I have a confession to make.

I am not in Australia, I am in New Zealand for a few months.

I wasn’t going to write about it because I called New Zealand home for over 40 years and besides, this blog is called traveller in Oz.

But then I thought; there may be some of you that are as interested in New Zealand as I am in Australia. It is a fascinating country. I just happen to be in an uninteresting corner.

I am staying with four of my sons in what used to be my family home.

It is in the second cheapest suburb in the region, as it was the only place we could afford a five bedroom, two bathroom house, at a time when more than 90% of homes had one bathroom. (Most still do) We also have 6742 sq metres of land so the boys can have space to run around. Naturally as children of the 90’s and the new millennium they prefer to use just ten square meters of it to stay inside and play computer games.

There are two sides to our suburb; the “good” side, where children are picked up from school in four wheel drives, and the “bad” side where you don’t leave washing on the line at night and shoes get stolen from outside your door. We live in the good side.

One of New Zealand’s best model designers lives in our suburb, so the shopping centre boasts a wonderfully designed two seater bike with a metal man on the front who pedals along with anyone brave enough to ride on the back. Four other interactive structures were installed just before I left but this is the only one that seems to have lasted the two years since.

New sculpture

Our suburbs welcoming structure is a sculpture shaped like two worms mating. It is currently being used to display some wags collection of road safety cones.

Now they have added a new sculpture in a similar style. It seems to be designed for longevity and not aesthetic reasons. From some angles it looks like a finger in the air gesture.

I did love it here and it’s a nice community to raise a family but after twenty years, it has lost its charm for me. I am a wanderer.

If you add in the chilly winters, Antarctic winds and unreliable summers, you might see why I have chosen to move to sunny Queensland Australia.

My next post will be about the nearby suburb that is not just fading, it is vanishing. You have been warned.

Australia is not a bigger New Zealand (Part 1)

I am back in New Zealand for an extended visit and it got me thinking about the surprising ways Australia is very different from New Zealand. I thought Australia was just a larger version of New Zealand. How wrong I was.

This blog post is about some of the differences.

The Wild Life

After two years I never saw a koala in the wild and the only echidna I saw was road kill; but I glimpsed wallabies and kangaroos in their natural element. I saw marvellous Water Dragons ( a very cool looking lizard with bouncy legs and a frill on top), a family of kookaburras, some shy platypuses and whole family of frogs bouncing in the light of my headlights. I went to cairns and saw a crocodile farm and watched a Cassowary cross the road. One day I hope to see the local four foot long Goana and the chunky wombats. I have never seen any of these in New Zealand

The Birds

The birds in Australia are bigger and brasher than their NZ counterparts and come in all the colourful hues I have only seen in NZ cages. They are large and noisy and a whole flock settles in the neighbours garden in the early morning calling each other in raucous and shrill tones. One week I saw about a twenty cockatoos and Galahs feasting on berries in just one tree. I also love the long curved beak Ibis I watched fossicking in amongst the people eating at the Southbank market in Brisbane city.

The Insect Life

Just like the birds, the insects are bigger and bolder. I have been up close and personal with large furry Huntsman Spiders in the house and they can run pretty fast when you are chasing them with a broom. They also make a big mess when you splat them. Mosquitos are familiar but the flies are particularly annoying. In NZ a fly will give up when you swat at it but not in Australia. It just flies off lazily and chooses a new spot to land its little legs on your face. Yuk.

The Bugs

No one told me about the leeches. Twice I went bush walking and had the little black jelly like bloodsuckers crawl up my shoe onto my ankle. They inject anaesthetic and anticoagulant, and then sit there sucking the blood and drop off when they are full. I noticed the first one early but the second left me with a big bloody mark on my sock. At least I never had a tick move in. Those things leave an itchy raised red rash.