A beautiful Barrier winter’s day

Another hideous day in paradise

After a stormy night, and warnings on the TV about tornadoes around the Coromandel, we woke to a brilliant Barrier winter’s day. I could have sworn it was summer again – blue skies; clear calm water; lovely T-shirt temperature.

Peter’s brother Andy is over helping us to do some building. Today we changed a door in my workshop, and tomorrow we start work on building two garden chalets for guests to stay in. The kitchen is about to be ripped out, which I am nervous about, because I don’t quite know how I’m going to be able to cook and do dishes with no kitchen. There’s only so many cans of spaghetti one can tolerate.

Peter and Andy are out fishing at the moment. Hopefully that means fresh snapper for breakfast. I see they forgot to take the craypot out.

Speaking of crayfish, we caught our first crayfish the other day. This was eaten very promptly, leaving none for my poor mother who has been constantly demanding a fresh crayfish be sent over to the mainland when she heard we were moving to the island. It’s only taken us a year to learn how to catch one, so hopefully one day mum will get her tasty wish!

Cyril the crayfish has a warm bath

Cyril waits patiently for lunch

Matariki

The other night, we had the pleasure of attending the local Matariki celebrations here at Tryphena on Great Barrier Island. What a fantastic community experience!

Picture a hundred or so locals piled into the local community hall. The children from the island’s three schools had made paper lanterns, and these were suspended from the ceiling of the hall. Each lantern was lit from within, and when the hall lights were turned off, it was quite a spectacle.

A kapa haka group from Kaipara were the special invited guests, and treated the audience to a fantastic performance.

Then all the locals and guests piled outside to a marquee packed with food for a gorgefest and chinwag.

I must now apologise to the citizens of Blenheim, who I dissed last Christmas after I spied their community Christmas Party in the flesh. Although my commentary at the time was jestful, it also undervalued the magnificence and specialness of our local kiwi community spirit. Here we were, ensconced in the Tryphena Hall, and delighted by the effort people had gone to on a cold, dark winter’s night on an island in the middle of nowhere. We were experiencing the local community at it’s best.

Bravo to the Island Arts Trust who organised the event. All for free too. Good show.

Another load to the island

We’re back on Fantasy Island now, having dragged a truckload and boat load of goodies across with us. The truck was loaded to the max with building materials for our winter projects, and boxes of our prized possessions (i.e. crap we’d collected over the years). The boat carried our quad bike, it’s trailer, and a huge statue of Tutenkamen (yes, that’s right, more crap for the garden).

The truck got up our new driveway with ease, so we’ll be back to the mainland in a few weeks time with another truck and a larger trailer to move even more stuff. I reckon that if we continue moving at the rate of a truck a month, we might be fully moved by July 2015!

Perhaps we might need to start parting with some of our prized possessions? Nah! Silly idea!

The unfortunate experiment

Now readers, be warned that you should not try this at home. Also note that this segment contains nudity that might not be appropriate for younger viewers.

On a cold and blustery night at Waiwera recently, we decided to fill the spa pool, and muggins here, seeing we were short of chlorine, opted to use large chlorine tablets designed for swimming pools instead.

By the second night, the whole chlorine tablet had dissolved (not that we’d noticed), and a strange tingling sensation was noted by the bathers.

Later that night, as we emerged from the spa, we noticed the bright red rash all over our bodies, and muggins decided to test the spa water with a dipstick. Well, it seems I was the dipstick. The chlorine levels were well off the chart! We were effectively soaking in Janola!

The next few days were torturous, as one experienced burns and peeling in one’s nether regions. I tell you, one’s nads aren’t designed for peeling!

So the moral of the story is to always follow instructions on packets, and not use your own body to ‘test the waters’. Readers will be relieved to know that we promptly dumped the pool load of water, and after a week of difficulty, all is back to normal down below.

Nothing like a chemical peel to make one feel a little younger!

Winter projects

Yes, as most regular readers will already know, we always like to have a project or two on the go to keep us occupied. This year is no different.

Having completed the extreme makeover at Waiwera, we’re now turning our attention to Great Barrier. The driveway has now been concreted, so that allows us to get lots of ‘big stuff’ up to our house for the more exciting projects.

This winter it’s sheds, garages, renovating the guest apartment, and gutting the kitchen. We’re both now certified TradeMe addicts, having trolled the website for hours purchasing all manner of things from windows, to kitchen benches, to ovens and hobs, to building materials. The demolition yard in Albany is our next favourite place – we now have a truckload of joinery to take to the island for our various sheds and other planned constructions. Later this week we’ll be packing up a furniture truck with building materials and heading across to the island with Peter’s brother who is going to help us smash holes in walls etc. Then we’ll have to rush back to the mainland in a fortnight with another truck to uplift a stunning island kitchen bench (complete with all the cupboards) that we found on TradeMe. We do love shopping!

So that’s our winter mapped out really – lots of shopping for materials, building, renovating and moving things from one island to another – something we’ve come to make a bit of a habit out of!

Kawau revisited

One of the many tasks we’ve been putting off for ages has been the need to pop over to Kawau to pick up all our stuff we’d left there. When we sold our Kawau house, we sold it fully furnished, but we still managed to fill an entire garage over there with personal effects and other stuff that didn’t sell with the house.

So after a blustery week of rain and wind, we hired a truck, trailer, and barge, and departed from Sandspit for Kawau early on Friday morning. Fortunately the weather was on our side, and a brilliant sunny day emerged to compliment a lovely calm sea.

It was a lovely trip across Kawau Bay to the island, and a nice trip down memory lane as we sailed into Schoolhouse Bay. We said hello to Norm and Jenny who live next to the wharf, and drove the truck up to the garage where luckily one of the many loose keys I’d brought along for the ride happened to fit the lock to the garage (not bad considering 18 months had passed since we last used the key).

We opened the garage with some apprehension – we couldn’t quite remember what we’d left behind, and we didn’t know if the effort involved in recovering our island bounty would actually be worth it. Fortunately the trip was worth it – all those long forgotten ‘treasures’ now recovered and loaded into the truck ready for the trip back to Waiwera.

View from Schoolhouse Bay, Kawau Island

The trip to Kawau was lovely, but it brought with it some closure and recognition that we had moved on to newer pastures (all 13 acres of newer bush clad pasture on Great Barrier Island). We have some excellent memories of great times spent on Kawau Island, and collecting our things from the island helped to provide ’souveniers’ that would help to cement those memories in our ageing, aluminium pot soaked brains.  

The trip home (fully loaded)

Once back at Waiwera, the unloading began, and boxes were opened to check contents ready for repacking for the ‘Barrier’. It was like Christmas at our house – goodies everywhere including spare pairs of underwear and slippers! Peter discovered yet more model boats to add to his museum that we are shortly going to build on the Barrier, and I found yet another Kenwood mixer to add to my collection (I now have 3 mixers, 2 blenders, 2 mincers, 6 bowls, a shredder, and a truckload of mixing attachments).

Clearly, despite slowing down and abandoning the ‘rat race’, our obessive compulsive collecting behaviours haven’t ceased, and we both still struggle to part with any of our treasures in case we might need them sometime in the future. We managed to sort through one of the sheds at Waiwera the other day and discovered amoungst other things, 3 forgotten deer heads, boxes and boxes of car models (again for Peter’s museum), and 24 empty antique suitcases.

Someone should notify the men in white coats now. Meanwhile, we’ll continue planning the development of new sheds and garages for Great Barrier so that we have somewhere to store all this cr#p in!

Broken tooth

I had one of those nasty moments last week when I felt a back tooth suddenly go crunch while eating lunch, and then I found myself spitting out parts of my tooth (or a filling, or a crown – who can really tell when you’re stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the impending bolt of lightning to strike one in the jaw now that a nerve has probably been exposed somewhere!).

A quick call to the local island dentist (yes, we do have one) revealed that they weren’t going to be on the island for a fortnight, so we hurredly booked a flight to the mainland for a session of emergency dentistry.

Unfortunately the weather decided to intervene, and although my flight got off the ground, it then had to turn back and land again when a nasty set of thunderstorms blocked the way between the island and the mainland. Once the storms cleared (two hours later), we were off again.

So I managed to book into see my mainland dentist Angela just in the nick of time ahead of the weekend (the flight arrived in Auckland at midday on Friday). Angela is a very thorough dentist (www.wellness-dentistry.com). She is the only dentist whose chair I have fallen asleep in, and that was during a root canal of all things!).

Much to my surprise, I found that I hadn’t broken a crown (like I had imagined). Much to Angela’s disgust, she found that my tooth had collapsed because of a nasty cavity that was about half a teaspoon of sugar away from a full root canal. Angela’s therapeutic hand (and drill) prized away the months of decay that I had neglected to manage, and a dentine filling and enamel reconstruction later, I was on my way. Fortunately I think I may have just scraped through not needing a root canal.

Angela is a minimal intervention dentist. She tries to educate her patients so that they can take steps to prevent the need for intensive dental work. This patient, however, had been naughty and hadn’t kept up with the maintenance, but Angela now has me back on track and armed with a flotilla of dental brushes, probes and flossing devices. If you want to have an excellent understanding of the state of your teeth and gums, as well as a game plan that will prevent you needing to spend thousands on dental work, then I’d thoroughly recommend a trip to Angela.

Right, I must be off now to floss!

Save the pigs

Pigs taste good!

Even this little fellow agrees.

So perhaps we need to look at renaming the “swine ‘flu” to something that doesn’t result in the poor piggies being victimised (Egypt has just annouced that they will be culling their entire pig populations despite clinical evidence that this is a human-to-human problem).

So let’s all start by calling this H1N1 beastie the “Mexican ‘flu” in lines with its predecessor the “Spanish ‘flu”. Just a thort!

Health warning: Do cook pork meat before eating (would someone please tell the little chap in the photo this).

Walking with dolphins

It’s a beautiful day here at the Barrier. It seems that I’ve now bonded with a different sort of local – a pod of dolphins.

While on my morning powerwalk along Puriri Bay Road, the dolphins swam alongside. I noticed they also followed me on my walk to the Post Office and shops the other day. Perhaps they are curious as to why this bizarre human is huffing and puffing along the road instead of hauling themselves along with the aid of an internal combustion engine.

There is a dolphin in this photo somewhere

Shoot the hopeless photographer!

Back on Fantasy Island

Da plane, da plane…

Well actually we came over by boat this time. The trusty Landrover had been over on the mainland getting a new radiator while we ran around and attended school reunions and weddings. So we loaded the Landrover up with more of our precious belongings, and set the alarm for a 4am start so that we could be at the ferry by 5am.

Alas, the weather was not on our side, and we arrived at 5am to find the ferry sailing had been cancelled. So it was off home to do the whole thing again the next day.

By Wednesday, the sea has calmed down somewhat, so we braved another 4am start and headed for the island. Not too rough, except for the bit out in the Colville Channel (3 metre swells), and we got to watch ”Batman – The Dark Knight” down in the movie lounge on the ferry. Great movie.

The past few days on Fantasy Island have been hectic. We’ve been to two dinner parties, and hosted a lunch. I’ve been working through our tax stuff in a frenzy (the penalty reminder letter from the Taxman has helped with providing motivation), and Peter has been fixing the septic tank pump (yay). I didn’t get to escape the stinky situation though – I was called down to repair a broken wire in the septic pump, while Peter pulled apart and then reassembled the bits. Yes, we would have called people in, but the plumber was busy till next week, and the septic tank truck man is off-island chasing some new romantic aquaintance. So we’d literally been in the sh#t if we’d waited for the professionals. Accordingly, we now have a whole new understanding of how our poo management system works!

Part of the newly concreted driveway

The new driveway is great. The trusty Landrover got to make the inaugural trip up the concrete, and now various nervous friends (nervous because of the steepness of our previous muddy drive) have scaled up the concrete in their cars and have given the new driveway their blessing. The problem is that we have only sealed half the driveway – the worst half. Now I want to seal the rest of it because I’m so impressed with the difference sealing has made – but that can be a job for later in the year (or maybe next year). There are too many other priorites that must be sorted first. Pleasing the Taxman is first on the list! Blah.

Adam’s new cellphone number

Many previous readers will be aware of the problems I have been having with my cellphone connection (nine months of frustration now). Well, I’m making the most of now (ugh) and moving back to prepay until I can find something that works better.

My new interim number (which is an old prepay card we had lying around) is 021 117 8768.

School Reunion

These are two words that can strike fear into the hearts of even the strongest pillars of our community. The dreaded School Reunion brings with it the compulsory programme of exercise, liposuction, cosmetic surgery, and hair implants; along with a need to stretch out the CV and purchase a few honours and medals from Weetbix packets. One needs to look their best in front of the impending panel of one’s fomer peers. So much to fabricate, and so little time.

Massey High School

I went to Massey High School as a kid, and upon seeing the reunion advertised, dragged very reluctant friends Brian and Wendy (also former students) along with me to the Easter 40th Jubilee Reunion. Brian and Wendy invented many excuses as to why they wouldn’t be able to go, but perseverance paid off, and the happy trio (well, some of us were happy - the other two were regretting the favours that had now been called in) bundled ourselves off to the powhiri and school tour (we were too cheap to sign up for the dinner, and it had been downgraded from being held at the Trusts Stadium to instead being held in the school hall).

Sadly the reunion was a disappointment for us. It seems everyone else from our year suffered the same pre-reunion nerves and had failed to show. There was only one other person there from our year, and to add insult to injury, he hadn’t changed a bit in 20 years - same size, same looks, and still had lots of hair. I tell you, this was very unfair! Mother nature hadn’t been so kind to me, Brian and Wendy (although Brian and Wendy will disagree vehemently with this statement).

We endured a rather long powhiri where we couldn’t hear anyone because all the presenters had a fear of using a microphone, then had morning tea (where they ran out of cups so I couldn’t get a cup of tea), then ambled around a very different looking school. The roll is now 50% larger than when we attended, and there is a fantastic new science wing, fashion design classrooms, and workshops. There is also a new gymnasium, and a tennis centre. The infamous H block buildings had been tarted up, as had many of the other buildings. Clearly we all had it very hard when we were kids – nowadays school looks like a picnic. And the school uniforms are so much smarter.

Overall, it was great to revisit the school, but sad that so few people from our year had turned up. It seems we’re still too young for reunions, as everyone there was older (they didn’t even bother taking photographs for those of us who were students from the 1980s onwards). Perhaps having it over Easter also had an impact. Almost a waste of liposuction really. No-one to impress.   

Now we have to wait another 10 years before the next reunion. That’s 10 more years of keeping this body in it’s athletic, sculptured state ready to impress at the next gathering of one’s school peers. That’s if anyone actually shows up next time. Blah.

Happy Easter everyone

Barrier Gateway Toll Road completed

PRESS RELEASE:

The new Great Barrier Gateway toll road has been completed and will be opened on 20 April 2009 to vehicular traffic. Currently the newly paved road is only open to pedestrians.

The 50 metre concreted driveway replaces the former 4WD only ‘goat track’ that led to Adam and Peter’s house in Tryphena. The former road was deemed too dangerous for regular traffic after numerous incidents and arguments had occurred over the past year since the lads moved to the island. The most recent incident involved a 4WD Landrover with trailer jack-knifing across the bottom of the drive. “There was much drama and language at the time” says affected road user Adam.

The new road has been in the planning phase for the past twelve months, and construction started three weeks ago. A digger was brought to the island to assist in flattening humps and straightening bends, and finally after several weeks of preparation, including laying of boxing and mesh, concrete was poured. It took 11 hours to lay and screed the 15 cubic metres of concrete required, exceeding all initial scheduling and funding estimates (the lads have never laid concrete before!). However the final result is well worth the investment as future road users will discover.

Turning the first sod (yes, that's no way to speak about Peter who is driving the digger)

 

Using the ‘highly successful’ Northern Gateway model, the new driveway will recover costs using tolls. This public/private partnership has resulted in the road being planned, built, and opened far ahead of the usual schedule (although we’re not really expecting any public funding somehow!).

Tolls are payable as follows:

Cars – $75.00 each way

Motorcycles – $20.00 each way

Tax inspectors – $25,000.00 each way

All other government officials – $18,000.00 each way

And just like the new Northern Gateway, it is expected that there will be many upaid tolls at the end of each month. Only tax inspectors and government officials will be fined and prosecuted for failing to pay their tolls. But unlike the Northern Gateway, cash and cheques will be accepted!

Prepped and ready for concrete

 

An ingenious way of moving concrete uphill

 

Unfortunately there is currently only enough funding in the roading budget to have sealed only half the driveway, but luckily the rest of the drive is not as steep or as difficult.

Roading planners were surprised the other day when a group of unusual and uninvited pedestrians began using the driveway ahead of the scheduled pedestrian opening. It seems that a stray flock of sheep from a neighbouring farm decided to ingore the “No Entry” signage and rope cordon, and became the official first users of the newly paved road. Fortunately most of the concrete had set, although collections of hoof marks are clearly visible at many points along the new road. The road planners used mint sauce and roasting pans to ward off the uninvited road users, along with threats that the said users might be invited to the official opening party on April 20th - as the main course!

Stay tuned for more updates on the opening of this exciting island project.

Walking to work

Just over a year ago, I used to spend between 45 minutes and an hour or more fighting my way through traffic down Auckland’s Northern and Southern Motorways in order to get to work each day. Then it was the same struggle back through peak traffic home again.

So much time was being wasted sitting in traffic. Sure, it was our choice to live so far out of the city, but the drive home away into the countryside certainly bought a level of sanity with it too.

Now I spend the hour I used to spend waiting in traffic doing something far more constructive. I get up each day and go for a walk for an hour.

The traffic here on the Barrier is terrible.

Its just been a case of swapping one concrete jungle for another.

The great thing is that I still get to use the travelling time to return cellphone calls (even if breathless) and listen to Morning Report on the radio (yes, I admit I do sometimes listen to National Radio).

The only difference is the method of conveyance. The vehicle is nearly forty years old, sags in many places, has worn tyres, is slow to start in the mornings, and is a bit too overweight for its engine size.

Between the walking, and the lugging of stuff up our steep driveway as we begin concreting, I’m hoping the vehicle stats will change somewhat. Let’s hope its just superficial bodywork that occurs rather than complete engine failure!