Sydney 2

Sydney 2
Well, enough said about the Sydney transport system which we have always found great (cry your heart out Auckland!) - we just need to sort out our concession ticket confusion!
Unfortunately the ferry wharf at Cabarita, which is an easy stroll from Dave and Christines, was closed for maintenance for the first few days so we had to get the bus to the train station for our travels rather than getting into the city quickly by ferry, but it was open again by the weekend.

We had a lovely 5 days with Dave and Christine and the 3 'children' - Pants, Fanta and Peppermint, being spoilt with a couple of lunches out - Icebergs at Bondi Beach where we had joined the throngs of people walking in the incredible heat between Bondi and Bronte to view the amazing Sculptures which had been on display for the past week, and a nice restaurant close to the Museum of Contemporary Art which we visited on the western edge of Circular Quay.

On our second night there we met up with Sandy, my old friend, flatmate and bridesmaid from student days at her lovely terrace house in Bondi, wandering into the village after a few tipples for a nice Japanese meal and lots of chatter to catch up on the last couple of years since we had met up in a similar manner. Always good to catch up with young "old" friends!

We enjoyed a bit of walking at Manly, around the Botanical Gardens, Cabarita and Breakfast Point amongst other things before heading off on Sunday afternoon to my niece Debra and Danny's and family, at Gordon, Killara for the last 2 nights before flying home. Their house is in a lovely setting amongst Australian bush and trees. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for parched Sydney with it's nearby bush fires, the very hot and sunny weather ceased and it rained for those two days but we were happy to laze about doing some local walks, puzzles, scrabble etc while everyone else was either working, at school or preparing for the school ball (Oh to be 17 again, not that I actually want to be!!) And it was so special to catch up with all the family as they landed at home again each evening.

Sydney 1

Saturday 23rd November. Our blogs have been few and far between lately with living a "more normal" life, still in the bus, but closer to home with excursions generally being more local - up the inner harbour for example - as we get closer to returning to our house on Sunday 1st December. In between times, from the 5th - 12th November, we had a lovely week in Sydney staying 5 nights with David and Christine at Cabarita and then a couple of nights with my niece, Debra, Danny and family at Killara. You can buy MyMulti 1,2 or 3 weekly travel passes for trains, ferry and buses around Sydney and after studying the map to get the most suitable one for the places we wanted to travel we bought MyMulti 2 passes, mine a concession at half price and even though the girl in the shop thought Len should have a concession one too we decided that might be pushing it, not being sure of the age for a pension pass in Aussie. Anyway we travelled happily around Sydney with our passes until we tried to go to Manly on the ferry when it said we had invalid tickets when we inserted them into the slot at the gate - it seems like you need a Multi 3 but, without elaborating any further apart from saying that there were pushing crowds behind us, we were through the gates before we even had time to think about it. Its a nice trip out there on the ferry but we decided to return to Daves via buses and trains which was probably a bit of a mistake with the whole journey taking nearly 3 hours - so much traffic! The trains and ferries in Sydney are wonderful however - so quick and easy. Our next awakening regarding the travel passes was when we arrived at the airport on departure and found that our cards wouldn't work at the airport gate. It seems you need to buy a separate gate access ticket at about $12.50 each which you can do at the nearby kiosk and is no problem except that the lady in the kiosk saw my concession ticket and asked how I had one of those. Replying that I was a Senior she told me that weekly concession tickets are only available to students and I was lucky that I hadn't been given a $200 fine! Seniors concessions are only available for day passes and then you need to show your NSW Pension Card as proof - they are not available to kiwis! You live and learn and I guess we would be wise to follow the rules next time!

Labour Weekend 3

After visiting Rachael and Antoine and hoping that we didn't hold up the process of laying the wood laminate flooring in the dining room of their new house too much (though Len did help with a couple) we headed back to our section in Whakatane where, after disrupting the car parking again, we had a late afternoon walk, along the way stumbling across a loud blues band playing in the bar / restaurant called The Office. We sat and had a beer alongside a tableful of  "old groupies" who must have been there all afternoon, one of them especially the worse for wear and hardly able to stand up. When she tried to dance I was very protective of myself and my drink being aware that I could be fallen upon at any moment!
The band was winding up for the day as we finished our beer so on the way home we bought some fish and chips for dinner from our local shop. Last time we had them they had been amazingly good with a very light herby batter but this time we were disappointed - that will cure us for a while from having them again!

Hurry through boats-there's fish to be caught!

The next morning we drove down to the Heads although they are within easy walking distance from our section. Len put his fishing line in and within an hour had 2 snapper and a kahawai so now he knows that he'll never need to go far from home to get a fish once we're living there! It was all very exciting and Len in his exuberance in reeling one in managed to hit me fair and square on the head with the hooked fish! How he did that I don't know - must have been funny to watch!

The Catch!

From there we headed back to Tauranga but stopped for the night at the motorhome park at Otamarakau right by the beach at the Tauranga end of the Matata straights. We've often seen vehicles parked here but didn't realise how orderly the area is with it's little drive and mown sites all marked. There are no facilities but a caretaker lives on site and charges only $5 a van a night. The only downside is that it is right beside the railway line and the noise is quite deafening when the freight trains go by - only a couple through the night though. Also we gather there is a bit of a security problem there with a group of Maoris always looking to target something to steal. Last week they stole a quad bike which had been sitting right beside the owner's motorhome. They must have pushed it out the gate and loaded it onto a trailer and nobody heard a thing!

Labour Weekend 2

We had a very peaceful night and it was lovely to wake to the birds chorus and the sun trying to come over the hill - this time of the year it seems to be about 8.30am before the section is filled with rays but once we've got it we've got it for the whole day.

Prime position overlooking Ohiwa harbour

Recently they have allowed 5 motorhomes to park overnight for 2 nights at the Ohope Reserve right down the end of Harbour road on the edge of the harbour so this was our destination on Saturday, hoping that there weren't already 5 there. No need to worry as we were the first - just quite a lot of cars and boat trailers as it was another nice sunny day although quite windy and difficult to find shelter. We easily found a nice spot to park right on the harbour's edge and Len immediately set off down towards the estuary entrance, about a 15 minute walk, to do a spot of fishing. After completing a few chores I joined him with my Listener magazine and towel, enjoying the sun and shelter from the wind as lots of little fish kept nibbling Len's bait away until there was no longer any more to put on his hooks. On getting back to the bus we found we had been joined, much further down the park by 2 other motorhomes with a caravan also arriving towards evening. Obviously not many people know about this park yet as it is so new and not in our Motorhome directory yet. Over summer I'm sure there will be hot competition for the 5 spaces!

Ohiwa Harbour entrance & Ohope as a backdrop!

Sunday we drove around the harbour to Ohiwa where we did the circular walk starting from the motor camp and going up and around the hill giving spectacular views out to White Island, Whale Island and Ohope although it was a little hazy. We suspect that might be because of the smoke coming over the Tasman Sea from the vast bushfires raging inland from Sydney at the moment.


We could also have walked down into Bryans Bay, probably an even better walk, but that will be for next time now!
The plan then was to try some more fishing on that side of the harbour but the wind made conditions rather unpleasant so instead we headed back to Ohope where we enjoyed catching up with our friends, Rachael and Antoine, who are just about to move into their lovely new house close to the beach.

Labour Weekend - Whakatane

Labour weekend was a good time to do another little foray to Whakatane and Ohope, theoretically missing the worst of the traffic by leaving earlyish on Friday morning and coming back on Tuesday. However we did stop at the Te Puke Golf Club for a round on the very quiet course where we only saw two other couples. They had just cored the greens so they were a bit slow but otherwise the course was in pretty good condition - much better than when we played on it earlier in the year. They only charged us $20 each because of the coring and we enjoyed the round just wishing that our scores had reflected our play on the fairways rather than the greens. A little light shower came down just before we finished but luckily the umbrellas stopped our bags from getting wet.
The golf stop meant we virtually hit the early rush hour in Whakatane which meant that we stopped briefly in the queue approaching the bridge and crawled for about 100 yards before feeling free again - probably about a 3 minute delay!
We arrived at our section in Whakatane to find 3 vehicles already parked there, a dog and the neighbours washing hanging from our tree but they moved 2 vehicles to let us park on the flattest bit. They had a big family gathering over the weekend and after living in the downstairs flat in their house for over a year they are nearly ready to move upstairs. The other vehicle which belonged to the neighbour over the road stayed there most of the weekend but we never saw them to actually talk to. No worries though as everyone around is very friendly.

Our section's over there!

After settling in we had our usual walk down to the Heads and back through the town in time to be back at the bus to meet our friends, Anne and Dave from Ohope, who also have a motorhome. They have just come back from a long camping holiday in France, needed to meet Debussy and have happy hour before we all headed down to the fairly new Spice Guru Indian Restaurant, just down the road, for dinner. A nice night catching up!