On our final leg we headed to Timaru, on the east coast, to look at some rocks a bit like the Giants Causeway basalt columns (not as impressive). We stayed one night and then headed up to Christchurch via a nice little town called Geraldine which has yet another car museum but more interestingly a replica of the Bayeux tapestry including the missing panels believed to show the coronation of William. It is made from masking tape covered in tiny pieces of steel offcuts (2 million of them!) from industrial knitting machine patterning discs and then painted with enamel (they really know how to have a good time in NZ). It had taken the chap and his daughter 35 years to complete. Apparently his daughter (not William the Conqueror's) had finally said enough is enough and that the metallic creation was complete. He then took up knitting and hanging up in the shop is the biggest jersey I have ever seen. The Bayeux tapestry replica is very impressive, but strangely after spending so much time and energy on this project the chap has never been to France to see the original.

Leaving Geraldine we came across a farm shop with café. The first such outlet we had seen and a glimmer of the Englishness of the area. Driving into Christchurch we were reminded of home with gardens full of plants not just grass and sheep. They even had some garden centres and the first and only traffic jam we have encountered in our two months here.

Next day we visited the NZ Air force museum. Peter was quite excited about this as they have a Mosquito simulator. He had four goes in this but only succeeded in sinking 7 destroyers in 20 minutes after crashing into them on several occasions. I don’t think he would get a job with the air force. We went on a behind the scenes tour with a couple of elderly enthusiasts who did more of an informal chat rather than a guided tour. They were very sweet. In one shed they were undertaking conservation of a Vickers Vildebeest and an Airspeed Oxford both manufactured in England and shipped to NZ.

We spent the next day at Akaroa (a sweet little town), on the Banks Peninsula which is the most prominent volcanic feature of the South Island. Geologically, the peninsula is comprised of the eroded remnants of two large volcanoes, now beautiful green rolling hills that look a bit like a cross between the Lake District and Norwegian fjords.

Captain Cook was the first Europeans to sight the peninsula in February 1770. Deceived by the higher land behind it, he mistook it for an island and named it "Banks Island" in honour of Endeavour’s botanist, Joseph Banks. He left without exploring more closely. By the 1830s, Banks Peninsula had become a European whaling centre. In 1838 Captain Langlois, a French whaler, decided that Akaroa would make a good settlement to service French whaling ships and "purchased" the peninsula in a dubious land deal with the local Māori. He returned to France and came back with a group of French and German families intending to form a colony on a French South Island of New Zealand. He stopped off on the North Island for supplies and someone let slip what he was planning so the British raced him all down the east coast to the Peninsula and arrived just before him and raised their flag to assert British sovereignty over the South Island. Yet another historical event in which we upset the French. But an amicable deal was made and each settler given 5 acres or a free passage back to Europe. Apparently they all stayed and the town makes the most of its French ancestry` in style and road names etc, but the Union Flag still flies on the hill over the town.

We were told an interesting story, that the Maori were very easily converted to Christianity because the first Europeans brought a host of diseases, particular whooping cough that killed a huge percentage of the Maori. The fact the Europeans appeared to survive these disease lead the Maori to believe that our God must be more powerful than theirs.

A boat trip was in order to see the rare (only found in NZ) Hector’s dolphins which are the smallest marine mammals, growing no more than 1.5 metres in length. We had a quick glimpse of two. I think the captain felt bad so offered us another trip. We were leaving the next day so it wasn’t much use to us. But Peter spotted another trip going out that day (in 15 minutes) so we asked if we could go on that, grabbed a coffee and of we went again and had good sighting of 5 Dolphins. They offer a trip where you can swim with the Dolphins but unless you are a super Olympic swimmer I am not sure how you could manage this as they were not hanging around.

When we returned the town was spookily quiet. That morning it had been full of people from two cruise boats that had arrived during the night and every shop, café and restaurant (not that there were a lot) had been heaving, but once they had gone everything shut. We did chuckle as it seemed that most people got off the boat and went straight to the nearest shop for coffee and cake. They could have been anywhere. I was going to treat Peter to a beer as it was his birthday but with nothing open we returned to spend our last night in Sid. Yes our very last night as next day we drove to Christchurch to hand Sid back. Despite my looking forward to a comfy hotel bed I was sad to be parting with Sid.

That first night in Christchurch was Firework night and believe it or not they do have fireworks but I am not sure how many of the population know what it is celebrating. I do love fireworks so we took the bus out to New Brighton (a place very unlike its namesake and more like Jaywick), where they have a massive display on the pier. It was very good.

I had booked us into a studio apartment in the very centre of Christchurch. If you were expecting the usual busy, crowded and built up sort of city centre well you would be in for a shock. It is more like an abandoned building site with empty buildings, demolished buildings, empty lots, shored up buildings and a few scattered intact buildings (luckily our hotel was one of the later). The earthquake in February 2011 damaged and destroyed a lot of buildings in and around Christchurch and killed 185 people. A 3 km square area in the city centre was shut off for over a year and now they are slowly clearing the remaining unsafe buildings and rebuilding. It is a bit eerie especially at night and would be a great setting for a zombie film.

We went on a tour around the city seeing a lot of the damage and hearing about the rebuild. Shipping containers have come in very useful. They have been used as shops in a temporary shopping mall, to shore up buildings and facades they wish to preserve and to build walls to protect the public from falling masonry. Artists have decorated walls all around the city with giant murals. The problem was not just the earthquake itself, although that was bad enough but the liquefaction that it caused. This is where the seismic waves shake finer grained rock layers so much that they liquefy and then the weight of everything above squeezes the liquefied rock out through any gap it can find. The level of the land where the rock has been squeezed out drops taking buildings and everything else with it.

This is the end of our NZ trip. Tomorrow we fly to Australia. NZ was a great place with some amazing scenery. The people have always been very friendly, the weather variable but ok, diesel cheap, food bit more expensive, pubs and beer not as good as home but the sushi great.