Saturday, October 17, 2015

Weather - and whether the plane's on time

Gales and disrupted flight and ferry schedules makes travel a tad more challenging so I'm very grateful to the Weather Gods for coming up trumps on Thursday morning for a calm flight to Invercargill. My annual dental check was postponed in September when low cloud closed both our airstrip and Invercargill Airport and I was fearing that gale-force winds might disrupt my appointment again.

The gales have caused some damage around the village; trees down, windows blown in and some roofing iron off. I came very close to abandoning the house after some huge gusts but luckily the roof stayed on - I didn't get much sleep though. The shade house got battered again and I've got more firewood after some trees and branches came down. The bush is littered with stripped branches and leaves but Mother Nature will use all of this extra debris to foster new growth - if only people were as efficient at recycling!

With a clean bill of health for my teeth I had plenty of time to explore Invercargill and work on my shopping list. The weather was fine and breezy on Thursday and early Friday morning but the wind changed later on bringing showers and light rain for my trip back home. Here are some Spring pics from the stunning Queens Park...









Young tuatara near one of his/her tunnels - these ones move fast

An older tuatara






It was good to be able to chat with the Spark techies face to face; my new phone is working fine but Bluetooth and setting it up as a wifi hotspot chews through the battery in less than 16 hours. The technical specs state that it has a non-replaceable battery lasting 400 charges which, by my calculations, means that it won't last much longer than a year. I was relieved when the Spark techie reassured me that the battery was covered under the two year warranty so maybe I'll use these new-fangled devices a bit more now.

More on my Invercargill jaunt in the next blog!