One Tree Hill is an icon in Auckland’s landscape – the largest volcano on the skyline with a tall monument at the top. It’s surrounded by a great park, Cornwall Park, and is a nice place to walk dogs. So that’s what we did. The hill used to have one tree at the peak, but due to a chainsaw attack, the old pine tree that was there died. So now it’s nicknamed ‘None Tree Hill’. The local iwi don’t want [...]

When we got back to Auckland, we had a few days to spend time with our families. One of our days was spent at Auckland Zoo, which has developed quite a bit since we last went a few years ago. We went with Mum, Matta and my younger cousins Emere, Hana T and Takimoana. The kids must’ve played on every playground in the whole zoo as we wandered around. We loved the new tiger enclosure. There’s a pool right next [...]

We got to catchup with almost all of our friends when we were back in NZ. (Sorry to those who we didn’t get time to see!) The highlight was certainly Eric and Prue’s gorgeous wedding! But first, there was a Hen’s party. The start of our day was learning to lawn bowl from Rob’s grandpa, GramBob. Don’t you love Prue’s dress? It was full of ruffles! No photos from the rest of the day, but it involved a drawing class, [...]

All done with Canada, we leapt on another plane (the All Blacks safety video on the AirNZ flight was classic) to get home for Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at the Harte’s. We had a lovely 3 course meal which Helen ( Liz’s mum ) made – a salmon salad, roast turkey and trifle dessert. NOM NOM. Christmas day we headed up to Snells beach for the Bilkey Family Christmas. Firstly, we went straight out to get some scallops for [...]

The third and final post from our NZ trip is about our friends. We have a varied and great group of friends, even though we don’t see them that often and are hopeless at keeping in touch. But we had some great wee adventures while we were home, and got to catchup with most of our mates. Was brilliant to see you all! We had dinner with the Compsci crew at the delicious Kirin in Parnell. Great japanese food, and [...]