Churchill Park

Today we let in the refrigerator man. He had come to refit a door seal. He was a young man who was non too complimentary about the people of NZ. (He spoke as a Kiwi himself.) He is looking to emigrate to Australia.

He arrived early which meant that we could have a morning walk. We wanted to go into Churchill Park. It is just over the hill from where I am sitting. Riddell (pronounced reedall) Road forms 2 and a bit sides of a triangle containing an estate of houses and a large area of farmland to the west of its centre. Churchill Park School is in this area. The house on the west of the area look out over the sea and are very smart.


(Tell dog story some time.)

It was a steep climb up Riddell Road until we came to car park leading to Churchill Park. We wandered through it. It had very much the feel of walking in the crater of an extinct volcano.


Passing the school we returned to the road and quite naturally arrived at our seat overlooking the sea.


Back in the house we discussed plans to visit a large area in NW Auckland with a model village, trains and vintage cars.

Hopefully, I have now fixed the bathroom fitting back on the ceiling with glue and tape stronger than that which should be able to fix rocks back on a crumbling cliff edge. I also hope to have blocked up the bottom of the front door through which slugs make their nocturnal way across the hall and over the childrens' bedrooms. We wait for the results on both these matters.

Mount Wellington - Plumbers World

Today, Weds, we had the car, so having done some work around the house we decided to have lunch on the top of Mount Wellington before visiting 'Plumbing World' as investigators for Lawrence.

Mt Wellington is landmark for this area. If you do not have a SAT NAV and are lost you head for Mt W and find a road from there. Mt W is a regular route marker for shopping and Sally's office. Although Mt W is not difficult to see, the entrance point is more difficult to find, even with a SAT NAV. We drove through gates up one way road that was light an upwards helter-skelter and just below the summit we pulled up into the car park. This was a favourite spot for workers to pull into for lunch. There were picnic benches where we had our lunch. We were glad that we had once more boosted the country's suntan lotion economy. There was no shade. From where we sat we could see Rangitoto and the housing development in the quarry below.

It is a strange development for NZ. The ground is totally flat, the roads are very grid like. The few occupied house exactly the same in shape and grey colour. From our vantage point we could see executive style detached houses, but at the back of their gardens their was a row of grey terraced homes. Very strange.

The crater of the volcano had been partly levelled and a fence added to prevent falls into the cone a good way below. I would seem that this filling in and earth work was carried out by Maoris to create a hill fort.

I made it to to the summit, but mum found the rugged path beyond the steps too difficult to walk on. From the top can be seen the usual city view, but to the south is the entrance of the Tamaki River flowing into the Panmure Basin. This area was very nearly chosen as the starting point for building Auckland and the current industrial use gives a good idea why that idea came up.

We returned via 'Plumbing World'. This a large store. The front has displays of all the elegant products used here, but through the back is a vast array of plumbing components. In the front were elegant ladies chosing the latest bathroom look and in back were rougher plmbers buying the fitments to make dreams come true. All the components that Lawrence gave me are compatible with components in NZ. But, sorry Lawrence, your boiler catalogue amused the hardened experts. One of the plumbers, a cutomer, looked at the catalogue and immediately said, "That's Pommie stuff". I replied "Yer, right". They most certainly do not do central heating, I asked about water heating. He pointed to a tall shiny cylinder. I asked how it works. He said that there was a 3 Kw element inside. (They do gas too.) Electricity is generally hydro or thermal and therefore relatively cheap here.

After lunch I did some woodwork. I left the glue to dry and when I returned a strange, alien like insect was on it.