Picnic on the Beach

For Valentine's Day Greg decided to surprise Andrea with a picnic breakfast on a little private beach. He got up early, loaded the camping cooker and gas bottle into the boat, along with pots and pans, plates and cutlery, and of course food and coffee! We had poached eggs on toast with coffee (Greg) and Tea (Andrea). Yum yum!

So here are a few photos of the little beach he found:

And one of the sun coming up over the Remarkables - it was dead flat again this morning, so nice for boating.

Photographic Evidence

See! We told you it snowed on the tops last night. 1 degree forecast overnight here tonight. Top photo is Cecil Peak and the bottom photo is looking up at the Remarkables. Both taken from Greg's work. Locals are saying that snow in February is very unusual and is generally a sign of a "good" winter on the way. Usually the first snow of the year isn't until late March or even early April. Some of the trees in Arrowtown have started changing colour already, which is about a month early.

And just quickly...

We had just finished the previous post and sat down with a cup of tea when we looked outside and saw this:

And just had to put it up for the rest of you to see as well!

PS How's that humidity treating you all? Currently 45% humidity and 17 degrees outside. Forecast overnight low tonight of 9. Started off the day at 3 degrees at 7am. If any of you want a decent night's sleep, there's a spare bed or 3 upstairs!

Cat-dog and Orange Moon

We've known for a while that Burton has some dog-like characteristics. Recently he has taken to going for walks with us. Tonight we headed across to the beach, so Burton came too. Apologies for poor photo quality - the only camera we had was on Andrea's phone.

In the news lately they have talked about the haze down here resulting from the fires in Victoria. Although the haze during the day time was hard to capture on camera, the moon wasn't! So here's a photo of the moon on Sunday night.

Queenstown Hill

Well, we said we might find a few more hills to walk up this long weekend. It's a good thing we live in Queenstown, as hills are rather plentiful.

We hadn't yet been up Queenstown Hill so when invited to join Max, Fin and Morgan, we jumped at the chance.

At the top of the "loop track" is a sculpture commissioned for the new Millenium titled "The Basket of Dreams", seen below with the Remarkables in the background. The idea is that you sit in it and make a wish. We sat in it and had Fin take our photo, but the only wish I made was that the photo would turn out ok, and it didn't, so we aren't sure if it works that well....

We had a bite to eat and continued up to "the summit" of Queenstown Hill, which was about 20 minutes straight up from the loop track. A lovely couple out walking offered to take a photo of all of us, so here's a photo of Morgan, Max, Fin, Andrea and Greg. If you can't see Morgan, he's on Max's back!

Moke Lake

On Sunday we decided to go for a walk around Moke Lake, which is about 10 minutes drive from downtown Queenstown. It is a high country lake in a horeshoe shape in the middle of Ben Lomond and Closeburn Stations. Very picturesque in winter!

As we've heard that there are some HUGE brown trout in this lake, Greg decided to take his spinning rod along. We have been to Moke Lake a number of times, and been fishing there a number of times, but to no avail. The closest we have come to catching a trout is a half-hearted version of a "follow in" where a fish follows the lure right in (almost to your feet) but fails to take the lure. For that matter, we don't even know anyone who has personally caught a fish there!

A howling southerly was blowing on Sunday, meaning there were only a few places that were able to be fished without ending up covered in nylon fishing line. So we set off and walked to the southern end of one of the "arms" of the horseshoe. After trudging out through the swamp, Greg started casting. After about 4 casts, this happened:

If you can't tell, this is about a 7 pound brown trout. It fought long and hard, but after 15 minutes Greg won the battle and landed it. This photo was taken on Greg's phone as Andrea forgot to take the camera, and has been downloaded thanks to the card reader John Houltham bought us while he was here - thanks!!

As brown trout aren't particularly good eating, the fish was released back into Moke Lake to fight another day.

We aren't intending on going away this weekend and are going to take it easy. We'll find another hill or two to climb up maybe, but nothing more adventurous than that. We're expecting gale force winds so we probably won't get the boat out. It's been a frustratingly windy summer, but hopefully it will all settle down in another month.

Winter Season passes for skiing and snowboarding go on sale next week - roll on winter!