16 March 2017 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

This morning I paid for a further two weeks accommodation here at this very central caravan park, a spot we have patronised from time to time over the past few years. There is always an element of “coming home” as we are welcomed back by managers Brad and Claire, and the many permanent residents with whom we are acquainted.

The lull before the next round of travel further afield has been rudely interrupted by work; yes, that activity we have mostly avoided with success over the past six or so years. And this is real work, hard physical work, to which we are unaccustomed. Our one remaining rental property demands our attention, however I should be grateful that we were able to shift the squatters out with greater ease than expected. It seems that even squatters are accorded the same rights as legal tenants, which further emphasises that landlords are a hard-done-by lot, despite the bad rap they are given by the media.

We were left with a house-lot of furniture, little of which was collected in the extended period of grace we offered, and rubbish, all of which filled a nine cubic metre jumbo bin. Cigarette burns across the vinyl, years of splattered fat throughout the kitchen, carpet so ridden with spills that it had to be torn up, the garden overgrown with rampant feijoa and grape vines, and a fast growing litter of kittens who had to be re-housed. I could go on and on and on, but will not except to say that my very practical and talented husband has once more stepped up to the plate and as I write this is preparing walls for repainting while the plumber does his preparation for the extensive plumbing fittings we are installing. The floors in the plumbed areas have all had to be torn up and rebuilt, and the walls in part re-gibbed. Yesterday my efforts were limited to assisting with moving the heavy construction stuff up into the house. My strength is abysmal, so poor that I was guilty of causing one sheet of gib to break. I am best left out of all this, although will no doubt be required to move these same sheets into position when The Carpenter, my husband, is ready for them.

We have been on the job for almost three weeks now, although during that taken time out to attend the anticipated wedding which was, as most weddings, just beautiful; the weather gods, the bride’s exceptional organisational skills and the tireless efforts of her team of friends and parents must be given all credit.

Intrepid or crazy tourist campers

The following week saw us head down to the Waikato for my boarding school hostel reunion, and again the weather stayed with us. We stayed at the Classic Car Museum in Hamilton which opens its car park to fully self-contained campers, not just members of the NZMCA. While there is a water tap in a rather obscure spot, the facilities are limited to those within the café, which is obviously closed during the night. We were quite shocked to find a roof camper parked up beside us one morning, with little or no other facilities, then even more shocked to see a young couple and baby emerge from the canvas. To their credit they did go in and spend an inordinate amount of time at the café, more than the use of the bathroom facilities would demand, so one can only presume that their spend made their stay more profitable to the museum than ours was. 

We four were the boarders of A1

Initial reunion at Sonning Hostel, now a carpark

And as for the reunion which I had been both looking forward to and dreading; this turned out to be a wonderful success, all credit to the ‘girls’ who spent so much of their time organising the event. This eclectic group of women, all approaching their mid-sixties with little in common but having lived their childhoods in isolated rural parts that required moving away from home to attend high school, embraced each other with warmth and laughter and there was no need to engage in  quizzes which were organised as awkward-silence-fillers; there was absolutely no silence to fill!  

Personally I attended the luncheon, the river cruise and the dinner, but left the Sunday activities to those others who stayed on, some of whom attended the church where we had once had to walk to in crocodile fashion, dressed immaculately in our Sunday dresses, panama hats, gloves and blazers, then sit before the congregation in the choir stalls where we were least able to escape notice. 

Instead we headed across to the Bay of Plenty to catch up with Larissa and her family, staying at our regular spot at the Waihi Beach RSA. Here again the weather was with us and we took full advantage of the east coast sun. We lunched at the Surf Shack, where our two teenage grandchildren were working. While they slaved away over sink and tables, we enjoyed huge platters of gourmet delight, enough to feed an army which we managed to consume without such help.

Later when the children were free of their weekend work, we all headed out into the Tauranga Harbour in the family’s little motor boat, settling into a secluded little bay. We paddled our legs in the fish filled saltwater while watching young Jackson and his mother take wild rides on a sea-biscuit and admiring India exhibit her growing skill on skiis. We would not be enticed into the water ourselves, even though we had secreted our togs into the bottom of our bags. I was a little tempted but then wondered how I would dry them out in the motorhome; a poor excuse I know.

Sea-biscuiting grandson

The following day with everyone returned to work and school, we headed north once more, now with the trailer which had been holidaying at the beach, and swung by our son’s place in West Auckland to collect our lawnmower, all in readiness for the task ahead of us on the southern edge of Whangarei.

Since then, the North Island has seen a deluge of weather; flooding, slips and other storm damage particularly throughout Northland, the south eastern reaches of Auckland and Coromandel. Fortunately for us and ours, there has been no residual damage. In fact my daughter-in-law sent through photos of the two city grandsons playing in surface road flooding. There it was a novelty, just miles away it was a catastrophe; such is the random nature of weather events. 

For me personally, despite the hard grind tales at the beginning of this post, I have had down time in which to catch up with friends and family, some of the former not seen for some years. The weeks ahead will give me opportunity to fill in the gaps of time and friendship, so long as I apply myself to the priorities: being available to gopher for The Handyman and see that he is fed well and in a timely manner, that his clothes are washed and his slippers warmed; in essence I have only to play the perfect wife.

So you see there has been little news by way of travel adventures to interest anyone but ourselves, however I did think I should check in. We are almost one month from our departure, and with such time pressure, the weeks will fly. We have yet to figure out how we will get ourselves from motorhome storage spot to the international airport, but solutions to this and other minor matters will evolve, as always.