Friday 6 April Had breakfast in the apartment, which consisted of the worlds smallest Weetabix and yoghurt. The kids came over and Simon brought with him 11 months of washing !!! After the 3rd wash we walked down to the Beachcomber restaurant to meet up with cousin Amanda and her partner Shaneen. Really great to meet again after 25 years - lets hope it's not 25 years before we meet up again. The weather was glorious and the restaurant packed with hol...

We arrived late last night into a hot and sweaty Australia. The flight from NZ was fine... short at 2:45 and Jetstar were functional....not elaborate, just functional. Immigration / customs etc were uneventful and we jumped into a taxi for a £50 journey to our accommodation. We dropped Simon and Shelley off (reluctantly) at the coffee palace backpackers and then went on to find our apartment. A lovely room with a kitchenette and washing machine and inter...

Wed 4 April 2012 Caroline wasn't feeling too well and so just the 5 of us went out on our adventures today. Caroline did cook us a super breakfast and after that we went into Christchurch - firstly visiting the RNZAF museum before going further into town. We discovered that a few entrepreneurs had established a small shopping centre made up from cargo containers just around the corner from the Cathedral in central Christchurch - fascinating. But we did fee...

Tuesday 3 April Woke up and went to watch John exercise the horses. He has a big race this week in Dunedin, a 5 hour drive south for a 4 minute race and then 5 hours back! Following breakfast we drove into Christchurch…..wow, such devastation! So sad and yet there seems to be an optimism about the place. Most Christchurch people are looking at the earthquake as an opportunity to build a better city rather than the loss of the old one. We drove to the ...

Monday 2 April As we woke we could see from our bedroom window the extent of the house. Fabulous manicured gardens - Caroline does loads of work on the garden and she told us in the summer she has to mow the lawn every 3 days and it takes her 3 hours to mow it all on her sit-on mower! John was feeding and exercising the horses - he has 12 but 9 of them are managed and trained by someone else and he is concentrating on just 3. John uses the horses for...