Wednesday 30th May –
Hunua rat monitoring.
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| The cloud poking out of the valley as we passed on the road above |
The temperature had dropped down
to freezing overnight but that made the scenery amazing as we made our way into
the Hunua Ranges.
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| And crossing the dam over Cossey's reservoir |
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| Look at all that food.... |
Today was totally different,
I was taught how to monitor rat numbers.
Here, we were measuring over a 24-hour period and I was shown how to lay
cards containing ink patches inside tunnels set along the rat monitoring lines.
Then, peanut butter was smeared at each end to attract rats and mice who leave
their inky footprints on the clear sections of card as they pass through. I was
teamed up with Willow (aka the mountain goat) again. We walked two lines which
took over three hours including the hikes in between the lines. When we returned
to Piggott’s Hut, we enjoyed a fantastic spread of food put on for Willow’s 60th
and John’s Birthdays (right) including cheese, bread, relish, scones with butter
and jam, cake and brownies. It was well-deserved after our efforts!
There is a friendly tomtit that hangs around Piggotts campground. He caught a juicy worm today:
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| I used a sunny morning to take some more New Zealand themed photos.... |
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| Rat line B disappearing down into the valley.... it doesn't look as steep as it felt! |
Thursday 31st May –
Day two rat monitoring. I had volunteered to work an extra day this week to
complete the rat monitoring but there were only three of us to collect the
cards from all seven lines! I walked the same two as yesterday but on my own
this time. Robin did two and then Willow was doing three to complete the job. I
was pleased with getting the same route done as yesterday but this time in two hours
and 45 minutes (though I did get a lift to the start today!). I was even first
back to the hut. I managed to collect all twenty cards (10 on each line)
and was pleased to find very little activity on any of the cards. A very
positive sign that the pest control in the area is effectively lowering the
number of predators.
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| Proof I got back to the hut first |
I wasn’t sure if I’d done it right, but Robin showed me a
card from a monitoring line where there’s no rodent control compared to
what our cards look like from today. Wow, that’s some difference!
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| Above - a well-worn rat card (no rodent control) versus one of our collected cards (below) |
There was no hanging about
eating cake today (sadly) so I was done and home by 2pm.
There I got some shocking news –
Simon’s brother had decided to share our massive news with the world via
Facebook today, before we are ready or before Simon has had the chance to
contact his old job to resign. It’s probably the biggest news we’ll ever have.
It would have been nice to be able to tell our closest friends ourselves before
them finding out through a third person via Facebook!! I was so angry. I
untagged myself and sent Andrew a firm but polite message asking him to remove
said message ASAP and later chased up his wife to help too! As it was overnight
in the UK, we hope that only a few people had noticed and there hadn’t been too
much damage to our secret before the post was removed.
Friday 1st June –
darts night at Huihana’s.
Huihana and her husband Steve
have been so welcoming to us. We got to theirs to find that they’d bought us a
set of darts each to celebrate Simon getting his Visa, which was very sweet of
them. It significantly improved our darts skills as well, so they may be
regretting that in time…! (or maybe not?!)
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| I won't explain the game or the scoring, all you need to know is the line of R's down the left means that I won (this one) |
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| Simon having a celebratory shot with (l to r) Shane, Huihana and Steve (and yes, that's a Pearl Jam DVD on in the background) |
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| Randomly, this Essex County Fire and Rescue sticker on a cabinet in their gaming room.... small World! |
Saturday 2nd June – A
lazy day with a trip into town to go and spend a bit of Simon’s soon-to-be-hard-earned
money! Sadly for him, they didn’t have the PlayStation he wanted in stock, so
he will have to wait and make do instead with a fan heater and an electric
blanket – exciting! We had dinner and made ourselves comfortable on the couch –
it was time to get online and share our news with some friends. We must have
been chatting for about five hours to various parties. It was great to be able
to speak to people and find out what’s new with them having avoided contact
with people for so long. Plus, we wanted to get in there before any other
potential social media leaks!
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| Sounds like it would have been good.... |
Sunday 3rd June – The
plan today was to go to an air show commemorating D-Day at Ardmore airfield,
only about 30-minutes away. But the weather had other ideas. The rain was
torrential and after I attended my morning gym class I went online to find
that, unsurprisingly, the entire event had been cancelled. What a shame when I
had finally found something that Simon would have loved to go and see on a
weekend.
We hunkered down inside but then
ended up with three dinner invites! Wow, these New Zealanders are as friendly
as people say! Tomorrow is a bank holiday for the Queen’s Birthday, so we’ve
got an extra day this weekend. We snapped up the first invite, so had to
decline the others. We’re all popular as
the newbies at the moment, but I’m sure the shine will wear-off soon enough and
we’ll just be ‘those pommies that have been around for ages’ soon enough!
We headed to East Tamaki for dinner
at Marcin and Ella’s with Filip and their other son Arthur? Marchin is one of
the installers at Simon’s new job and we’d met them a couple of weeks earlier at
a Steak meal out. We were treated to some Polish Goulash, pork escallops,
mashed potato and Polish cabbage salad. They had been planning to go away for
the weekend and had cancelled due to the bad weather too, so felt that us
immigrants should stick together!
Monday 4th June – Today
was another wash out with thunderstorms so we occupied ourselves with multiple
episodes of Homeland on Netflix.
Tuesday 5th June – I
started the day with challenging work at the gym doing a double class, followed
by a depressing assessment telling me that my body fat percentage has increased
since I started doing all of this exercise two months’ ago! The long weekend
must have been worse for me than I thought!
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