Category: Living in New Zealand
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Honk
My family and I were driving to Miramar a few weeks ago to visit the Weta Workshop. Our journey took us through the centre of Wellington and through the Mount Victoria tunnel. Think the Blackwall Tunnel but half the length. As we passed through the entrance, the bare concrete tunnel walls became illuminated with rows […]
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Lions and tigers and bears…..err nope!
A dear acquaintance of mine was quizzing me about wildlife in New Zealand last week and it occurred to me that perhaps other people might be interested in my answers. So here goes….. Are there any poisonous snakes in New Zealand? No. In fact, there are no snakes in New Zealand at all. Although I […]
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Slips
Steep hillsides + loose soil + earthquakes + torrential rain = slips. Slips (aka landslides) are very common in New Zealand. Roads and houses are built alongside or on top of steep, hilly terrain of soft rock which over time becomes weakened by regular earthquakes and then further destabilised by lengthy periods of heavy rain. […]
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Tornadoes and Hailstones and Rain, oh my!
According to New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), tornadoes are a ‘relatively rare’ occurrence in the country. Well, you could have fooled me. Here in Waikanae Beach, we’ve had 3 tornadoes in 24 hours. And another 2 last week. Granted they’re not the size of the ones you’d find hurtling through […]
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Water
It occurred to me that other day that my kettle looks like it has never been used and yet it has been boiling water several times a day for over 2 months. Why is this unusual to me? Because the insides of UK kettles are usually coated in white limescale which has to be regularly […]
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Coronavirus: an excuse to explore
For two and a half years I managed to avoid the ‘rona in the UK and within a week of being in New Zealand, both my daughter and I caught it. Figures. The rules here dictate that we all had to self-isolate for 7 days so while this meant I couldn’t go into any shops […]
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Our new home
At the moment, we’re living in Waikanae Beach. And it’s lovely. Waikane (pronounced Why-kan-eye for those not familiar with NZ place names) Beach is a small costal township on the Kāpiti Coast, north of Wellington. The name is a Māori word meaning ‘waters’ (wai) of the grey mullet’ (kanae). To get to the capital, you can […]
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New blood in town
I guess it was inevitable. Within 24 hours of landing in New Zealand I was covered in mosquito bites. I have always been sensitive to insect bites, particularly mosquitos and living by the coast as we are at the moment means that the little buggers are everywhere. “Oooh, they just LOVE foreign blood!” chuckled my […]
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Logistics, logistics, logistics….
It turns out, oddly enough, that moving to the other side of the world requires some serious organisational skills. Throw in a global pandemic and a house sale, and it takes the logistics to whole new level of complicated. To start off with, I thought a relocation would be a fairly simple process: Sell house. […]
She'll Be Right 