Central Otago Holiday 2012

Old Cromwell Historic Town is a darling area to visit in Central Otago, about a 45-minute drive from Queenstown, or Arrow Town, or Wanaka. It is considered to be the most inland town in New Zealand.

Classified as semi-desert, with improbable but possible temperatures ranging from – 26 ˚C to 38˚C, we had to pinch ourselves that we weren’t sitting drinking cappuccinos at the old Mudhouse in Barrydale (in the Little Karoo in South Africa).

Just like in Barrydale, many of the buildings in the Old Town are built from grey slate mined in the neighbouring hills and mountains.

The Scales Don't Lie!

Holy moly! Carbon footprint calculators are about as enthralling to use as my bathroom scale. The latest one I tried was last week at my daughter’s school in the Tread Lightly Caravan. The calculator predicted that, despite my worm farm, weekly organic box of fruit and veggies, home-grown veggies, four chooks and low, shivering-in-winter electricity bill, we will need 3.8 earths to sustain our current lifestyle. That’s not ONE earth, but nearly FOUR!

The main culprits? Apparently our wood-burner didn’t fare so well. Eating take-aways even occasionally doesn’t cut it if we are throwing away four to eight plastic containers at the same time. And driving a petrol-driven car for two hours each week makes us bigger carbon gluttons than the average person in the UK. Yikes.

I did try cheating a bit by re-doing the calculations about eight times, tweaking my answers to drive for only twenty minutes a week and only fly in an aeroplane for two hours, but to no avail. One earth won’t do for us.

So here’s what we are trying for starters:

1.       To scoot home from school on scooters instead of driving. That’s 25 km of exercise per week sorted.

2.       To use the train to visit the city.

3.       Turning off plugs at the wall, for all appliances.

4.       Using cold water washes in the washing machine.

5.       Absolutely, absolutely stick to our policy of only buying second-hand for all household items. Like this cute designer jacket I picked up at Savemart, my favourite clothing store in the world.

The best Carbon Footprint calculators:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/oct/20/guardian-quick-carbon-calculator

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/the-15-best-carbon-calculators

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/19/carbon.web

A great article on reducing household waste:

10 Tips for a Zero-Waste Household

A year’s worth of solid waste from Bea Johnson’s home fits in a quart-sized jar. Here's how you can reduce yours.

Two years in New Zealand, and you always take the weather with you!

This post is long overdue and to be honest, I’d almost forgotten I even had a blog. This is partly because life is so busy and full that I’ve stopped noting the significant, novel things about New Zealand, and just enjoy them in the moment. The other reason is that I was one of the unlucky Titirangi residents to catch the whooping cough doing the rounds in January 2011.

 The hills of Titirangi

Instead of sipping a glass of champagne to celebrate our milestone of two years in New Zealand on 24 January, I was swigging cough medicine. A lot of it.

And let me tell you, whooping cough isn’t called the 100-day cough for nothing. I didn’t just cough, but felt as though I had a fever for four months. Looking after two young children, trying to work and keep the house clean had to fit around long naps, or just periods of exhausted lying about for weeks on end.

Being a hard worker, this was an interesting experience of being forced, for the first time in my life, to stop the treadmill and convalesce. It's been a time for deep reflection. The result? I have walked away from the past few months with a new, exhilarating question playing around in my head: ‘What am I waiting for?’ 

Heading for our second Christmas

The year is galloping to a close with school galas, school outings, holiday plans and general end-of-year mayhem. It will be our second Christmas in New Zealand - part of me can't believe how the time has raced past.

Reflecting on the past 20 months is a painless task: as new immigrants we have been blessed with the softest landing possible - a wonderful group of friends, a small and close community, successful jobs and very happy kids. We love this country. We cannot imagine calling any other place home.



Lunch with friends at a waterfall near Karekare near where we live.

K and I watched a series of brilliant documentaries on New Zealand, among them "Here to Stay"  - a look at several different cultural groups that have immigrated to New Zealand.

Understanding the history of NZ is important to us, as well as discovering many quaint and interesting little towns and beaches. So when we recently landed up in Puhoi, I was especailly interested in a tiny, white-washed wooden villa on the hillside called the Bohemia Museum. I'd just returned from a holiday in Prague (Centre of Bohemia) and after watching "Here to Stay", I realised that Dallies had lived there. Sure enough, we were told that a small group of immigrants from the Czech Republic had canoed up the river in the early 1900s after months of travel.

Breaking News: NZ third best place to live according to UN

This article was posted in the NZ Herald today:

New Zealand is the third best country to live in the world, climbing 17 places in the latest United Nations' index aimed at measuring development.

The Human Development Report 2010 (HDR) was released today by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Development Programme Administrator, and former New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark.

The report, The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, highlights countries with the greatest progress as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI).

The index calculates the well-being in 169 countries, taking into account health, education and income, which are combined to generate an score between zero and one. The countries are grouped into four categories: very high, high, medium, and low.

New Zealand was named 20th in the 2009 and this year is just behind Norway and Australia, first and second respectively.

The country's score has been rising by 0.5 per cent a year between 1980 and 2010 from 0.786 to 0.907 today, placing it in "very high" category.

New Zealand's life expectancy is 80.6 years, average number of school years is 12.5, and gross national income per capita is $25,438 ($32,046).

Read the rest...