24 February: Happy birthday to my brother, Joe. For the next seven weeks I am only three years older than he! We spent the day having a look around Petone and Upper Hutt. We had lunch at La Bella Italia, a lovely bistro with a huge selection of gourmet cheeses, sausages, olives and other Italian gastronomic treats. The rest of the day and evening were just spent being with good friends.

25-27 February: On Tuesday, we packed up, said ,"see you next time" to Darcy and Phyllis and headed north to meet Cathy and Max in Greytown. After lunch, we stopped at Cathy's sister's home where Margaret and John were kind enough to let us leave our car in their yard for a few days. On we went with Max as our driver to Martinborough where we collected the keys to a bach (kiwi for beach house) on the coast at Tora...a place we had never been before. Cathy said when she started looking for Tora on the internet she got a great deal of information about Torah!! It is about 45 minute drive from Martinborough, not too far from where Cathy grew up and seems like a million miles from civilization. From the moment we arrived until we left on Thursday afternoon, it was total relaxation. The coast is very rugged, littered with paua and other shells, rocky outcroppings with seals sunning themselves, the remains of a wrecked ship, and a magnificently starry sky. We went for walks, drives, read our books, and we all got up at different times during the night to marvel at the display...amazing what you can see in the sky when there is no ambient light. On Thursday afternoon we reluctantly packed up, left our beach idyll, and made our way home to Feilding. In the evening I started making calls to reconnect with more long time friends.

28 February: Our calendar for the next ten days is filling up with visits to friends we made when we lived here. We went to the Feilding Farmers' market in the morning and then to the Feilding Coach House Museum. This is one of the jewels of the region. It is a huge building filled with horse drawn vehicles of every kind from ploughs to ladies carriages, as well as a great number of motorized tractors and other farm machinery. There is a slide show of historic events in Feilding, and numerous wall mounted and free standing information signboards explaining the development of the area with an emphasis on the farming and business communities. The museum is staffed by volunteers and beautifully maintained. In the evening we drove to Bulls to have dinner with Jo and Raul Rangooni. Rauf was the cook, and we dined on Tongariro Trout that he had caught. We spent the evening catching up on family happenings and trying to work out the problems of the world. The latter needs more time than we had. We'll see them again on Sunday morning at the Sanson Sunday market.

1 March: Happy Birthday, Kevin. We are so glad you are in our family. Today was for sleeping late, laundry, catching up on my journal and blog, and the all important "will all our stuff fit within the airline weight requirement". We have packed and unpacked and repacked, and I think we will be ok. We may have to leave some of our clothing behind to be able to take home our shell and stone collection! If we buy anything in Australia, we will have to jettison more clothing!

2 March: This morning we returned to the Sanson Market, met Jo and Rauf, had a look around, and went for coffee at the Church Cafe where they serve....heavenly coffee, if course. In the late afternoon we went to a concert put on by the Palmerston North medical community to benefit the local rescue helicopter . It was a musical revue starring doctors, nurses and other local talent and well done. They raised $35,000 for the cause in one concert. After the concert we event out to a new restaurant, Gengys, for Mongolian grill. Good food and plenty of it, more than we should have eaten. We have one more week in Feilding and will make the most of seeing old friends and revisiting familiar places.