Private: 23rd November
November 23rd, 2006 - Posted in NZ Search - by Sarah|
First up a message to Frances : Nice to know that you are keeping up with our exploits please can you send us your email address so we can email you directly.
After leaving the metropolis of Gore (brown trout capital of the world and country music and ford falcon capital of New Zealand) we headed north towards the city lights of Oamaru (pop 3561). We resisted the highlight of nightlife in Oamaru during our visit (the penguins coming home from the sea every evening to feed their young) and focused on The Search. We stayed in Oamaru three nights and almost lost track of the number of properties we visited. In the end we only had a couple to add to our long list but ended up with our first shortlist property since removing the old gold mine (Caledonian Creek) from Greymouth. The shortlist entry is a property not far from Waimate near Kelceys bush that as far as we can tell is not on top of old gold mine workings! There is unsealed barely used roads on two sides and a bush surrounded creek on a third side. It is surrounded by beautiful bush clad hills on two sides providing some shelter from the cold south winds and from the predominant westerlies. The bush supports a decent population of birds including bellbirds and at least one Tui, there are also a few pheasants around due to some sort of game bird operation down the road. Apparently there are wild wallabies in the bush around Waimate but at least they would provide some moving target practice once we get a rifle! The pig hunting is supposed to be real good too.
Picture of Kelceys bush.
We decided to move on to Nelson to check out a property that Sarah found on the Internet in one of her innumerable searches of online property advertising. From what I can make out of the muttering and exclamations the websites contain all of the properties but their search engines are pretty diabolical meaning that they cannot narrow down the selection forcing a manual sifting of hundreds on irrelevant properties to weed out the few that seem to meet our requirements. We were going to stay in Hamner springs overnight on the way to Nelson and before we got there the car started making louder and louder grinding noises from the right hand rear wheel.
Just to put it on the record while we’re on the subject here is the saga of the car so far…
1) The rear air shocks sprang a leak in Karamea and we ended up having to drive back over the bluff stopping every 15 minutes to pump them back up with a hand pump.
2) We got 2 new rear wheels (sensible steelies rather than the mags that were on before) in Westport so that we could get to Greymouth for replacement shocks without having to stop every 15 minutes again.
3) In Greymouth we got new shocks put in.
4) In Gore we discovered that the front headlights were no longer working and had to drive back from the fireworks using a combination of side lights and high beam. We replaced the bulbs and got a matching set of original Ford steel wheels from the wreckers along with a new window winder and door opener (yippee!).
5) On the way to Oamaru we discovered that the new rear wheels were scraping over bumps when fully loaded so we dropped it into a paint and panel shop there to have the rear guards pulled out so the wheels fit under them properly.
6) …Then the grinding noise started.
We worked out that it was probably the wheel bearing and stopped off in Rangiora to get a new one but decided that if the car was going to be in the garage for a day that we’d rather spend a day in Hamner Springs so carried on to there for the night. We arrived on Saturday evening and dropped the car off on Monday morning after talking to the local mechanic on Sunday afternoon. He quickly discovered that the wheel bearing we had wasn’t the correct one so had to order another one to be sent overnight. Tuesday dawned bright and clear and ravaged by gale force winds – the strongest for 40 years in the area. We soon discovered that all the roads around Hamner were closed due to trees being blown down and the only road out of town was closed because crossing the 40 metre high bridge across the gorge would have been suicidal. We spent the day in our cabin watching the weather – quite entertaining as you can see below.
Fallen tree right outside our cabin.
They finally got the roads open again around 7pm and the garage had one of the clearance teams bring their spare parts up from wherever the courier had left them once he couldn’t get any further up the road. The car was sorted and ready to be picked up by 10am the next day and we finally moved on to Nelson.
I have managed the wrest the keyboard back from Sarah and would like to provide my list of car events:
1. The air shocks started leaking air in Karamea we replaced the shocks with normal ones and replaced the wheels so they wouldn?t scrape without the extra height. As we could not find the exact original wheels this meant widening the rear wheel arch a few millimetres as well.
2. At some point one of the main beam lights must have blown and the remaining one went in sympathy. We replaced these in Gore.
3. The useless pricks at the garage in Wanganui put the right-hand rear wheel bearing in the wrong way around !? This meant it only lasted only 6500 Km instead of the 100,000 odd Km it should have lasted! This was replaced in Hamner Springs.
As for the door opener and window winder these were still working just a bit irritating so we got replacements for 10 bucks or so (about 3 quid) while in a wreckers. We have done about 7000Km now in about three weeks so not too bad for 30 year old car that has been in storage for seven years?
Back to the story?
We stopped for lunch by the Buller River (at what used to be the Mangles campsite) where we spotted a fairly rare bird that according to our bird book is only found much further south these days.
The New Zealand Yellowhead
We finally made it to Nelson and our real kiwi campsite that cost us $12 a night and had about 6 inches of paint on the toilet block walls from being repainted every year for that last 50. It was a really nice campsite on the riverside set amongst manuka and with a friendly long term population in their house buses. We spend a couple of fruitless days going around the local real estate agents with them trying not to laugh at our budget before giving up and heading out to Richmond where they were a little better at hiding their amusement. While in Richmond we picked up some more info on a block Sarah had spotted on the internet and we had checked out on our way into town. Its about 10mins drive from Tapawera about 300m off the end of the seal towards the Wangapeka track. We reckon this is a really good location as it combines a feeling of remoteness with a city less than a hours drive away and a great climate for growing all of the basic requirements as seen below.
Hops farms just around the corner from the Tapawera/Wangapeka property.
We had a bit of an explore around the area but could not make it all the way to the Wangapeka track end as Sarah would not let me cross this little ford:
Ford on road to Wangapeka track.
The property itself is really good, it has about 4Ha of good flat grazing at the bottom with about 2Ha of elevated terrace from which there are great views of the surrounding hills in the Kahurangi National Park.
Views from the top of the terrace.
We had a little better luck when we moved to Motueka and got some more info about a nice forestry block near Murchison that we had a look at on our way [back] to Westport. We both really loved the block which was mostly steep and had a stream running down the middle of it past the little hut/building site that would be perfect for micro hydro. There were half a dozen terraces above and below the hut that would be great for veggies and chickens and 3Ha (7.5 Acres) of grazing at the bottom of the hill along with 12 Ha of forestry on the sides of the hill. The whole lot was facing west though and checking our compass we reckon it wouldn?t get and sun in the winter till about mid afternoon. No good for growing much in the winter and certainly not much good for getting sunshine into the house to heat it up!
From Westport we headed out to Karamea again (an hour of flat straight road followed by 30mins of steep winding road) had a look at another flattish 6Ha paddock with a streaming running through it. It was really nice (for a flat paddock) with a bit of bush remanent around the stream but at 18m above sea level could well be underwater in about 50 years (or at least threatened by high tides and flooding being on flat land between two major rivers!). We went back to Westport without staying the night and checked out another property at the entrance to the lower Buller gorge that again would be too dark in the winter.
After having a chill out afternoon we headed off to Picton the following day. On the drive over we were stopped by the Blenheim Police, presumably we looked highly suspicious driving such a highly sought after car so far from it?s registered home. Although Sarah reckoned they just could not believe it had a Warrant of Fitness (MOT in the UK) and so stopped us to check. After satisfying themselves that we were the rightful owners of such a fine classic car the police allowed us to carry on our journey to the muttered statement from the passenger seat of ?we?ve got to get another car?.
We camped the night at Picton (actually Waikawa Marina) and found that during the night we had a wee visitor who liked the warmth of our tent so much he stayed the night.
Picture of our night friend.
The next morning we jumped on the ferry to Wellington with the intention of driving up to Northland (north of Auckland) as Sarah has seen some interesting properties up there and we need to satisfy ourselves that we are making the right decision opting for the South Island. Next update will be after we get back from Northland in a week or so as we will be travelling light and fast.
Private: 7th November 2006
November 7th, 2006 - Posted in NZ Search - by Sarah|
Sitting writing this update at Simon (B’s eldest brother) and Miranda’s house in Gore in the middle of the afternoon with the sun shining. Here is the view from where I sit…
The view from Simon & Miranda’s house.
You can’t see them on the photo without zooming in to the nth degree but there are snowy mountains in the distance to cap off the view. I have drawn the blog update straw while Brendhan is downstairs in the garage giving the Capri an oil change.
We ended up spending a week in Greymouth because there were a few properties of interest. Most were flat as a pancake, vertical or completely covered with bush, swamp or both. However, a couple caught our interest – ‘Caledonian Creek’ and ‘Maori Creek’. The first is 5 hectares about 20km up the north side of the Grey Valley and has a view north over the Paparoas (see photo below) and a view south (in very good weather) to Mount Cook. We went up there for the first time on a really clear day and I was blown away by it. It’s at the end of a dead end road with no other property in site and the creek runs down its west side. We walked the boundary and liked what we saw very much but felt that it had to be more than 5 Ha. Sure enough, after being assured by one agent that it was we eventually got hold of the listing agent who confirmed that it was just the northernmost quarter of the area we’d walked that was the 5 Ha for sale – the survey plan we’d been given was for the site prior to subdivision. This was a bit of a blow so we concentrated our efforts elsewhere.
Caledonian Creek looking north.
Maori Creek (see photo below) is roughly due south of Greymouth (on the road that goes to Shantytown for those who have done the West Coast tourist trail). It’s a mixture of bush and clearings and we were shown round by the listing agent who showed us where the boundaries were and where a perfect clearing for the house was.
Maori Creek.
We resolved to go back on our own with the survey plan to walk the boundary. We chose a foul day with rain falling in typical West Coast buckets and very quickly discovered that once again we had been completely mislead about the boundaries of the property. Half of what the agent had shown us, including 3/4 of the lovely clearing was actually on the property next door. The actual property sloped South East and had no clearings at all that we found before we gave up.
Sarah after finding out Maori Creek is a lemon.
After much umming and ahhing we decided to go back and have another look at Caledonian Creek with the actual survey plan. We did this on another day with really heavy rain so we could see how well the land drained and how big the creek got. The upshot was that we still really liked the property and put it into our short list (the first entry). The agent promised to send us more info and we decided to move on towards Gore where we’d arranged to stay with Simon, Miranda, Finn & Max for a few days to catch up.
We stopped over in Wanaka for a night and found some great property but like so many new subdivisions it had protective covenants to stop people like us buying there. We have come across a lot of these such as ‘house must be a minimum of 230 square metres’ (humoungous) or ‘no pigs or chickens’ (given all of these properties are measured in hectares this seems insane – who are they going to bother?).
Then we spent a couple of nights in Te Anau and saw a few more properties (expensive, flat or surrounded by other small blocks and mostly with covenants). We had some lovely weather though and took time to enjoy the scenery and the sunsets (see below).
Te Anau sunset.
We seem to have been spending a lot of time doing non-house-search related things (they were mostly car related) over the last few days including going to Gore fireworks (which didn’t start until about 9:30pm because it wasn’t dark until then). It was very strange going to fireworks in such mild weather! We had a look at a few properties around Gore including one that has made it onto the long list but we have yet to go back to take pictures. It has a view as good as the one from this house.
We received the info about Caledonian Creek too. This included a geotechnical investigation report which gave us some insight into the properties’ history. The creek boundary was mined for alluvial gold at some point in the past. Unfortunately, from our perspective this makes it a bad proposition for building on, as the only site identified as suitable by the report is right next to the road at the south of the property. So our short list is empty once again.
We went as far as Dunedin yesterday and looked at a few more around there, a couple of which have also made it onto the long list. We’re heading off to Oamaru tomorrow and will work our way up the east coast from there.
We had some great news today too – all our belongings are in New Zealand and have been passed by customs and MAF without any need for steam cleaning, fumigation or heat treatment. Yippee!
