Liquor? I hardly knew her...

As a South Australian I genuinely enjoy the novelty of buying alcohol from the supermarket in New Zealand, but I have to say that what I enjoy the most is the actual checkout transaction involving said alcohol. As I approach the counter clutching, among other things, a bottle of ridiculously underpriced red wine from my homeland I am greeted by a relatively bright uniformed year 9 with whom I gather I will be completing my transaction. He is cheery at first, if not a little pimply. We chat about the recent endeavours of Kiwi sports teams against Australia as he scans a box of washing powder, a carton of milk and a four pack of toothbrushes, but as we approach the Peter Leahman Shiraz his demeanour changes dramatically. He effortlessly goes from ill-proportioned teen to suspicious, sleuth-like detective. Shifting his head to get a proper view of mine he suddenly looks very stern. Unsure whether he’s going to call the cops or divulge the secrets of the universe I ask tentatively if there’s a problem, to which he responds by asking me for some I.D. Fumbling through my wallet I retrieve my South Australian driver’s licence. He pores over this before calling for what I assume can only be backup. He stares blankly, if not a little accusingly, as I gently rock my 6-month-old daughter back and forth in her pram as we wait for the manager. When he arrives, appearing to have only recently completed year 10, our man glances at the card before asking for another document that might more adequately verify my age. By some strange twist of fate I reach for my back pocket and find my passport (see previous blog). This appears to just scrape in as the proof they need to sell me liquor. Smirking rather cheekily as I swipe my credit card I ask whether comprehensively bearded 17 year olds with young children, fraudulent South Australian driver’s licences and a taste for wine from the Barossa are a common problem in Orewa. He replies that stranger things have happened - this only serves to heighten my intrigue at what I have already found to be a fascinating country.

In other news:

A few months ago we moved into a house that has to be an exact replica of the house that Phil Collins wrote ‘Easy Lover’ in, complete with retro brass décor and oversized light switches. Those attuned to New Zealand folklore will be impressed by the fact that this house was once owned by Mr Asia, an infamous drug tycoon for whom the aforementioned décor must have been contemporary. Whilst living in his past dominion I have wandered what sort of stunts you have to pull to get nicknamed after a whole continent.

Unfortunately for us and our would-be Skype friends we don’t have broadband at our new house. At our previous house, which was only 100 metres up the street, we had more broadband internet than we needed, but after a month long debacle involving the less than highly efficient NZ telecommunications bureaucracy they concluded that our new house is three kilometres out of range for the broadband service. With the only reasonable explanation being that there is a tear in the very fabric of the space-time continuum somewhere between our front gate and no. 23 Oceanview Road we have resigned ourselves to the waiting game that is dialup.

Lucy, apart from helping me to pose as an underage drinker, is making all sorts of new sounds, rolling around on the floor and waking in the middle of the night with the giggles.

The ocean is getting swum in despite it not really being warm enough (the entire nation seems to take to the sea to cool off when it hits 24 degrees). We call it ‘sympathy swimming’.

Our pohutakawas are turning red – which to the Australians out there may sound quite rude until they google pohutakawa.

Festive love and peace,

Tim, Liv and Lucy

Red Stars and Red Tape

After just about making a career over here out of photocopying my important documents and handing over large wads of cash to the countless manifestations of New Zealand bureaucracy I was recently awarded the right to teach in the country’s schools. This I have done with no small amount of enjoyment and I can say that teaching students whose pronunciation of certain vowels leaves one in mild hysterics is incredibly rewarding. Let me recount a typical post-lunch dialogue:
Taeuna, a lively lad, arrives well after the bell and pants breathlessly:
'Gee, um so hot und switty, ay?' To which Molla replies:
'Not uz switty uz yo mama last night bro!' At this point I interrupt and attempt to explain the irony of 'yo mama' jokes that end with 'bro'.
'Not evun!' Molla replies indignantly. This roughly translates into English as 'You're right, our cultural turn of phrase is very silly, our accent is ridiculous and all sheep related jokes made at our expense are true.' Very good fun in anyone's book you'll agree.

Unfortunately, in the midst of my witty classroom observations I remained naively unaware that the aforementioned paper work did not give me the right to be paid for said work. This would involve many more weeks of me disclosing increasingly inane details about my life such as the verification of my grandmother's next-door-neighbour's sister's second-best-friend's deceased budgie’s registration certificate. A particularly stunning example of a government department's complete inability to adhere to common precepts of logic occurred when I rang the Ministry of Education in order to procure for myself a Ministry of Education number. The response from my heavily accented phone correspondent was one of uncertainty:
'Ah...I'm not exactly sure… I don't think we actually give those out here.' To which I responded:
'Isn't this the Ministry of Education?'
'Yes it is.'
'Do you deal with Ministry of Education Numbers?' I ask, now second-guessing my own logic.
'Yes we do, that's how we identify teachers and allocate their pay'
'But you're telling me,' I continued, in increasing bewilderment, 'that you can't tell me how I might get one of these numbers?'
'Well, it's not a simple process...' I stopped him here to explain that previous experience in this country had left me with no illusion that the getting of this number would be, by any means, a simple process. But it was again my naive hope that I might get the ball rolling before continental drift saved me buying plane ticket back to Australia.

Finally, feeling battle weary but mildly triumphant at having gathered and forwarded all the relevant details to every person in the country in possession of a shirt and tie, I eagerly awaited my paycheck. This arrived quicker than expected but appeared a little thin. Don't get me wrong, I know teaching's not rocket science and I don't do this job just for the money in any country, but being paid at the rate of $29K per year, holiday loading included, certainly makes me thankful for all those diligent colleagues of mine back in Australia who turn up to enterprise bargaining meetings to fight for more than the award rate. This is not forgetting that we're talking New Zealand dollars here - which are at best worth marginally more than their cricket team.

Needless to say I've decided to focus my attention on the country's better-known attributes in the remainder of my time here like the dramatic landscapes, endless pristine bays and my beautiful wife. Thus I have chosen not to work on sunny days and, as summer is almost upon us, there is a distinct possibility I may not grace the gates of another place of learning until we return to the big brown land.

Big love.

Mr Moore (+ Mrs and Miss Moore)

Ps. In keeping with the theme of tedious bureaucracy I have decided not to put any photos or videos on this post but you can click here to find semi-recent photos of the Moore family at various states of rest and play.

Guy Fawkin’ Good Times

For thousands of years the Chinese have used fireworks to light up the nights and the faces of everyone with that boyish love for dangerous explosions. It was only relatively recently that the whities came along and said ‘Hallo chaps, perhaps we can use this stuff to conquer and subjugate less developed nations’ to which the Chinese replied ‘Now look here,’ (they had English accents too it seems) ‘That’s not terribly sporting, we just use the stuff to make our festivals and future Oympic endeavours a little more exciting.’ To which, if my sources are correct, the whities replied ‘Oh dry up. Come back when you’ve got your own plan for global domination.’

I must say that none of this transcontinental dialogue, however historically accurate, was going through my mind at 8:51pm on the night of Wenesday the 5th of November. Nor was I thinking about Mr Fawke’s anarchistic aspirations of the early 17th century as I drove past endless front yards that teamed with young families, teenagers and the elderly gingerly lighting fuses that trailed out of buckets full of pointy coloured rockets. As great showers of sparks lit up the night on either side like great computer animated footsteps my singular concern was getting to the local supermarket before they locked the doors on our pyrotechnic adventures for another 360 days. That’s right, New Zealand’s charm does extend beyond dramatic scenery and their willingness to put soft cheeses in meat pies, for five days a year anyone with a fiver and a less than keen affection for all of their fingers is free to strike terror into the hearts of neighbourhood dogs in the name of disestablishmentarianism.

Landing the Honda in the New World carpark at 8:58pm I burst through the automatic doors to see the assistant manager dismantling the temporary fireworks display. Trying hard to mask my desperation I casually enquired about the possibility of purchasing the goods that go bang. He blankly directed me to a box of Mad Lion fireworks (pictured). The severe looking king of the jungle staring up at me from the passenger seat only served to heighten my excitement and sense of danger as I drove my bounty home. Pausing only to read the very obvious warning labels (Caution: This product may emit showers of sparks) and assure those concerned for our safety that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing but were sure these things weren’t dangerous, we joined our fellow revellers on the beach. Needless to say that in the half hour that followed much fun was had and many a cheeky grin was exchanged in the flashing lights as, ankle deep in the sand, we lapped up the best NZ$39.95 we’ve ever spent.

Fully sick bro...

Whenever I am asked about where I come from, on mention of the Adelaide Hills most Kiwis say something like 'Oh I couldn't live there with all those bushfires'. It's an understandable fear, I must admit that when I hear the distant sirens ring out in the middle of a 40 degree day with a hot northerly blowing I put the cricket bat down and pause to think about what my bushfire action plan might have been had I cared to have one. But coming from the inhabitants of a land peppered with some of the most active volcanoes in the world I do find it a little incongruous.

Before coming here I was previously unaware of the events of 146 AD. It was in this year that the Chinese heard an awfully loud bang and the Romans noted peculiarly red skies for quite some time. What they saw and heard was the effects of the most catastrophic natural disaster in human history. It was in this year that Taupo (now a sleepy tourist town nestled around an unusually round lake) erupted with ten times the force of Krakatoa, destroying almost everything unfortunate enough to have made this land its home.

Intrigued by these events our little family packed our things into the car and headed south to the place where the Indo-Australian and the Pacific tectonic plates grind over one another with unimaginable force - known to the world as Rotorua, and marketed to the public by NZ Tourism under the misleadingly benign title of the country's premier geothermal wonderland.

Arriving late in the afternoon at a city where steam seemed to rise out of lakes, drains, lawns, cracks in the footpath and small children we decided to shelve our cost cutting plans to cook in our cabin and chose instead to eat at the saddest looking Turkish restaurant we could find. This was a mistake. It was only after the event that we found out that all New Zealand eateries have an alphabetic quality code that must be displayed by law near the counter. Assuming that 'A' is the best we must have missed the line of 'Zs' that should have featured in the service area of 'Cafe Istanblue'. Liv, a notoriously slow eater, noticed after a few mouthfuls that the food tasted funny. I, being a notoriously fast eater, gazed at my empty plate in sombre reflection. What followed is better left unsaid except to say that the experience of New Zealand's premier geothermal region is heightened when hot, stinky mud is not just coming out of holes in the ground. It must be noted that a green faced family fronted up at Cafe Istanblerk the next day to provide some much needed customer feedback.

Still feeling queezy I visited the local museum where I learnt about the 1896 Tarawera eruption that erased three whole villages from the human gene pool and I was harangued by images of the whole regions impending, if not spectacular doom. Upon asking passing locals whether total annihilation was a genuine threat or just a hyped up tourism device, all seemed strangely evasive and offered no assurances that anywhere in the vicinity was a safe place to be. Bushfires were looking better by the moment. So with an apocalyptic step in our stride we set off for Waimangu National Park - the world's newest geothermal formation.

Hot water. We make tea with it everyday without a second thought, but I can tell you that when that stuff is pumping out of the ground it is one of the most impressive things around. At Waimangu (which is really the spectacular fallout of the Tarawera eruption) billions of litres of water too hot to drink churns around in enormous lakes, one of which, an opaque blue colour, mysteriously rises and falls 12 metres - 12 metres! And they don't know why! So we were apprehensively impressed as we followed a scalding river down one of the most beautiful and unique valleys on earth.


We were preceded by a group of cheerful monks that helped to lighten the sense of doom.






To the right of this photo flows the aforementioned scalding river.







In other news...

I know that it's fashionable for every parent out there to fancy themselves as neo-Freudian child psycho-analysts and present passers by with scads of psycho-babble that prove their child is reaching all the key developmental stages in such an order that proves that they are smarter than everyone else's children. We're not really into that. I prefer to use the animal kingdom to describe where Lucy is at. Currently she is firmly insconsed in the kitten stage. This involves a lot of lying on her back and pawing at anything vaguely interesting within her reach.



New Zealand's seeming oblivion to curious double entendre continues...













Much love and peace (particularly geothermal and gastric peace) to you in your corner of this great planet,

Tim, Liv and Lucy.

An accent by any other name

Think for a moment of the world’s easiest names to pronounce. I’m guessing that Tim features somewhere on your list. Well, let me tell you about an exchange I had in a shoe shop recently. The young go-getter assistant who seemed so eager to help that I was a little unsettled, asked me my name.
‘It’s Tim’ I replied.
‘Itseim… hmmm… is that middle eastern?’ he queried,
‘No mate, my name’s Tim’ I corrected.
‘Teem?’ Assistant now looking slightly puzzled.
‘No, it’s Tim’ I said, taking more care than would’ve seemed necessary to pronounce the all important vowel.
‘Sorry, I’m still not getting it…’ At this point, wondering whether I was actually in an English speaking country, I spelled my three-letter, one syllable name. ‘Oh Tum. I was just having trouble with your funny accent.’ My expression at this point could only be truly appreciated by another Australian. This would be funnier if it didn’t seem to happen everyday and it’s for this reason I no longer answer the phone at our house.

I also had another interesting conversation in a hardware store in Silverdale. Silverdale is a little town north of Auckland with a disproportionate number of lingerie stores – I counted eight out of the total of fifteen shops having ladies intimate apparel hung in the windows. I was not there to buy lingerie but a tool set (spot the gender stereotype). Knowing that I would be leaving in six months and therefore piffing the tools when I left, I had in my hand the cheapest set of tools in the store that looked like they would last at least until I got them home. I was carefully checking the price when I noticed not a small number of very young kids wandering about the store, some with ominous looking tools in their hands. At this point a quietly spoken young fella approached me with a baby on his arm appearing to want to help me find what I was looking for. Being the new dad that I am I asked whether the baby was his.
‘Oh no, this is my nephew,’ he continued, ‘most of these kids are either my brothers and sisters or their kids.’ Stunned by the number of kids in the store who obviously weren’t there to buy tools or gaffer tape, I replied:
‘Must have a pretty big family?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got eight sisters and seven brothers’ he responded casually. I paused,
‘From the same parents?’ I asked, forgetting that this might be a bit of an intrusive question.
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied like someone who probably has this conversation every day, ‘most people think it’s pretty strange but it’s not that out of the ordinary.’ The casualness of the last remark did not match the dumbfounded look on my face. Being Olympics time I mentioned China’s One Child Policy by way of a stunning contrast, ‘Oh they’re crazy over there,’ he replied. Crazy indeed, I thought.

As I wandered back to the car, passed windows full of frilly knickers and lacy bras, I contemplated the potential for disaster in hardware stores come childcare centres and the role that lingerie might play in the creation of what can only be described as the uber-families of Silverdale. I love this place.

Liv promises to add to this blog soon and save it from being the shamelessy self-indulgent Tum show,

Big love,

Tim + Liv + Lucy

Ps. Here's a photo of Lucy to demonstrate how she's getting cuter by the minute. Liv's seems rather certain that, despite our proximity to Silverdale, Lucy is not the first of sixteen.

Falling water

Here are some photos and videos of Whangarei and Hururu Falls. Both are fine examples of the sort of magical places Aotearoa has to offer but believe it or not both have road bridges just over the top of them! I mean these are the sorts of places that in other countries would attract trendy eco-tourism companies or at least world heritage status – not in New Zealand – here they are nothing more than inconveniences for highway engineers.

Here's Lucy looking powerful cute then snug in jackets in our happy little family.

If you're wondering what we're thinking in these photos it went something like ' how great are waterfalls?'

In other news we’ve found a great local pub that sells tasty beers and all manner of deep-fried seafood. The guy behind the bar appears to wear shorts in all weather – which is quite impressive given the extremes we have over here. To give you an idea of this the other day I spent the morning in the sun on our veranda eating my breakfast, next minute sheets, quilts even, of rain descended on the country. Two hours later, the sun was back and the bad weather almost forgotten until that night when it was reported that a place around the bay had received 500mm of rain – FIVE HUNDRED MILLIMETRES! To give the Adelaideans back home a bit of perspective that’s 55mm less than our average annual rainfall – 30mm more than we received for the whole of 2007 – in two hours! Needless to say this is a very strange place and any publican who has obviously made a personal commitment to the wearing of shorts regardless is deserving of at least a little respect.

Check this Kiwi confectionery:





How perky you ask? Mighty perky.

You can see more photos by clicking this sentence if you're keen.

Big pacific love,

Tim, Liv and Lucy.

Sweet penguin and the 'Hell Hole of the Pacific'

The Bay of Islands is one of those places found throughout the Antipodes with a conveniently descriptive name. You have some idea of what to expect before you round the final bend to be met by a glassy seascape punctured with numerous beautiful isles large and small.

We awoke in the coastal town of Paihia (sunrise pictured right) and trundled along the esplanade to the wharf where we boarded a ferry to the sleepy town across the bay with a rather curious history. After pushing our pram up along the main street and through winter morning sun we found our way to the local museum. This was full of lots of interesting stuff like the jaws of a seven metre shark, a one fifth scale model of Captain Cook’s Endeavour and an impressive array of instruments intended for inflicting harm on others but the story behind the naming of the town did lead me to break the stuffy silence with a cheeky giggle.

Legend has it that a chief, wounded in battle, asked for penguin and after drinking some of the broth, murmured, “Ka reka te korora”, meaning how sweet is the penguin? Now I’m sure that only those present at this post-battle recoup could tell us whether the chief was being rhetorical or not but his question must have begged an answer that went something like ‘pretty sweet’ because the town was named Kororareka meaning sweet penguin. Another name given to this town in the early 19th century was ‘Hell hole of the Pacific’, apparently due to the general sense of lawlessness and debauchery that ensued soon after the arrival of Euros with their deserting seamen, runaway convicts, grog sellers, settlers, pimps and prostitutes. Stranger still is the fact that this ‘Tortuga’ of the pacific became the nation’s capital in 1840 but was moved elsewhere less than a year later. A few years later someone must have named the place after a mate down the pub as the town has now gone by the name of Russell for the last 150 years (jetty pictured left).

Leaving the museum with a sense of historical accomplishment we wandered around New Zealand’s oldest church, went up to the lookout (this highlighting again our mutual lack of physical fitness as a married couple) and enjoyed the truly stunning panorama of aforementioned islands from a new vantage point. This picture obviously does said view little justice.


As we watched the Hell hole of the Pacific retreat behind the wake of the mid-afternoon ferry Liv and I agreed that this was the sort of town we would not be ashamed to call home and I was struck with the thought that when Kiwis say ‘sweet as…’ perhaps they are abbreviating the full ancient saying ‘sweet as that penguin at Russell’.

Lucy and the storm

We were woken early in the morning by the sound of every loose object outside our house skating across the pavement before shedding the bonds of gravity and taking flight. Bleary eyed we peered through our curtains at the serene seascape we admired the day before to see the usually waveless beach a tumultuous pea soup of crashing breakers right out to where the horizon became obscured by the torrential rain making rivers across our lawn. This continued throughout the day and when we lost power, with the light fading, we were found huddled in blankets around a scratchy battery operated radio listening to what the broadcasters were boldly calling a 'weather bomb'. That's right - it was a bomb... in the sky... made of weather. Despite the added aspect of terror (in the popular US sense that is) we were able to batten down the hatches, make some mid-storm reinforcements to shaky decks and find enough candles to play a distracted game of scrabble.

We awoke to a less wild but no less miserable day of rain and newspapers plastered with unroofed homes, landed yachts and rather forlorn looking New Zealand faces accompanied by stories of survival and loss (one of which is pictured right, just try to ignore the rugby propaganda - it's a dark time for the All Blacks but this Aussie thinks they should take it on the chin with the manliness that their haka implies). The storm claiming five lives on a day where winds topped 167kph .



I was particularly intrigued by this last figure as I had done little elemental measurement myself during the day. Fighting my way through the horizontal rain I climbed into the driver's seat of my new red car during the storm and tried figure out how fast this would be if I were driving. Needless to say this wasn't as effective as I had hoped and I concluded that the weather people - apart from following up leads on possible fundamentalist connections to the bad weather - may perhaps have had more effective ways of measuring wind speed, resolving to trust their judgment in future.

Meteorological incendiary devices aside we've had a cosy last few days here. Lucy is expanding her vocabulary of various very meaningful throat noises every day and, in our modest opinion, is taking cuteness to the next level. Here's a little video taken just after we posed some poignant questions to her about space and time and the meaning of life (she smiles about it in the end).

Other adventures of note have been our trip up to Mahurangi Regional Park - where we have begun to discover that New Zealand has more beautiful places than people able to visit/inhabit them, our joining of the Orewa library - this giving us access to the whole of the Rodney District’s libraries (that's right, we are living in a district called 'Rodney' and I have a library card to prove it) and lastly we had the pleasure of meeting some beautiful people at a farm dinner, including some very welcoming new families and an Arab Palestinian Christian formally of the BBC with whom I spent most of the night embroiled in a fascinating conversation covering the intricate nuances of speaking and writing Arabic to the marsh people of Iraq (yeah I know, apparently they have miles of marshes in Iraq where people live on floating beds of reeds and palm fronds, again, fascinating). Thus ends the longest continuous sentence I have ever written. Let's pretend it's postmodern and not just poor grammar.

It's expected to rain here now until 2010 but we are hopeful to begin exploring this beautiful land despite. For the moment just being with Liv's family and meeting some of the very friendly locals is enough to keep us smiling at each other.

Big love.


Tim, Liv and Lucy.

A quick catch up for those who may be out of the loop...

Apparently it takes two weeks from the time your baby is born to process their birth certificate. Once you have sent this birth certificate off with your application it takes a further two weeks to receive your new little bub's passport. So perhaps booking an international flight four weeks after the due date for Lucy's entry into the world was cutting it a little fine... but we made it and with the newest passport on the plane (that is supposed to last her until she turns five - yep 'here's me as a frog' she'll say) we boarded Air New Zealand flight 822 after teary goodbyes from friends and family, manic farewell parties and a whole lot of raised eye-browed strangers who obviously thought we were bad parents for moving countries with a new born baby girl.

Trying our hardest not to smirk at the air hostesses'/customs officers'/duty-free shop assistants' accents we arrived in Auckland with a mixed sense of excitement and relief - excitement at the prospect of a new life on the beach with Liv's family and relief that the ocean of paper work wider than the Tasman was now behind us. After a lift with Hudson from the airport through the darkness and the rain we arrived at 23 Ocean View Road where two very proud grandparents met their first grandchild for the very first time. There was hugs and well dones and isn't this greats and lots of smiling followed by a tasty roast. That night we climbed into bed with full tummies, the sound of the ocean in our ears and the quiet sighs of a dreaming Lucy in a cane bassinet beside us.

Since then we have:

• Bought a fancy car - it's red and it goes really fast, not very us but cars are so cheap here, something to do with not having a domestic auto-manufacturing plant to compete with imports so there is no tax on import Japanese cars.
• Built a dam with Pola (Liv's cousin from Sydney) in one of the creeks that runs across the beach.
• Watched a little too much SKY TV - this has to stop immediately.
• Read stacks of old books - the walls of this old house is lined with well loved volumes - I think the owners use them for insulating the walls (currently reading Thomas More's 'A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation').
• Eaten feijoa cereal like it's going out of fashion.
• Watched rain fall in sheets on the South Pacific Ocean.
• Found hermit crabs in rock pools.
• Giggled uncontrollably at the New Zealand accent while watching the news.

Two things I need to see before I leave this place is molten lava and grinding glaciers, I am told the land of the long white cloud can deliver both.

Much love + deep peace,

Timmo (on behalf of Liv + Lucy)

Ps. For more photos check out this link