Curio Bay Wildlife

This weekend, we decided to head down to the Catlins, to Curio Bay to get away to the coast for a bit and take a surfing lesson.  It was a great weekend - Saturday dawned bright and clear with a slight offshore breeze, apparently perfect for learning to surf.  We drove South and set up our tents and then relaxed for a couple of hours waiting for our lesson.

 The lesson was loads of fun.  All 4 of us (Greg, Andrea and our two flatmates Mark and Stu) got up surfing more than once and rode waves in to shore.  3 of us had never surfed before so we were very pleased with our efforts!  Unfortunately we were all having far too much fun to take photos or videos.

At dusk we headed along to the petrified forest to watch the Yellow Eyed Penguins (Hoiho) come in to their nests.  We stood in the cold southerly that had just arrived for 45 minutes and were rewarded with two Penguins hopping their way across the rocks.  The closest they got to us was about 150m away, but we managed to get a few photos:

The following morning we sat down to a lateish breakfast (after the overnight rain cleared):

We were all busily eating when Andrea looked up just as a Hoiho hopped out of the flaxes 4m away behind our tent! We'd been told they weren't normally anywhere near the camp ground but we were entertained for the next half hour as he hopped around having a good look at everything.  Needless to say, we took more photos!

The other residents of the area also obliged, with sea lions and seals showing off in the sun (see photos below) and the Hector's Dolphins passing by a few times.

We finished up the weekend with a road trip back, taking in a few of the sights, and stumbled across rocky outcrops right on low tide, where we managed to gather some Paua that the boys are in the process of turning into patties for dinner.  All said and done, an awesome weekend!

Landscaping

We've been busy over the past few weeks sorting out the garden and landscaping, now that it's finally warm enough to plant things.

The vege garden is a work in progress - the bean rack will be going up this weekend along with the lettuces but the peas, spinach, spring onions and herbs are doing well and the rhubarb is growing like a weed.

We also planted two feijoa trees in the hope that some time in future we won't have to pay $30 a kilo for feijoas! We've been told that Kelvin Heights is the best place in Queenstown to grow feijoas but it's still a bit hit and miss here so fingers crossed!

In the background of this shot is another possible fruit tree that has produced a few white blossoms but we have no idea what it is or if it's actually even a fruit tree so I guess we'll just wait and see!

We also continued the pittisporum hedge around the outside of the property. Again, in 3-4 years time these should be around about the right height for complete privacy. They're fairly hardy though and we have about 30 others so we're pretty confident they will enjoy the conditions.

You might also notice the new rock borders and new paths - the paths were always sort of there but now you can see where they are, and the rock border continues the theme we started up by the road side.

Our other fruit tree is a cherry tree of some kind. Again we're not sure which variety or if it's ornamental or edible, but we'll find out in a few months! If the number of blossoms is anything to go by it should produce plenty of fruit - maybe for us and maybe just for the birds...

More of the rock borders, and some of our new tussocks. The last thing to do in here is to put down bark, which we'll do in a few weeks. The grass is also looking a lot greener than when we moved in - amazing what not driving on it, watering it and feeding it will do..... it was a complete dust bowl when we arrived.

A busy few weeks

Sorry to all that we've been a bit slack with the blogging for the past month or two.

Greg's back at work with a vengeance - extremely busy! And Andrea's been relatively busy too, with trips to Christchurch, Hamilton and Whangarei lately.

Weekends have been taken up in the last month with lots of gardening, rock collecting (for landscaping), tree planting and more! Photos to follow in the next month.

We have also been making the most of the end of the ski season and the beginning of the summer season - last weekend was Coronet Peak closing and we continued the tradition of snowboarding and wakeboarding on the same day. We've even managed to corrupt a few of the neighbours and their kids - it was great to have everyone out on the beach late into the afternoon.

This weekend we continued with more gardening and then went ice skating on Saturday afternoon with some friends. On Sunday morning we headed out to Coronet Peak where we went paragliding for the first time ever. We decided a few years ago that each year for our wedding anniversary we would try and sample one of the many activities Queenstown has to offer and this year it was paragliding. The two videos below are of each of us just after take off from Coronet Peak.