87. Vignettes of Family Life in New Zealand: (6) Christmas/New Year 1990/91



Summer evening, Lake Taupo

112 Point View Drive, 18th December 1990
    Dear Mum and Elizabeth,*
    Hope you have had a great Christmas.
    Thanks for the letter, both the handwritten one and the annual letter.
    We are getting all geared up for Christmas here - lots of social activities. In fact this next Saturday will be the first one we have had at home for the last six weeks. There were various parties to celebrate the admission to the bar of Linda and her friends. As you can see she looks pretty cute in a wig. The ones of me were awful but we will try and do better on our summer holiday and send you some more photos in January.
    As you can see my writing is getting worse and worse. It must be all the time I spend on the computer, so I thought I'd continue this letter on the machine and then at least it will be more legible!
    Last weekend we had a bar-b-que here for the Robinson family. Sacha came too but all the others - over twenty of them - were Linda's relatives - her Mum and Dad, two sisters, two brothers, five nephews, three nieces and assorted in laws and girlfriends. We took the opportunity to show off our new patio area and gas-fired barbie (that's a cooker, not a doll!) It was a great success and for a change yours truly did the cooking although all the preparation, marinating of meat etc had been done in advance and all I had to do was play the master chef.
    Kate and Harriet will be with their dad for Christmas Day this year so Linda and I are going to her mum and dad's for lunch. They have kindly invited Sacha and Lewis also - Pat is over in the UK so they were pleased to be asked. We leave for the South Island on the 27th and will be back here on January 12th. We have a week booked at a farm near Queenstown and the rest of the time will be travelling from place to place. We are looking forward to the break after all the excitement of the last few weeks. Linda and the girls have not been to the South Island in spite of all their other international travel. As you may recall the only time I went was when Stuart, Lewis and I went camping there in 1983 and were washed out of just about everything, so we are hoping for better luck with the weather.
    I had a letter from Stuart earlier this week. He is now the second longest serving member of the company** in the region where he works which tells you something about the dangers of being in the Persian Gulf as well as the opportunities for rapid promotion. You may in fact hear from him before you receive this letter since he is due for his first R&R break on December 27th and will be coming over to England to meet up with his girlfriend, Fiona. They are planning a trip to Paris but I'm sure he will be hoping to see you both. We are rather hoping he will be on R&R if and when the Americans invade Kuwait which they seem very determined to do. Tell him I have arranged for some information on correspondence course to be sent to him in Dhahran, also stuff on American Express.
    That's all for now.
    Lots of love from us all here, John xx
[  *My father died in 1987]
[**DHL]

17th January 1991
    Dear Mum and Elizabeth,
    Many thanks for the letters and for the Christmas presents and also for your telephone call. It was good to talk to you both... Thanks for the tie - very patriotic; I'll wear it for Burns' night! - and the lace tray cloth for Linda; we can see that you made good use of your trip to Scotland in your Christmas shopping. Kate and Harriet were very thrilled with their chains and initials and have been wearing them constantly. In New Zealand we would presume them to be made of paua shell, or abalone, but weren't clear whether they were some Scottish equivalent or something completely different. We spent the ten pounds that you kindly sent, Elizabeth, on some souvenirs of our holiday - greenstone from the West Coast in the form of brooches and pendants.
    We had a good Christmas Day, mostly. Lewis and Sacha joined us for Christmas lunch at Linda's mum and dad's together with Linda's neice, Helen, who is about 20. Kate and Harriet came over later in the afternoon with their father and then travelled home with us. Unfortunately on the motorway on the way home my car broke a cam shaft drive belt and we had to get a tow-truck to get it (and us) back here. There wasn't time to get it repaired before we left for the South Island on the Thursday - so we had to adjust our packing arrangements to fit everything into Linda's car which was quite a squash since it is a two-door hatchback whereas the Subaru is a four-wheel drive touring wagon. As it turned out Linda's car- which is 1800cc and very fast - went excellently all through our trip of around 3600 kilometres.



                               On the Cook Strait Ferry                                                                   Above Queenstown

    Harriet has enclosed a copy of our itinerary with her letter so that will give you some idea of where we went. We stayed put near Queenstown for about a week at Speargrass Flat near Lake Hayes. It was an excellent choice since the people who ran the Lodge were very friendly - they were both Scottish and met at catering college in Edinburgh - and had two children, a boy and a girl, Kate and Harriet's age. We had the run of a lovely house, other visitors to talk to - one from Kingsbury in North London, and American, a couple from Kent, and, on New Year's Eve, a small safari group tour from Germany, and the children had some friends to play with when we were not out enjoying some of the many amenities of the area. This time the weather was mostly excellent, warm and dry all the way down and throughout our stay at Lake Hayes and very very wet when we crossed over to the West Coast - like driving through a waterfall at some points  but the roads didn't wash away and we were able to do most of the things we planned with the exception of a trip up onto Fox Glacier and a tour out to see the nesting grounds of the kotuku or white heron.
    At Kaikoura on the way down we saw a lot of dolphins quite close to the shoreline, a well as seal and bird colonies. The area has become a centre for whale watching trips and also for boat trips that take you out in wet suits to swim among the dolphins. We didn't do either since we were really only passing through - but we did eat the delicious crayfish the area is named after. Linda's brother Tom and his wife camped there for part of their holiday and told us that the dolphin experience was quite amazing so next time we'll have to stay there longer. The scenery from Lake Tekapo down to Queenstown was very dramatic with the lakes and Southern Alps, wild lupins in full bloom, some very Scottish landscapes. As you can see from one of the photographs enclosed we got good views of Mount Cook looking along Lake Pukaki on a very clear day.
   We did a variety of things while in the Queenstown area. We all went on a trip to an old gold mining town - Macetown - 32 kms up the Arrow River Gorge from Arrowtown. This was in a land rover and involved 44 crossings of the river and a very bumpy narrow unsealed road along the side of the gorge. It was amazing to think that in the 1860s the whole area was full of gold miners, prospectors, and townships that are now deserted and in ruins. We panned for gold in the river but with no success....  (We did, however, get some gold later at Shantytown, near Greymouth on the West Coast but this was 'planted' by the people running this reconstructed gold mining town.) We also went on an evening boat trip to Walter Peak, a large high country sheep station on Lake Whakatipu, where they farm, among other things, Highland Cattle. And we had a trip on the S.S. Earnslaw for a day at the Glenorchy Races at the top of the lake. Linda, Kate and Harriet also went on a day's pony trek in the Lake Hayes, Arrowtown area which they thoroughly enjoyed - I passed on that one and went for a walk in the hills instead.



                 On the hills near Arrowtown                                                               Kate at Shantytown

    Now it is back to normal. Linda returned to work on Monday last and I have been at home this week with Kate and Harriet. Kate has been going to tennis lessons each day from 9am to 3pm and Harriet has spent most of her time playing with Rebecca, the next door neighbour's daughter. They have just made themselves a picnic lunch and are off to eat it down the potato mine, whatever and wherever that is!. The neighbours opposite have gone to Kuala Lumpar to live so their daughter, Samantha, is no longer available to play.
    Sacha stayed here on and off while we were away and moved the goat around so that he didn't starve. Lewis started his new job on Monday with Task Electronics in Newmarket. So far he seems very pleased with it since it will give him some useful experience with computer systems. Last year was a bad year for him on the job front so it was a great relief when he finally landed a reasonable job after all those years of the market garden. As far as I can make out he is responsible for stores and inventory as part of the customer services division of a small but expanding specialist electronics company.
   Stuart is still in Saudi. I spoke to him on Tuesday and told him I thought he should be out of there but he has decided to stay on for the time being. He knows the risks - he thinks - and will see what develops. The company want them to stay a bit longer although business is clearly declining sharply. He has a gas mask with him at all times and a safe room in his house which is sealed and provisioned in case of bombing or a gas attack. He says he is never more than fifteen minutes from the house during the day. I doubt that he would be able to get a flight out now anyway and his only escape route would be to drive west, probably along with thousands of others. By the time you get this letter of course the whole situation could have changed dramatically. We naturally are worried for his safety but understand the pressures on him to stay put. In fact while I have been writing this letter the Americans have launched attacks on targets in Kuwait and Iraq and there has just been a report on television from Dhahran of the air raid sirens going off there in the middle of the night. Now they are talking about gas attacks on Tel Aviv. Not a pleasant thought.
    Congratulations mother on becoming a Companion of the Society of St. Francis.
    I had forgotten, Elizabeth, that I had given you a picture of puffins for your 21st birthday - sounds awful! - so wasn't distraught that you had left it in Nigeria. As you may know the principal thing we lost when we were burgled last year was the very posh camera I bought in Singapore when we were there on our honeymoon. However, as you can see from the enclosed photographs, your 21st birthday present to me is still in excellent working order and continues to take good pictures.
    That's all for now. Back to the tv coverage of the Gulf War. Let's hope the whole affair is quickly over.
    Lots of love from us all,
   John, Linda xxx

    

 

Previous blogs in this series are (1) 72, 13th November 2013; (2) 78, 27th November 2013; (3) 80, 5th December 2013; (4) 82, 17th December 2013; and (5) 85, 28th December 2013.