We left a cold and wet Dunedin yesterday morning to travel north. While I packed expecting a New Zealand summer, I had not studied the map enough to realise that places we were travelling were South of the bottom of Tasmania! Any wonder my wardrobe was largely inappropriate. We stopped off at the Moeraki Boulders, a beach that has large sea stones with amazing fault lines through them. It was raining here so not a pleasant walk along the beach. We continued our ...

Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Dunedin and started out with a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate factory. For me, this was like going to heaven! We saw the process of making chocolate and saw various sections of the factory where this was happening, products being made and packaged. We got quite a few freebies along the way so this kept me happy! This morning we drove a short distance to Larnach Castle, built in the 1860's by the Larnach family who resided there u...

We were scheduled to go on a flight over Milford Sound yesterday but it has rained overnight and the weather continued to be cloudy and windy into the morning. This meant that our flight was cancelled and might go ahead in mid afternoon. We moved to Te Anau, slightly North and ate lunch by the lake after having a wander around the local shops. The wind was icy, clearly my summer clothes and one jacket were not really appropriate! We visited the information site ...

This morning we boarded a cruise heading for Doubtful Sound, bigger than Milford Sound and further south. Our boat left Manapouri and travelled for an hour across Lake Manapouri. We passed islands and enjoyed the mountainous scenery along the way. On arriving at the other end of the lake we got onto a bus for a trip past the power station and over Wilmot Pass. This was a steep gravel road stretching for 22km over the mountains to Doubtful Sound. The Sound wove it...

The main reason for our trip to NZ this year is for Peter to shoot in the NZ Nationals and Grand Prix, both of which are being held at Branch Creek Station just outside Wanaka. Wanaka is situated on the shores of a lake and has stunning mountains all around, some of which have glacial snow on top of them. We're sharing a house with other shooters Vicki Johnstone and Mal Price from Laang and Paul and Wendy Hedwig from Nelson NZ. Shooting started on Monday with a ...