Trip to New Zealand
09 November 2008
The weather is warming up again after a disappointingly dry Winter. It’s likely that there will be severe water restrictions here again this Summer, but at least we have been able to enjoy the fine conditions.
September brings the finals of the major football codes in Australia. We went to the final home game of the Melbourne Storm rugby team with some friends and watched them defeat the South Sydney Rabbitohs (Russell Crowe’s team). Mr Crowe was not in evidence.
A couple of weeks later we went to the Preliminary Final of the AFL football. In Melbourne rugby has a small following and the crowd for the Storm game was about 15,000. The AFL finals are held at the much larger MCG and the crowd was close to 100,000 for the biggest games.
The Bulldogs v Geelong game was held at night to maximize the television audience. The lights also seemed to confuse the seagulls as there were hundreds of them circling inside the stadium.
It’s a year since I wrote that we were starting to look seriously for a place to move to. After spending what seemed like every weekend walking through a succession of houses and apartments, we have finally found a place in Fitzroy and will be moving in a few weeks.
The only photos I have are from the Agent’s advertising so they make it look very shiny and sparse. Once we have moved in there will be some better photos. There is a spare bedroom for visitors to stay in and it is a short walk to the centre of the city. It will also mean that I will be able to start walking to work again instead of driving most days.
Jay has been very busy at work as Krome have released a number of game titles recently. They developed “Force Unleashed” for several platforms, “Clone Wars” for Wii and also “Scene It”. Here our friend Michael is demonstrating his Lightsaber Wii controllers for Force Unleashed on his birthday.
Neither of us enjoys cardio very much at the gym but we ought to do more, so we have joined the Melbourne Argonauts Rowing Club. We have just completed their “Learn to Row” program. It was a bit more challenging for Jay than me as I found it quite familiar after rowing 20 years ago at school.
We did have the unfortunate experience of our quad scull sinking two weeks ago. The wind came up quickly and the lake became so rough that the waves were breaking into the boat so we went down before we could get back to the boathouse. Fortunately it was only about four feet deep where we sank and we managed to tip the water out of the boat and get in again.
In October we went to the Victorian IFBB Bodybuilding Championships. Dennis Wolfe was the guest poser. We were lucky to be seated immediately behind the judges.
This year our friend Eric was not competing in this show as he had moved to Queensland earlier in the year.
Every year in Victoria there is a public holiday on the first Tuesday in November. Locally it is for the Melbourne Cup horse race, but it also coincides with election day in the US. Congratulations to all our American friends on their new President. We took the opportunity to make it a five day weekend by taking Friday and Monday off and went to New Zealand.
We flew to Christchurch and drove around the South half of the South Island. The scenery is dramatically different from anything in Australia as New Zealand is so geologically young and active. We drove to the foot of Mount Cook, the highest peak in the Southern Alps, stopping on the way at Lake Pukaki to take this photo.
The mountain streams and lakes are pale blue because of the ground-up rock in the water. From Mount Cook we drove to Queenstown and visited Milford Sound, a spectacular fjord. We flew by light plane back to Queenstown, seeing some of the scenery used in the Lord of the Rings films which were filmed in the area.
On the West coast we saw the Fox Glacier, one of only a few close to sea-level in this part of the world, and returned to Christchurch via Arthur’s Pass through the Southern Alps again. There are more pictures in the photo album.
Now we just need to move house, get organized for an early Christmas here in Australia with my family and then travel to Los Angeles for Christmas with Jay’s family. We hope to catch up with friends in Los Angeles at New Years.
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September brings the finals of the major football codes in Australia. We went to the final home game of the Melbourne Storm rugby team with some friends and watched them defeat the South Sydney Rabbitohs (Russell Crowe’s team). Mr Crowe was not in evidence.
A couple of weeks later we went to the Preliminary Final of the AFL football. In Melbourne rugby has a small following and the crowd for the Storm game was about 15,000. The AFL finals are held at the much larger MCG and the crowd was close to 100,000 for the biggest games.
The Bulldogs v Geelong game was held at night to maximize the television audience. The lights also seemed to confuse the seagulls as there were hundreds of them circling inside the stadium.
It’s a year since I wrote that we were starting to look seriously for a place to move to. After spending what seemed like every weekend walking through a succession of houses and apartments, we have finally found a place in Fitzroy and will be moving in a few weeks.
The only photos I have are from the Agent’s advertising so they make it look very shiny and sparse. Once we have moved in there will be some better photos. There is a spare bedroom for visitors to stay in and it is a short walk to the centre of the city. It will also mean that I will be able to start walking to work again instead of driving most days.
Jay has been very busy at work as Krome have released a number of game titles recently. They developed “Force Unleashed” for several platforms, “Clone Wars” for Wii and also “Scene It”. Here our friend Michael is demonstrating his Lightsaber Wii controllers for Force Unleashed on his birthday.
Neither of us enjoys cardio very much at the gym but we ought to do more, so we have joined the Melbourne Argonauts Rowing Club. We have just completed their “Learn to Row” program. It was a bit more challenging for Jay than me as I found it quite familiar after rowing 20 years ago at school.
We did have the unfortunate experience of our quad scull sinking two weeks ago. The wind came up quickly and the lake became so rough that the waves were breaking into the boat so we went down before we could get back to the boathouse. Fortunately it was only about four feet deep where we sank and we managed to tip the water out of the boat and get in again.
In October we went to the Victorian IFBB Bodybuilding Championships. Dennis Wolfe was the guest poser. We were lucky to be seated immediately behind the judges.
This year our friend Eric was not competing in this show as he had moved to Queensland earlier in the year.
Every year in Victoria there is a public holiday on the first Tuesday in November. Locally it is for the Melbourne Cup horse race, but it also coincides with election day in the US. Congratulations to all our American friends on their new President. We took the opportunity to make it a five day weekend by taking Friday and Monday off and went to New Zealand.
We flew to Christchurch and drove around the South half of the South Island. The scenery is dramatically different from anything in Australia as New Zealand is so geologically young and active. We drove to the foot of Mount Cook, the highest peak in the Southern Alps, stopping on the way at Lake Pukaki to take this photo.
The mountain streams and lakes are pale blue because of the ground-up rock in the water. From Mount Cook we drove to Queenstown and visited Milford Sound, a spectacular fjord. We flew by light plane back to Queenstown, seeing some of the scenery used in the Lord of the Rings films which were filmed in the area.
On the West coast we saw the Fox Glacier, one of only a few close to sea-level in this part of the world, and returned to Christchurch via Arthur’s Pass through the Southern Alps again. There are more pictures in the photo album.
Now we just need to move house, get organized for an early Christmas here in Australia with my family and then travel to Los Angeles for Christmas with Jay’s family. We hope to catch up with friends in Los Angeles at New Years.
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