Living in New Zealand: The British Hotel, Lyttelton

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The British Hotel has a colourful history and I bet I don't know the half of it. Currently it is a great little bar, popular with locals, serving a small menu of good food.

But the fire is rubbish.

Living in New Zealand: Super, Lyttelton

A mish-mash of a building on Norwich Quay in Lyttelton (Click to see options for using the image)

Near the head of Lyttelton Harbour/Whakaraupo, lies the small settlement of Governors Bay. We use to walk our dogs down by the shoreline and I loved walking to the end of the ridiculously long jetty. But that was a long time ago and the jetty has seen better days. It was falling into disrepair even before the earthquake of 2011, but that finished it off. 

New Zealand Garden Diary: Feeding the Right Kind of Birds

There are a lot of birds in our garden, but very few species come to the bird table, unlike in the UK. I mostly see sparrows (non-native), silvereyes (native), chaffinches (non-native), greenfinches (non-native) and starlings (non-native). The starlings are real bullies, scaring every other bird away and demolishing fat balls in a matter of hours. So it was a relief when the Sausage Shed stall woman (who sells the fat balls) gave me a method of putting the starlings off. 

A way to keep starlings away from the bird seed and fat balls and let waxeyes/silvereyes fight amongst themselves (Click to see options for using the image)

Living in New Zealand: Full Moon Rising Over Lyttelton

Full Moon Over Lyttelton (Click to see options for using the image)

I’m writing this on the shortest day of the year (21st June) . I can’t imagine that when this is published the moon will look as amazing as it did at the start of June, but you never know. We were walking up for a happy hour beer and seeing it over the pine trees and the lights of Lyttelton was just magical. Cartoons don’t do it justice, so I hope it is as good tonight.