The Harrisons have been in Christchurch for a couple of weeks now and it’s been a tough few weeks all in all, while travelling of course we started to long for a home again but the reality is being on holiday is definitely preferable! It also seemed we had a choice of places to choose from to live but the truth is it’s super hard to find a house to rent for only one year, that is close to the beach, willing to let a family of five stay, cheap enough but with decent schools for the children to attend. (And trust me we really aren’t that fussy!) Our temporary accommodation was the excellent campsite at New South Brighton which sounds bad, working from a tent, but is well set up with trampoline, kitchen, laundry, two play parks and the sea on both sides of the peninsula.
A very pleasant if often windy 11 mile (20km, going to have to adjust to km soon, no-one speaks imperial here!) commute to work from here and thanks to an old friend Heather from Edinburgh who now lives in Christchurch with her family I was back on the bike and enjoying the balmy biking weather. I set out for my first day back at work at Villa Maria College, an all girls catholic school just west of the centre of town, slightly nervous about a) working at such a high achieving school and b) just returning to teaching after eight weeks of basically surfing, boating, running, playing etc. Turns out to be a great place to work, never met such polite motivated students, have been thanked more and asked more questions in two weeks than in the whole of the last year (and I loved Tynecastle and was sad to leave). Time will tell if I can cope with the pressure of excellence but very happy with the students, staff, super fun sports day (like a game of quidditch with six houses all in bright colours and lots of chants and cheering). Nice for me to push myself for a change too, was getting a bit soft with my cushy single classroom, outdoor ed management role at Tynecastle and very small classes. My Higher class of 8 has been replaced with 26 demanding and able students in the equivalent class, average class size here is about 25. Also being in multiple rooms as the newbie makes it tougher but does keep you active at least! Anyway enough about work how’s the rest of the setup going?
Weekends away in Christchurch you have great options with the Southern Alps to the West, Kaikoura and Hamner Springs to the North, and the Banks Peninsula to the South so with more hot weather forecast we started with the latter and camped at the lovely remote campsite at Little Akaloa, this turned out to be the cheapest campsite so far in NZ at only fifteen bucks a night and who needs a shower anyway when the water is tropically warm for evening swims….
We quickly learnt the setup of Banks Peninsula beaches, drive up and over the crater rim (poor car struggling on!) then down endless windy and scarily steep gravel tracks and then finally walk for another 30-40minutes to some beautiful remote beaches. Seals, SUPing through caves and plenty of fun waves for surfing at beautiful Hickory Bay and Raupo Bay and closer to town on the south coast Te Oka and Tumbledown beaches also lovely spots though busier than the east coast ones. Akaroa is a charming little town to grab an icecream, paddle or swim in the harbour and the Giants Museum has some great mosaic gardens to explore…definitely feel a few more trips to the Banks Peninsula will happen this year, great to have this on your doorstep if you tire of the crowds at Sumner and Taylor’s, though have had some great surfing there too. A three day heatwave of 35 degrees was a shock to the system especially cycling to work and trying to sleep in a hot tent in a four season sleeping bag (basically don’t move or breathe!) but thankfully cooler temps returned once the wind swung round to the South, Fiordland is apparently getting battered with wind and rain again, huts on the Routeburn washed out, road to Milford shut and that great Gunn camp in Hollyford sadly possibly destroyed for ever. Never underestimate the power of mother nature on a small isolated island in the South Pacific!
After far too many house visits (which kids usually ruined our chances as best they could by sprinting around to explore and bouncing off the walls despite some serious pep talks) we finally found a really nice house in Mount Pleasant with a great view over the sea and estuary, a good location for commuting to work and being close to the sea, not quite as close as we’d like but a five minute drive to great surf beaches isn’t too shabby. Room with a view comes at a slight cost of a very steep hill to get to the house, five minutes of suffering at the end of the commute home but good fun start to the day! On the day we moved in I took the scenic route home from work over the Port Hills along Summit Road, and remembered exactly why I wanted to return to and live in Christchurch, twenty minutes of eyes on stalks painful uphill up Dyers Pass Road gives you an amazing undulating road snaking along the summits – imagine the Pentlands with a road along the top and rocky outcrops and water on both sides. Not sure I’ll do this commute that often but it’s definitely a classic! Mountain biking and running too looks awesome round these parts, wish our bikes would hurry up and get shipped out, that’s nearly ten weeks ago they were sent away….
The house turns out to have fresh plums, peaches and pears on trees and also a vegetable garden and a gardener to look after it for us, all very civilised, especially with Em and I’s limiting gardening ability. House is currently very large and empty, being a four bedroom with almost no furniture in, pretty convenient with kids new school next door and so nice not to be in a tent anymore! We are now open for business in terms of guests, just remember to bring your own beds with you!!
Mount Pleasant below and our campsite on South Brighton spit behind, not a bad commute all in all if a tad hilly!
Harrison Family Adventures Down Under 