Army Bay

As we are now a two surfcasting rod family, I was encouraged to have a go at fishing this morning at Army Bay. As the weather was warm I decided to give it a go and surprisingly enjoyed myself. Unfortunately no beginners luck in catching a fish, and no success for Royston with his new rod either, but it looks like I may have limited excuses for not going in the future...

Charlie & The Octopus...

Another Iams pet food free toy for Charlie, this time an Octopus - though quite why it has this name when it is a mouse on a spring with three legs I'm not too sure. The only photo I could get that wasn't blurred when he was playing with it, here he is playing it cool...

All Whites v New Caledonia

This evening we subjected ourselves to an evening of international football (if you can call it that) to watch the NZ All Whites against New Caledonia in a World Cup qualifier. To confuse everyone, the All Whites actually played in black...




The level of football was so low it was probably the worst game of football we have ever seen - so bad, we decided not to subject ourselves to anymore pain and left at half time. Even with a Premiership player in the side it doesn't seem to make much difference! We are now officially rugby converts...

The Start of Spring...

At last after what seems like months of rain, spring is finally here and we hit the garden centre with a vengeance. We must be getting old... We have acquired some new wooden troughs which Charlie obviously thought were for him.




Once we managed to get him out, they are now home to our strawberry plants and a variety of lettuce/spinach leaves.





We have also bought several herbs, chillies and tomato plants which we look forward to eating in a few months time.

Whitianga Scallop Festival

This weekend we headed to Whitianga with our friends Darryl & Alistair for the annual Scallop Festival, which celebrates the start of the recreational scallop collecting season on 1 September. Somewhere between 80,000 - 100,000 scallops were consumed on the day!




There were about 100 stalls serving scallops cooked (or raw) in various ways - the signature dish being scallops encrusted in macadamia nuts, and numerous wine and beer stalls. All the local clubs, schools etc had stalls as fund raising opportunities.





One of the highlights was the schuck off between TV chef Al Brown (on the left), famous for his Hunger for the Wild show, and Whitianga's local councillor. No surprise that the chef won.




We had a fantastic time despite the weather attempting to be miserable, and thoroughly enjoyed all the scallops and tasting local wines.





The scariest part of the festival was the Scallop Band - musicians dressed up as scallops, fish, sharks and a deep sea diver - very bizarre!

North Harbour v Waikato

This afternoon we went to support our local rugby side North Harbour just down the road from us - a great little stadium though rather empty! Both Harbour and Waikato had yet to find a win this season so we expected a scrappy game.



A couple of the All Blacks had been released to play in the game - their class shone through. And after a nail biting finish, Harbour finished winners 15-10.

Castor Bay

After weeks of stormy, wet and windy weather we have finally had a lovely sunny day so decided to head to the beach. As we had never been to Castor Bay this was our choice today - a few bays south from us down the coast. And this is the view over to Milford beach.




Whilst this is the view across the Hauraki Gulf to Rangitoto.