Fishing update

Greg's very pleased as he's just had an email requesting a high resolution copy of the photo of his ugly old brown trout to feature as the "cover fish" for the Wakatipu Angler's club magazine. Apparently no one has been doing very well with the fishing lately, the fish have been "off the bite". Unfortunately they forgot to tell Greg.

More on 4WDing

Neil and Glenys have made a video of the trip from Saturday. It's a pretty big file as it's High Definition video, so probably not recommended if you only have dial up.... or if your data allowance is running low!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux2JC3xjV4I

4WDing and Fishing

We weren't sure what to do this weekend, whether to go hunting or fishing or tramping... or nothing-ing. Then we received a phone call late Friday evening from Greg's friend Rex, who lives about 100m up the road (Greg often goes rabbit shooting with Rex). Rex is 73 and is a mostly retired market gardener who grew up in Invercargill and now lives his life the way Greg would like to.... fishing and hunting and nothing-ing.

Rex was phoning to invite us out 4WDing with the Shotover 4WD club, of which Rex is a member. They go out on "club runs" every few weeks where they head into a different 4WD area near to here, and this week they were heading into the upper Mataura. We weren't sure if we'd know anyone, but we turned up at the meeting point and knew over half the people there, including Neil and Glenys from across the road.

We had a brilliant day, and were passengers in a number of different trucks throughout the day - everyone wanted us to jump in with them so that they could show off their trucks. We're trying hard to not get hooked as it seems to be an expensive hobby... but too late. We're already devising plans to either do up the Bighorn (snorkel, suspension, tow hooks, winch and mud tyres) or sell it and buy something more suitable.

It was more tiring than we thought it would be - we left home at 9:30am and bumped and jiggled our way through the next 10 hours, not getting home again until nearly 8pm, but it was soooo much fun.

The trucks lined up at the top of one of the two ridges we went up:

Stopping for a rest:

The view from the top of the ridge. In the foreground you can see the track we came up, and yes, we started off right down the bottom of the valley!

Cleaning the truck after one of the mud holes... it's much more fun to use fords than hoses.

This morning we awoke to find the lake mirror-flat and decided to not waste it, so we headed out fishing for a few hours. We did pretty well, coming up with 8 fish in under 2 hours. And no, we won't be telling anyone where we went!

Here's a photo of Greg's knarly old brown trout, which we figured to be about 6 pound. Check out the hump on it's head! Just like old snapper, they get bigger and uglier as they get older.

Just a lazy Friday night...

Vege Garden!

For Andrea's birthday in September, she received some Mitre 10 vouchers from both sets of parents and some of the value was put towards our new Vege Patch. The remainder was spent on a baking blow torch which Andrea uses to caramelise sugar on Creme Brulee - mainly for Greg's benefit!

The vege patch has exceeded expectations - since planting in September we've already started harvesting the baby spinach and the spring onions for salads (at least every second night for the past 3 weeks so far) and the silverbeet and peas are well on their way. The parsley and chives are thriving alongside the Rosemary Tree that already existed (it's a lot bigger than a bush, even after Greg hacked off 2/3 of it's branches!), and the beans were planted a couple of weeks ago (they need warmer soil so can't be planted until late October when the frosts have finished) so we're hoping they'll be ready to eat in late January.

This is the first year that we've ever had a vege patch, so it's a bit trial and error, but we're pleased with the results so far!

The vege patch looking from the clothes line:

And a week later... peas!!

Boulder-dash!

Sorry it's been a wee while since we blogged. You all know what the lead up to Christmas is like for everyone!

In the past few weeks we've been up to a lot:

2 weeks ago Andrea went up to Auckland for the weekend whilst Dave (her brother in law) came down here to go hunting with Greg. Andrea had a great weekend with her family, including taking 2 year old Jeremy to the zoo and a family dinner, and Greg and Dave had a great weekend too. They went down to Haast for a couple of days and although they got close to deer, didn't manage to shoot any. However they spent a day culling goats a bit closer to home and had a ball.

We've also had the most recent street "do" here and had a fantastic evening with the neighbours - we had a cocktail night with fancy canapes and everyone is still talking about it... and when we'll do it again. We had a good turn out with about 30 guests - not bad for a street with only 12 houses in it!

Greg and Chris in the kitchen preparing Martinis (Shaken, not stirred):

Andrea and some of the other "girls" (enjoying our night out of the kitchen!):

This weekend we went away for a bit of a hunt/tramp between Makarora and Haast. The idea was to follow a stream up a bit, but it turned out to be a bit more challenging than we'd thought with some of the boulders the size of trucks. In fact it was often easier to bush bash than walk up the stream, and although it was hard work, we had a lot of fun. Reminding ourselves regularly as we hauled ourselves over yet another large boulder that there are tourists in Queenstown paying good money to go "bouldering" (the sport of climbing large boulders without harnesses - although they are surrounded by mattresses... we were surrounded by... large boulders). Although we didn't shoot anything, we had a deer run across about 10 feet in front of us, far too quickly for us to even think about taking a safe shot. Very frustrating! Especially after a 4 hour climb.

We took a few photos so that you could all appreciate the beauty without the hard work.

Some of the lower part of the stream:

Also the lower stream:

Once we got up a bit higher the stream got decidedly calmer (and clearer):

Although this only looks like a stream, you had to be careful as the water was so exceptionally clear, it only looked knee deep but some parts were over your head.

We got back out relatively unscathed, with the exception of a few decent bruises and a mildly scratched cornea on Andrea's eye, which ended up with a trip to A&E this morning (don't worry, she's fine).

In other news, Andrea has a new job which she'll be starting in early December. Greg's work is still going well, but he's very busy and looking forward to Christmas when he'll get a long break and a chance to catch up with his family who are all coming to stay with us.

Roll on Christmas!