Two birthdays were celebrated whilst in NZ. Anna had her eighth while Col was still in Bali. Harry Potter Lego was the big winner on that day. Courtney had the advantage of a term at school before her 11th birthday so she had lots of friends, as well as the cousins about. Christmas was a nice day with Virginia and Robert coming up from Blenhiem on the South Island for the holidays. Breakfast in a park and lunch at Gil & Rosemary's on a very sunny NZ day. After lunch we were entertained by the children for a while, and then of course it was back to the toys.
Just before Christmas Liz and I had a rare weekend away from the kids and went to Auckland to watch the Americas Cup racing. Light winds canceled the racing but we saw lots of the boats sailing around us and generally enjoyed a weekend out on the town. During the weekend we met two couples from boat we knew in Lake Macquarie, Colin & Vicki off the yacht My Girl and Barry & Lyn off Blue Chip. Also we ran into Kathy from the Gizo (Solomon Islands) Dive shop. Kathy's parents had a horse stud just outside of Auckland so we made a date to go and visit and, later on, had a wonderful day catching up with her and Dirk.
After Christmas we went on a bit of holiday to finish off our stay in NZ. This was firstly a short trip east along the coast to Ohope to see some friends Sue and Sean and their kids. As luck would have it we camped in the same park as Liz's brother Chris and family. From there we did a tour of the Coromandel peninsula - a truly stunning part of the world. We undertook this trip in the little Ford laser we bought for $500. We jammed ourselves in with camping gear and had our first ever camping trip with the girls.
The tent and camping gear was lent to us by Colin & Robyn Denize, who I did some work for. They kindly host our web site now.
After the huge job of packing up the accumulations of four months we set off to Auckland for the plane to Sydney. We picked up a rental car and a combination of a late night trip and the new roads out the airport put us on the familiar freeway to Newcastle in no time.
We stayed with my parents at Caves Beach and it was great to see them and all the rest of our family and friends. We had a month there with a lot of the time taken up by tidying up our house we rent out. But we managed to catch up with most of our friends and had some excellent days and evenings.
From here on the photos come from our new digital camera! This means photos will be taken with no regard for developing costs and web pages will be more timely.
On one very special day we caught up with our Solomon Islands cruising friends, Dennis & Barbara Kay, on their new catamaran Araboot. They had bought a Hitchhiker 40 catamaran and hoped to sell their old boat Toobara soon. It was great to go for a sail on Lake Macquarie. On another day we went to ABC radio in Newcastle and recorded an nterview about our travels which was broadcast in NSW on a Sunday morning - all very embarrasing but fun.
All in all our trip back home to NZ & Australia was good. We all know that we have a good life to return to after we finish the 'current project'.
