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!
