The road trip begins – leg 1: Gisborne

25 Hurahura - Gisborne

The sleep out

The freshly painted fence

France and Elsie enjoying the back lawn

Matt - post surf

The ladies relax (I'm still working on my tan..)

Jenni and Coral celebrate the good life

Elsie taking in the Gisborne cafe scene

The three rivers

Francine and Jenni assemble the new chook house

On Thursday November 3^rd we headed over to Gisborne for a week. This marked the start of our one-month road trip, our holiday within a holiday.  It was really exciting packing up, miraculously managing to squeeze everything into the car (including mountain bike, pushchair, portacot, highchair, body board, all our bags, and some essential kitchen items for bread making) and hitting the road.  I had decided that this was to be our “summer holiday”. With an itinerary including Gisborne, Abel Tasman and Malborough I was convinced that we would see some sunshine along the way and Gisborne certainly complied.  The weather was amazing! Blazing sun and highs of 28C Joel, Elsie and I didn’t know what had hit us.

We were in Gisborne to visit Francine and Matt who like us have also just returned to New Zealand, albeit permanently, after a good decade away in Europe. A few years ago Francine and Matt bought their dream house in Gisborne and have been letting it out until this year, their big homecoming.

They had returned to New Zealand to find the house required a little more work than anticipated due largely to the high number of sunshine hours creating a Jurassic garden that required taming. Sticky fingered tenants had also helped themselves to anything that wasn’t permanently attached to the property. Yep, security lights had been taken, a garden gate, all manner of period door handles (for the brass presumably), a bench, and an irreplaceable vintage porcelain sink.

Francine and Matt opted to stay with Matt’s mum, Coral while they attacked the property weeding, waterblasting, and painting before they finally unpacked their container load of goodies and moved themselves in. That was until Joel , Elsie, Jenni and I all decided to come and stay.

After a communication failure on my part Joel and I left Auckland a day earlier than France and Matt expected. So, we arrived at around 7pm to find an exhausted looking Francine and Matt. They had spent a very busy day rummaging through boxes to find, beds and linen and towels and all those things that you need to make a house work and had decorated two beautiful guest rooms for us. On top of everything else the oven wasn’t working so Francine had to schlep over to Coral’s in order to slow cook the leg of mutton for dinner then drive back to Hurahura once cooked.  However, we made it, every one arrived, the food was fab and we all sat around the kitchen table to celebrate France and Matt’s first night in Hurahura. Matt smoked a cigar, Joel drank far too much, Francine looked slightly overwhelmed, and we all ranted well into the night.

This marked the beginning of what turned out to be a truly wonderful week in Gisborne. The sun shone, we went to the beach, we barbequed, there were lots of visitors to Hurahura, the fence got painted (and so did we a little bit), we had lunches and family dinners, chicken coops were constructed, Elsie slept BEAUTIFULLY (perhaps it was the perpetually blaring stereo?), there were paddling pools, the salad greens from the garden seemed to grow a foot overnight (and tasted superb), Green lipped mussels were cooked over an open fire on corrugated iron, Joel Elsie and I applied a lot of sunscreen and we completed the week having fallen into the rhythm of a happy sun drenched family.

Hurahura really is a special place. It is easy in New Zealand to go on and on about the size of the houses and Hurahura is no exception it truly is a beautiful home - but it was the garden that stole my heart. Mature laden citrus trees, winding paths, ancient apple trees, lavender, climbing roses, an arch (!), the greenhouse, flat lawn, fishpond (with sitting budha), curved driveways, splindly cosmos and giant spikey natives. The next door neighbor is Anzac Park – a reserve with the XXXXX river flowing along it’s border – complete with rowing club and neighbourhood Sea Scouts. So you could literally drag your boat/kayak/row boat out the back gate and 50m down to the boat ramp.

It really did make me pause and think about the merits of living in a city with next to no outdoor space.

I was pretty impressed with Gisborne itself. I liked the layout of the town, it’s always nice to be riverside but with a beach as well the locals are quite spoilt. Speaking of which the locals are very friendly! Strikingly so. The economy seems to be booming, we ate well, and there is a buzz to the place – a provincial pride that was absent in many smaller New Zealand cities a decade or so ago. Pity it takes so bloody long to drive there!