Sad times indeed reaching the final few months in lovely New Zealand but we weren’t going to go down without a fight rest assured viewers! Kids were all a bit exhausted after the fun South Island road trip in the last holidays, and they found the return to school a bit tiring, so we started with a fairly gentle weekend for Mother’s Day by our standards. A surf with the crowds at Sumner, fun on the old trains and trams at the Heritage Park Night Market and a spin round one of our favourites Bottle Lake Forest, after breakfast in bed for mummy, Zach seemed to enjoy seeing the sights, starting to take an interest in the world around him finally!
After a rare rainy Sunday of Clip n Climb action, I managed to sneak out of work early one day for another surf with mummy and Zach, before watching Ethan enjoying his school cross country round the Heathcote reserve, pretty long run for small kids and Ethan was a bit overdressed so taking his time! Next day was even sunnier so took the long way home over the hills for more #bestcommmuteintheworld sunset selfies and silliness! This time of year is still very pleasant and sunny until the sun sets and the mercury plummets, as we found out watching the Canterbury Crusaders play Fijian Drura at Orangetheory Stadium. We figured you can’t really live in New Zealand and not see a live rugby game and time was running out. I also had very fond memories of seeing the Crusaders play in 2004 complete with knights on horseback and castles with flames shooting out. Someone had told me since the mosque attacks they weren’t allowed to do that anymore, so I got a very pleasant surprise when the horses galloped out (more cowboys than knights now) and the flames roared! Great atmosphere at the stadium and despite having to explain the rules of rugby to the whole family we all had a great night with flags to wave, tries right in front of us, trying to catch balls in the crowd and even a half-time show.
Em tried her hand at Stand Up Paddleboard surfing the next day at South New Brighton which is a welcome break from the crowds of Sumner and Iona got stuck up yet another high tree! Sunday we did some Mountain Bike Orienteering back at Bottle Lake but all agreed we preferred the biking part to the flag hunting! Ethan belatedly picked up his trophy for being the family Triathlon champion and we all got very psyched to see the new Top Gun Maverick film, okay mostly me, I’d spent weeks reading reviews and listening to the soundtrack and was like a kid in the run up to Christmas. The film itself lived up to the hype and was well worth the 36 year wait for a sequel, even Zach seemed to enjoy the experience especially the epic flying scenes on the monster cinema screen.
After a couple of local weekends we were ready for some proper weekends away and started with an old friend Hanmer Springs with even older friends (kidding!) Duncan and Heather and family. A perfect, cheap five bedroom house with cosy log burning stove was an ideal base and we started in style with pizza and beer at Amberley Brewery on the way up. We changed the order slightly with the hot pools first to avoid the crowds and then biking second, but this was a foolish plan as of course the kids were reluctant to go biking in the afternoon. With glorious alpine sunshine there was no way they were having a quiet one though so we headed up over Jacks Pass to try the Homestead Run, 2pm a pretty late start in winter for a 13km mountain loop and we soon ground to a halt in thick mud rather than fast farm tracks we’d hoped for. After much walking and whining we reached the summit though and enjoyed the long gentle downhill racing the sunset back to the car and headed back to the ranch for a slap up bbq dinner.
Sunday we checked out some of the forest trails including the excellent Tombstone which is a great addition with some steep technical rocks and roots to keep you entertained. I took five children round Easyrider and luckily Zach stayed asleep while the mummies had a spin and we finished the weekend with some baked goodness, you -can’t really go wrong with Hanmer’s hot pool and all-weather biking combo and nice to get into the high mountains this time too just before the snow arrives. Two days later was another glorious 20 degree “winter’s” day in town so another trip up Cass Peak on the commute was in order. Got home to find Zach and the girls had been busy baking too, yum yum!
Next up for school cross country was Sara and Iona and both ran really strongly, especially Iona who despite stopping to talk to Ethan at one point managed to get the win, she’s a real natural runner that one (and biker/climber/skier etc!). Em had one final New Zealand tick she really wanted to do – Avalanche Peak in Arthur’s Pass and time was ticking with snow appearing on the hills. Avalanche Peak at 1850m gets plenty throughout the winter, the clue is in the name! Forecast looked good for one day only out of a three day Queen’s Birthday weekend, so we booked into the YHA in Arthur’s Pass which had a perfect family room and by co-incidence was run by an ex-Villa girl which gave lots of banter and threatened price hikes as she was in Ennis house and I am head of McAuley house! We drove up Saturday morning and Em and Zach headed up the steeper Avalanche Peak Track while the kids and I headed up slightly easier Scott’s track. You are soon rewarded with great views across the valley to Punchbowl Falls and we enjoyed playing school on the way up with Maths, English, Science, Te Reo and of course plenty of PE on the steep walk! After lots and lots of snack stops and high quality learning and teaching we finally cleared the bushline and reached a scenic cairn high on the ridge at 1500m which was a logical stopping point. I could see Em coming down the ridge from the summit higher up so opted to swap with her and do a quick run to the summit in the balmy afternoon sunshine. The final ridge was a little exciting and snowy so I was glad to hear Zach and her had turned back just before the exposed section though Em felt sad she hadn’t quite made it to the summit yet had got so close. Without axe and crampons I think she made the right choice, everyone else I met on the summit was equipped with these and it would only take one slip to have a nasty fall. I took many pictures then enjoyed the steep, technical run back down to catch up with the others, what an amazing treat to be up in the hills this late in the year. If we had started earlier in the day and earlier in the year I have no doubt we would have got the whole team to the top but a worthy trip even part way up a mighty mountain and a slap up feed in the Bealey Hotel was well deserved by the whole gang.
The next day started cloudy but bad weather was clearly coming so we wandered up the Bealey Valley to get some good views of Mount Rolleston looming overhead and practised our technical stream crossings. Back to the YHA for a lazy afternoon of cake, movies and board games while the rain bucketed down, Em and Sara enjoyed the walk down the valley back to town which is much better than it looks on the map. I went out for a damp but fun run up to Temple Basin ski resort but had a great tailwind and downhill back to base. Arthur’s Pass is a great place to stay and a proper little mountain town with big peaks in all directions.
Sadly the long weekend was coming to an end all too quickly but we had time to squeeze in another old favourite of Castle Hill for some bouldering on the way back, Zach turned out to be a natural boulderer and the kids did multiple laps of their favourite problems and lots of games of hide and seek with Milo and Torren who happened to be there too. Iona is rapidly becoming our handstand champion and will be better than me in no time, must keep practicing! I had a great session bouldering but couldn’t quite get the classic Beautiful Edges, one move from the top and a long drop to the tiny yellow mat! Excuses, excuses!
Next weekend we all fancied a trip to Akaroa and a night in Becky’s bach again, the weekend started with some head banging in the Port Hills and some great cuddles with Zach. We went to the Giant’s house first which was as magical as ever and the colours looked extra vibrant on a sunny day compared to our last rainy visit.
The afternoon’s activity was the excellent bike trails above town, Em cycled up and we drove up and got the bikes ready for the fun downhill, we all did the windy Bermilicious, Em and Ethan did Blue Steel, Midlife Crisis and Party Line which is an amazing link up with massive jumps everywhere and the girls and I enjoyed Scenic Cruise, then we swapped over and I got a go on the fun stuff. The newest line Cake by the Ocean has some really fun bits too. A really impressive bit of scenic local trail building and it will no doubt become very popular in future years so get out there and beat the rush people! A great finish cruising down into town past the lighthouse for tasty fish and chips and back to the bach for a long soak in the hot tub on the deck under the stars, magic place to stay and we’ve not had a bad trip to Akaroa (or Hanmer or Golden Bay or Wanaka or Fiordland or….sigh, focus Chad focus!)
Sadly Sunday couldn’t quite match Saturday’s magic as I took the team to Magnet Bay for hopefully some last classic point break action but today there was no swell and only howling winds and dust storms. Clearly not an ideal combo for braving the rocky surf, after a quick play on the rope swing we bailed for home stopping only to take some pictures of the cool rainbows on Birdlings Flat beach. Worth a look but probably not worth the big drive over the hills to the Southern Bays.
A forth weekend away in a row beckoned, fatigue maybe starting to set in? Back to Hanmer with Em’s awesome mummy friends, only this time the snow had arrived so maybe, just maybe we could get some skiing in? The access road at Hanmer is normally 4WD only and I’d looked at shuttle prices ($210 for whole family!) and even renting a 4WD but had given up the ghost, only to notice they’d changed their access the day before to 2WD with chains, worth a look? We headed up the steepest, rockiest road we’d ever taken the car and somehow made it to the carpark only to find the Poma wasn’t running so we’d all have to use the dreaded nutcracker lift, yikes! Luckily Ethan got the hang of it pretty quickly and Em and I could tow the girls, poor Em also had to carry Zach too but after a few warm up laps, we managed to get everyone to the top for some great skiing and awesome views. A lovely place to ski and the sledging wasn’t bad either! Back down the scary, steep road and back to the hotpools (definitely better later in the day!) for a nice soak and lots of slides.
Sunday was more local biking and the sculpture trail, a bit greasier than last time but still great fun, only had the four kids on Easy Rider this time so we did a fun variant finish on the North of the road while Em whizzed round the harder stuff. Home for a rest after lots of adventures as everyone was starting to look a bit broken.
Sure enough most of the families from the weekend away came down with various illnesses from covid through to the nasty winter vomiting bug that we ended up with, followed by two weeks of coughing, vomiting children and not much school action. The big shame was we actually had a four day weekend for Mataraki in the middle as I’d managed to wangle a day off work for doing lots of cover, but spent the day on the sofa cuddling sick children instead, doh! Reluctant to admit I was ill I surfed some giant waves at Sumner and probably didn’t help myself much, biking up Mt Pleasant two days later was also a bit of a struggle but there is only so much blue skies, snowy mountains and sunshine I can take from the sofa! Our plans to get some more skiing in before we left sadly had to be changed but we did manage to make it to the school production of High School Muscial 2 which was a great night out and the kids are finally starting to feel themselves again, quite a year of illness with covid as well, hopefully Scotland will bring less germs in our direction! In other exciting news Iona has started losing teeth left, right and centre and now sports some impressive gaps.
Just in time for Ethan’s birthday we all felt a bit more human again and I could enjoy a few final Port Hills sunsets on the commute in amongst slowly packing up the house. We kicked off the birthday weekend with some fun bowling and arcade action at Zone Bowling and even (just!) had time to fit in a couple of laps of the adventure park in the afternoon though the tired girls whined the whole way down which detracted from the last descent somewhat! Sunday was a perfect alpine day so we headed up to Mount Hutt for our second and final day of the ski season. We did our usual blagging to get into the top car park and everyone including baby Zach enjoyed multiple laps from the summit. The lifties after a few runs said we couldn’t take a baby to the top and we said we already had a few times so they let us go up again! I ventured off the back for some off-piste fun off North Peak and found every type of snow imaginable, pockets of packed powder, wind slab and plenty of sheet ice too, not ideal but still fun to be exploring the hills on skis. I came back over South Peak and enjoyed the steep Towers descent which Em also enjoyed as a final NZ ski descent. We headed back to town for some excellent Burgerfuel burgers and the final week of term.
The last week was a fitting end to our time in New Zealand, lots of very kind goodbyes from students and staff, lots of tasty kiwi treats to eat and lots of second thoughts about leaving! We were pretty busy too selling all our furniture and the car and it all came down to the final weekend where in between the dreadful winter weather people came and picked things up and helped clean the place up. Heather was amazing and took all our kids horse riding for the day which helped out loads and we did manage to watch the Matariki fireworks from Kama’s place in between the endless packing and tidying. With a day to go someone finally bought the car, an American family from Dunedin also with 4 kids just arrived in the country. which was a fitting home for our trusty Nissan Serena which had done 50,000km in New Zealand with very little fuss. I finished my time at Villa with a moving speech stressing how much the staff and students meant to me and I sang a few lines of the classic Pepeha by Six60 which definitely summed up my time here, without doubt some of the kindest people I’ve worked with and the head of house has been really enjoyable too, something I hope to continue at some point in the future….
Ko mana toku maunga, Ko Aroha te moana, Ko Whanau toku waka, ko au e tu atu nei…
Mana (spirit) is my mountain and Aroha(love) is my sea, Whanau (family) is my waka (boat) and all of that is me….
Luckily with so much going on it was hard to stop and look at the view one last time and feel emotional about leaving such a lovely place, more a case of all hands on deck and trying to get the boxes packed, house cleaned and holiday luggage down to a manageable amount! Predictably the surf at Sumner while we were packing was as good as I’d ever seen it but the boards are all packed up luckily for the long journey in a boat to Scotland. The kids were still attending fun parties right till the end but the next stop for the mini team is Australia to hunt down some koalas and kangaroos, see you all there….
Harrison Family Adventures Down Under 