Greetings from Oz

It’s 9:30am Tuesday the 20th here in New Zealand as I write, though the server is likely to place a timestamp of Monday afternoon since it’s in New York EDT time. The 16 hour difference between NZ and NY has been the most confusing. We did manage to call home a few times and I don’t think we caught them in the middle of the night. Well, except Morgan, whom we intend to wake in the middle of the night

Our last day of driving around took us towards the west coast of Northland. We’re getting to know this bit of Northland and managed to figure out how to get back on track after some wrong turns. We’re negotiating the left side quite well. The narrow lanes in some places, plus dark and rain last night, were a challenge – but one that we rose to. Driving that last bit of country road from Walton to Franklin when we get home will be a piece of cake – as long as we remember to stay on the right side!

We took a turn down a small peninsula near Helensville towards the Tasman Sea. Along the way we stopped at a macadamia nut farm. The kind lady who sold us some nuts said that NZ macadamias are lighter and sweeter than those from Australia and Hawaii because they let them dry for a longer time. We didn’t have any to compare them to, but they were excellent! Quite light, as she said, even though they are fatty. Mostly monounsaturated fat, though. So good for you, yes?

They have a beautiful nature walk on the grounds with pond and flowers amongst the macadamia trees.

Macadamia nuts:

Flowers in the garden:

We head back to Auckland and the airport shortly. See you in the states!

We drove north again yesterday in order to dine at the Sawmill Cafe in Leigh. Since we had driven past it the day before, and Leigh is on a decent sized road near the coast, no problem, right? Well, at the circle in Matakana we turned left instead of going round the circle to go straight. It was a pretty road. We didn’t recognize the scenery, but then it looked similar to everything we’d seen before. So we drove on… and up… and up… and up. Okay, we were pretty sure we’d made the wrong turn when it was clear we were no longer near the ocean. But it was still pretty. We stopped nearly at the top when we saw a place to pull over. The view of the valley and ocean from such a spot is breathtaking.

Close by was this sign of property for sale. Don’t be put off by that price tag – NZ$975,000 is less than USD$750,000!

Matakana Valley Road

We drove back to Matakana and stopped for a while. A cute village with nice shops (mostly closed late Sunday afternoon) and place called Blue with organic ice cream and blueberries. A popular choice is vanilla mixed with fresh, crushed blueberries – delicious!

We finally made it to the Sawmill Cafe and Micro Brewery. It’s a lovely enclave in Leigh, New Zealand — restaurant, accommodations, shop and micro brewery. We tasted the Leigh Pale Ale and Thornycroft Dark Ale, both of which were tasty. We were so excited to walk in the cafe and see a pinball machine — alas it was Out of Order!

We are staying in a motel in Orewa, along the east coast about an hour north of Auckland. On Saturday Bill took the reigns, driving us north on Hwy 1. It’s the biggest highway here, but only two lanes, one for each direction, and occasionally a passing lane. The highway runs parallel to the ocean for much of the way, but at Warkworth veers towards the middle of the island. We followed it to Wellsford and then headed east on the Pakiri Road back to the ocean. Although our map showed this road at the same size as Hwy 1, it was nothing like it. It was paved for most of the way, then came the one lane bridges, and eventually it was a single lane with bypasses in case you meet a car from the other direction. In the middle of the single-lane dirt road part there was a sign “road narrows”! We didn’t run into any cars along this path. But when we stopped at a picturesque point, quite a few cars drove by in both directions.

Lots of sheep and cattle grazing. When I take pictures of these grazing hills, the white sheep look like small grains of rice dotted on the grass.

The Pakiri Road took us up and up and up, so it was quite exciting to drive back down and see the ocean in front of us.

Here’s a highlight of our trip – taking Leka the ferret to the Helensville vet!

We’ve been enjoying Auckland’s local alehouses – two that brew their own: Shakespeare Tavern and Galbraith’s Alehouse. Shakespeare was fun, very Irish Pub-like, including a chatty and friendly Irish bartender. Galbraith’s knocked our socks off. Really. We tried samples of Bob Hudson’s Bitter, Bellringers Bitter, Bitter and Twisted ESB, Full Nelson (brown ale) and Grafton Porter. All were good, Grafton Porter and Bitter and Twisted were startlingly good. We also enjoyed an excellent appetizer of Salt and Pepper Squid.

Bill and Helen at Shakespeare’s Tavern:

Galbraiths Alehouse:

We’re off to rent a car and see how we manage on the left side of strange roads.

Well, blogging has not been a smashing success. Lots to tell and pictures to show, but the combination of being busy and sometimes iffy internet have combined to make the blogging spotty. We are in New Zealand now and about to roam around Auckland. The internet here is great so I uploaded some pictures to our server. These are from the favorite part so far, in Perth. I’ll have more of Perth (Shirley’s ferrets and environs), Melbourne (including the ferret symposium) and Sydney later.

Meanwhile:
Perth – the beer and wild animal part

Melbourne, our first stop, was a very topsy turvy time. All that jet lag, and then traveling out to the suburbs to go to the first ever Australian Ferret Symposium, and then back to center city again kept all our marbles bouncing around and around.

We had a great time seeing old friends and meeting new ones at the symposium. We particularly enjoyed reconnecting with Shirley Hewett, whom we’d met at the Ferret Symposium in St. Louis, MO, in 2005. She and Shona organized the event in Melbourne and did an amazing job of getting people together.

Here we are with Shona and Shirley (and Leka), happy with an event well done.

We took a train back to center city and spent a day and a half walking down by the Yarra River, eating Chinese food (fabulous prawns in ginger and onion sauce!), looking for local microbrews and drinking “flat white” coffee.

This fabulous creature is down by the Yarra River, where there are paths for bikers and walkers.

The night skyline is quite a sight.

Our first really good microbrew.

We’re in Perth now, with Shirley. Lots of great photos and moments. I’ll write about that tomorrow.

After a horrible drive to JFK, we had a pretty easy trip to Australia – as easy as a 15 hour flight packed in coach can be. A bunch of On Demand movies made the trip go much easier. (I watched Gone Baby Gone, The Savages, Talk To Me, and Margot at the Wedding.) Bill found it harder to sleep, but sitting in the middle seat probably didn’t help. Guess I’m stuck in the middle seat going back. Oh well.

We are staying in downtown Melbourne for a couple of nights before heading out to the suburbs for the ferret symposium. We walked around a bit yesterday afternoon. Chinatown is nearby, so we had some great Chinese for lunch. There are many Vietnamese, Indian and Thai places, too, so we’ll investigate more this afternoon.