May 4

Our autumn is very much with us now although we often have hot sunny days. The mountains which we see most days although they are 50 miles away are snow covered and very beautiful We plan another trip up into them soon.

We dug potatoes and carrots yesterday and transplanted broccoli, lettuce and leeks to our garden at the new house. It’s very nice to have the move to that house to anticipate.

The children are looking forward to their 2 week holiday starting Friday. Jonathan is off school at the moment with bronchitis - the first he's had since we've come and not bad enough to require antibiotics. Andrea has a tummy bug on Friday and I felt under the weather for a day, but we seem to have shaken it off very quickly. Stephanie is very annoyed at being so healthy that she can't take day off school. But she enjoys school. She's in a play tomorrow.

May 7
 
I had an upsetting experience just now. I was sitting in the broad daylight in the kitchen eating and having some coffee and a fat grey mouse jumped out onto the stove and sat there eating the crumbs. I just hate mice. I asked Philip to bring some poison or trap home. I'm not going into the kitchen until he comes home. It’s silly to be so upset over something so small and harmless. May we'd better get a cat. We often have cats in our garden and scare them away. Philip says perhaps we should put out food out for them from now on.

The kids are on a 2 weeks vacation. We might go away for a few days. No place special- just out to see bits of N.Z. that we haven't seen yet.

Our car broke yesterday so Phil spent the whole day trying to find out what was wrong and finally fixing it. It was dirt on the electrical connections. But it really messed up the day. He took Andrea to the new day care centre and then went home for breakfast. Then it wouldn't start and he fiddled until 12:30 when me tried to  call me and say that he couldn't come to get us but he couldn't get ahold of me so he had to bike into my work. But I was delayed an hour by lots of' difficult patients so then he had to walk a mile or so to collect Andrea and we were late. Then another  mile to the centre to get a bus for us and Phil’s bike back home.

Phil has been invited to Palmeston North by the Govt dept. to talk about nuclear power and also the University there. This will be in late June so perhaps we will all go with him and tour the North Island for a week. They'll pay his fare and lodging for one night which would be quite a help and if we left in the week between houses, as it were, we'd have $45 less to payout here.

One of his colleagues has just published a paper challenging the accepted Watson and Crick DNA molecule theory. But because there is inadequate equipment here he hasn't tested his idea very well. Phil has an idea about how to do this.

Phil bought two mousetraps and some poison so hopefully by tomorrow I'll be somewhat happier about going into the kitchen. I have to spend a lot of time there tomorrow as we're having the Corballises to dinner. It’s their house we plan to rent next time. They have a cat. Nearly everybody seems to have a cat. Maybe the only way to avoid mice. I think I could tolerate a small cat if he didn't rub against me. 

May 15

We’ve taken a three day weekend again and gone north this time about 100 from Chch and it took us nearly four hours to cover that. This place, Kaikoura ,is by the sea but high mountains come down to it and we have a magnificent view. The mountains are snow covered and the sea is a beautiful aqua. This towm is small only 1200 people or so. It’s a tourist centre but this is off season . We've got a motel which is ok, $l3 a night and not cold if no luxurious - no tv.

The drive up was interesting. We'd driven about 1/2.way when we went to Hamner Springs the place where we went  before to the mineral springs. The landscape becomes amazingly green. We saw lots of bright flowers. Apparently near here the water in the sea becomes warmer. Instead of the Antarctic flow its it is influenced by the tropical water. There’s been lots of rain but its not cold.

May 16
This is a lovely place and the sun was out yesterday and it was quite warm. We spent the morning by the sea. First we pottered around the beach outside and found lots interesting bits like lobster shells and petrified bones and pretty drift wood. Then we drove down a few blocks to a fisher man's wharf and stopped to collect paua shells.

Paua is like a clam - about that size and shape and beautifully coloured like a rainbow with turquoise or lavender and bright pink preedominating in a sort of translucent effect. So we stopped and gathered well over 100 perfect shells. The lining of the shell is used for jewellery. We plan to scrape the rough back side and polish them and bring them back as souvenirs.

Then we went a bi further down the coast to a seal colony beach. The seals were on rocks cut off by the tide so you couldn't get too close but with field glasses you could see them quite plainly. Hundreds of huge black seals looking like bears. The sea was very pretty there - rough with high waves breaking over the rocks. The area out to the sea was flat rock with cracks in it with little sea animals in the cracks.

After lunch we drove up into the mountains looking for snow but didn't get high enough. There was only one road that went any distance. It was 12 miles long and we had to ford the river 10 times. We drove over one incredibly dangerous bridge and the children and I got out and walked over it, and Philip drove it on his own.
It was an incredibly fragile looking bridge, only a car width wide and no railings.

The place was a real wilderness. We didn’t t meet any cars at all only a horse who refused to move off the road. We had tea in a bush walk. All the native trees were labelled the paths made through the dense forest. We discovered the fan tail birds who are tiny with yellow breasts and fan shaped tails. They tried to get as close to us as they could and then flew back. They watched every thing we did and followed us when we walked one way or another. They weren't after food as we offered them biscuits and apples but they took no notice. They just wanted to play.

May 20

On the way back from Kaikoura we had some excitement. We decided to go, back by an unpaved road through the mountains home to see a bit more of the country. About half way through our brakes failed. Luckily the hand brake held and no one was around. Phil managed to fix it. It was something that had come unscrewed. Then we drove on but the ignition cut out three times before we got home and we were lucky we finally made it.

May 24

Sunday we went out to tea with the University people who went to Fiji  in 1973 to take up the contract that Philip couldn't do, because of Andrea's liver problems after her birth. They found it incredibly uncomfortable and they weren't even there for the summer. They couldn't work or cook or eat or socialize. They didn't even like making the effort of going to the swimming pool because you just got hot again afterwards. They found a rat in one of their children's beds.

They made a fabulous shell collection which they showed us. Beautiful and rare shells. Hundreds of different kinds. I told you about all our paua shells. It turns out that it is illegal to take them, out of the country. We thought they grew near where we were but apparently they are used as bait for crayfish which is a more popular and expensive fish. Anyway we like them.  (We still have about 30 of them in a box in our attic.)

We had a letter from the people who own this house. Made me feel guilty about the letter we have to write telling them we've leaving. We've decided against us all going to the North Island at the end of June. Just Phil will go and will fly. We’ll  go in December and take several  weeks and see the sights properly.
 
May 31. We had a shock in the electricity bill - $45 for 2 months. with another $40 on gas and $12 on coal and we used up three trunk loads of wood and cones and I'm still cold.