are not your average North Island Goat, with some of them getting up to 200 lbs with horns a foot long. From our experience the smell increases with weight and size of horns too! They can get quite aggressive and aren't scared of rushing you (if they see you) in an attempt to make you miss your shot. Definitely not for the faint hearted! It was our first "successful" hunting trip together (Greg's shot things by himself or with mates) - all up we shot 6 goats, and Andrea even shot one of them (after stalking it for about 20 mins and creeping over ridges in the long grass). Perfect head shot, not that she's gloating. Not bad for the second ever round she's fired though!

The walk in was quite spectacular, with about half the "track" being a stream. River crossings were more numerous than sections with dry feet. Typically of this area, it's an old gold mining area with relics littered around all over the place. We both kept our eyes down on the river crossings in the hope of finding a nugget but no such luck.

We came across this dam, which had a pipe coming off the side of it to an old shed with a wheel and generator still inside the shed. The gear was all made in Thames (Coromandel) in the 1800s which was quite interesting, due to the fact it weighed literally tonnes, being solid steel and copper. We've got no idea how they got it in there, in the middle of nowhere, with no helicopters or even roads in those days! The poor horses must have been exhausted.

We've decided Greg probably needs to get a camo pack.... you'll see why from the photo below. Deer might be colour blind but we're not so sure about everything else.

And lastly, here's why we're finding it a bit more difficult to get onto the deer. They are still very much up on the tops and haven't started coming down into the valleys yet. This is due to the snow melting and there being a lot of new growth up on the tops. Because the valleys are so steep-sided, the sun isn't getting down into the bottom as much yet so there's actually more fresh grass up high than down low. And in most of the areas we hunt in, getting up to the tops is virtually impossible (due to sheer cliffs) - even if we could shoot one from the valley we'd never find a way up to retrieve the body.

There's a deer in this photo. Good luck to you all in finding it! We'll post a zoomed in photo showing it's location in a couple of days.......

Thyme to stop and smell the flowers

(Andrea will try and restrain herself from further puns. Sorry)

Andrea spent the past 2 days in Dunedin for work. We took heaps of photos last year of the lupins around Queenstown, but through in Central Otago they don't seem to grow as much. The predominant wild flower over there is wild thyme. The Alexandra wild thyme festival starts this coming weekend (it's all about alternative art etc from what we can tell, having never attended) and the fields and hills both sides of Alexandra, through as far as Roxburgh in the south and Gibbston Valley in the northwest are all covered in light purple. It sort of looks like the rocks are slightly tinted with pinky-purple, it's only when you get up close that you realise that it's actually millions of tiny flowers. The hills will be at their best in a week, but here are the photos from today:

This first photo was taken looking across Lake Dunstan just above the Clyde Dam. All of the light greyish shading on the hills is actually wild thyme.

Looking across one of the fields further through the gorge towards Cromwell

And last but not least with some other wild flowers mixed in just before Cromwell - that's the back of the Pisa range (the other side from the Cardrona Valley) with tiny amounts of snow on it in the background, and again Lake Dunstan.

And yes, Andrea dug up a little bit and brought it home to plant in our herb garden. Now we just have to hope that it didn't die over the last hour of the drive home... and that it doesn't take over our whole garden! You should see our Rosemary tree.....