First Fishing Trip

Today I went on my first fishing trip with Paul to the Kaipara harbour north west of Auckland. I didn't enjoy the early start 3am wake up to be at the dock for 5am!! - at least we saw sunrise...






This is me before the violent rocking of the boat caused a brief period of sea sickness...though this didn't stop me reeling in several snappers and kahawai




Boat was great - spacious and plenty of room for all the chilly bins full of beer, and later fish, good preparation areas for bleeding and gutting fish, and baiting the lines. Skipper was very good knowing all the good spots, and forced me to keep fishing through my sea sickness.





After the fishing came the eating... The first snapper was eaten raw sashimi style - amazing!! The second snapper was cooked whole on the BBQ.





The finished meal!







Charlie was very non-plussed about the whole thing, that was until we gave him some freshly cooked snapper - we may have started something we will live to regret there...

Christmas Day

Another warm, but not so dry, Christmas meant we headed to the beach for a picnic lunch today. We stopped at Hatfields beach about 20 minutes north from us and away from the popular beaches.






We had a lovely lunch of crayfish, smoked salmon and smoked mussels washed down with a bottle of NZ fizz from Soljans which we bought when wine tasting with Mum & Dad last month. Who needs a white Christmas!





After the afternoon rain we had a window of opportunity to cook our BBQ this evening - this a pic of the raw ingredients! Thai prawns (monsters!), marlin steaks, kangaroo fillet and rack of lamb.

Computershare Christmas Do

This evening was my Christmas do at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna, just over the road from work. As I am part of the Social Club Committee organising the do was one of my tasks so was quite relieved that all went well. This is a photo of our table with work friends Craig (and his partner Jo), us, Dean and Mark x 2 in the background.


For some reason I got roped into doing a Princess Leia impression...it's amazing what a few glasses of wine will let you do... That's Charmaine holding the bread rolls and Novita next to her.





And a picture of Royston and Craig before they went off to dance to Dancing Queen together...

Mahurangi Peninsula

Today we headed along the Mahurangi peninsula to the east of Warkworth. Although the weather was a bit changeable we managed to make several stops along the way. The first was Algies Bay, a popular spot with boaties with many people heading off for a day fishing.




We then headed to Scandrett Regional Park, Auckland's most recent regional park which is still under development. The beach looks out over Kawau Bay, and there are many walks that we plan to do in the future.



After a brief stop off at Martins Bay, we then went to Scott Point which is part of the Mahurangi Regional Park, and home to the Scott Homestead.






After a walk on the beach we had a picnic lunch before heading back home.