Our Furniture Arrives!!!

Our Furniture arrives after seven months in storage!

After a week at the holiday home, our furniture eventually arrived. We did quite well as there were no items missing and only our coffee table had a small chip on the corner of the glass. MAFF came and examined all our outdoor kit and after getting the all clear from them it was a case of emptying over 160 boxes!

It was great to have all our belongings again and it felt like christmas opening all the boxes. At last we could make the house feel like a home.

The Lounge starts to take shape

Charlie working hard!

The Garage starts to fill up!

Finished at College

The last two weeks at college went pretty quickly and it was a case of just getting my head down and studying for the big final exam. It all went well and i passed without any drama's. I also qualified with a gold card for the annual fitness test.

The fitness test over here is a bit like an army assault course with loads of obstacles such as climbing through windows, Dragging a body, doing a tyre carry, climbing walls and fences and a run. It was good fun really and if you beat your target time by more than 30 seconds you get a gold card pass as you are considered as highly fit! My target time was 2:36 minutes. I managed to get round in 1:59 minutes, which was the 2nd best time in the group. Not bad for an old git!

The last night at the college was really nice as we had a formal dinner. The quality of the food was first class and we were treated really well. I left the college on the Thursday afternoon and drove up through the heart of the North Island to Taupo. I had a hotel booked for the night and i started to get a bit worried when i heard on the radio on the drive up that there was twenty centimetres of snow forecast on the road over the mountains at Tongariro national park!

I was glad i had the four wheel drive, as the snow was laying thickly on the road over the mountains. I got to Taupo after a five hour drive and when i booked in, the receptionist informed me that i had been lucky to get through as the mountain road had just been closed due to the snow! Taupo seemed like a very beautiful place and certainly somewhere we will be visiting in the future.

A view over Taupo

I headed up to Pukekohe on the Friday to pick up the keys to our new house. I had a week on my own before Hayley and Charlie would arrive on 26th October. Things did not start well when i found out our Furniture container had been moved onto another ship and was now nearly two weeks behind schedule. It was now going to land in Tauranga and get railed up to Auckland. This would mean that i was in the house for a week with no furniture at all! I picked up the keys to the house and headed up to find out what it looked like now that it was all finished. Unfortunately the house was not quite finished and i found that none of the locks worked, there were no blinds anywhere and the fence had been smashed over by a lorry delivering soil to our as yet unlandscaped garden. Great!

After a few choice words to the estate agent the blinds and locks were sorted and the garden was booked to be completed during the next week. I also managed to book us all into a holiday cottage (or bach as they are known here) in Clarks beach. This is a really quiet holiday village about half an hour from Pukekohe.

At 5:45am on 26th October i was sat in the arrivals terminal, waiting for Hayley and Charlie to arrive. We had been apart for twelve weeks, so it was great to be back together again. We spent the week chilling out and letting Hayley and Charlie recover from their jet lag. They also had the pleasure of being sat next to a screaming baby all the way from Los Angeles for twelve hours and thus getting no sleep!

Two weeks left at College

The entrance to the stadium


I have got two weeks left at the college. There is a big exam at the end which will be tough, but i have been doing lots of study. The time is going fast and it does not feel like i have been in NZ for two months now.

I went to my first football match in NZ last week. It was at the Westpac stadium in Wellington. It is a good stadium and is 32,000 all seater. The game was between Wellington Phoenix and Perth Glory in the A-League. There was a crowd of about 12,000 and they made a good atmosphere. The phoenix won the game 4-1 and it was good entertainment. As for the standard, well i reckon i could have got a game at right back for the Perth team!



Just over a week ago there was a volcanic eruption at Mt. Ruapehu. That is where i went skiing a while back. One person was seriously injured by the flying boulders. There was a big mud flow, or Lahar as they are known. It went straight down the ski field! Following on from that, there was an earthquake here in Wellington on Friday afternoon. It was only a small one, but it shook the building. It was a very strange sensation.

Everything else is going to plan. The container holding all our household belongings is due to arrive in Auckland next Sunday. Fingers crossed!

My nice furry jacket and Bushmaster hat!

A Quiet Week

The Beach at Titahi Bay

Sunset on Thursday night


It has been a quiet week after the last few weeks of fun and games. The week was spent in the classroom. I have managed to get out for a couple of walks and the weather is starting to get warmer. Only four weeks left here now.


The house is coming along nicely and should be finished well before we move in on 20th October. We have got a football match this week against a Kiwi team. I am glad it's football and not rugby!

Me out in the hills today

It's true, there are millions of sheep here!

Advanced driving course, birthday and skiing

The Beast!

Another great week here in kiwi land. I started the week with my advanced driving course. It's not quite the same as the driving courses i have been on in England. Lets just say that they are a little bit more laid back about the rules over here!

I got lucky for once and managed to get drawn in the brand new 3.6 litre Holden Commodore SV6. It is a beast and looks the part too. It's rear wheel drive, which is different to most things i have driven before. On Thursday we went to New Zealand's main race track. It was a good chance to give the cars an absolute thrashing. We got a full day on the track and had some great fun. I passed my exam and confirmation drive on Friday.

Giving the marked cars a good caning!


It was my birthday on Wednesday and our whole group went out for a curry in Wellington. Thanks to everyone for all the cards. I had them all put up in my tiny little room. My first birthday in New Zealand!

All my cards and my new Argyle shirt

A group of eight of us decided to head north to the Ruapehu ski fields on Friday for a weekend skiing. It is a four hour drive north from Wellington. It was a cool weekend, even though the weather was not very kind to us. We got a full day's skiing in on Saturday, but Sunday was storm bound, so we headed home. Mount Ruapehu is an active volcano and was featured in Lord of the Rings. It was a shame we did not get great views, but i have put a few pictures here for you.

At the top of the ski Tow

Looking across to the Pinnacles

Lots of nice snow!

Another tough week in the South Pacific!!

Team 2 after qualifying with the Bushmasters

I have completed another week here at the college. I am now qualified to use a Bushmaster assault rifle. It's a lovely gun to use and much more accurate than the Glock handgun. I have also been to a car auction on Saturday and bought a Honda CRV for less than £2000. What a bargain! It is my birthday on Wednesday and a few of us have planned to spend next weekend at Mount Ruapehu Ski fields. It is really cheap to ski and the conditions are perfect at the moment. Hopefully i will get some good pictures for you all to look at.

I am doing my advanced driving course this week, which should be fun. At the moment the course has been all fun, shooting and driving fast cars. The boring bit will then start as i will have five weeks in the classroom studying law! Nice.

Our new car

One week down!

I have survived my first week at the Royal New Zealand Police college. It has been great fun. I have just passed my qualifying shoot for the Glock 9mm handgun. We had a week's training on it and we ended the week with a qualifying shoot. I am training to use a Bushmaster assault rifle next week. Should be fun!


I have been training hard and have been running/swimming/cycling every day this week. I should start to see the positive effects of it all soon! There are some great mountain bike trails and walks in the surrounding mountains. I have already been planning some routes.

The view from my accomodation block