Simon & Emily
9th November 2006, 11:48 AM
Well, at long last (after a few guilty thoughts!) I’ve finally got around to putting some info on here.
We finally arrived in Christchurch on 1st August, and have packed so much into three months it feels like we’ve been here forever. During our preparations, we gained so much knowledge and friendliness from this forum, I feel as though I ought to share our experiences. However, despite all my good intentions, I never got around to keeping a diary, let alone enter anything on our blog page :o But, I know we were always interested to hear how people did things, so here goes.
We intended to stay on the south island, but Simon got a good job offer up in Rotorua after a few weeks. So, having spent 5 weeks on holiday in Christchurch, we had to knuckle down to normal life. We accumulated an amazing amount of new ‘treasure’ in those 5 weeks, along with two cars, so we drove from Christchurch to Rotorua over a Friday / Saturday, with Simon starting work on the Monday. (We’d already sorted out a rental, on a non-stop 5 day visit the week before!)
Having spent most of the last couple of weeks house and rental hunting in the area, we actually viewed our house on the Monday, finished the contract on the Tuesday, and moved in the following week on the Friday!! We’d already organized the movement of our container goods from Christchurch to Rotorua (about $6000 – daylight robbery if you ask me, compared to the amount it cost to ship it from England) so they arrived the next Monday – just two weeks after we arrived in Rotorua.
It’s a lovely rural spot of three acres, with a trout stream running along it, which is great for paddling and swimming. Really peaceful, and just what we were looking for. The downside is that it only got a really, really small house on it, so we are currently awaiting council approval to bring a re-located house down here. We also viewed this, and got verbal approval from the council before we made our unconditional offer, we hope there will not be too many unforeseen problem…….. If it all goes OK, it should be here within a couple of weeks, and then the real hard work starts!
Another downside of living so far out in the sticks is that we are unable to get broadband. Dial up is so, so, so slow, so we are looking into satellite broadband, but this costs about $500 to install and a minimum of $100 per month to access, but I think we are going to have to do this, if only to get some usable contact with the outside world in England!! (An e-mail takes about 10 minutes to send from pushing the button, and it frequently falls over and looses things, by some sort of internal security cut off I think). We have to have sky tv as well, but I guess we’d already decided to get that having got hooked in Christchurch!
However, we feel that we’ve settled in really well; our son is happy at the local school, our daughter is at the playcentre, we go to the hot thermal pools and swimming in one of the local ‘secret pools’ at least once a week with school friends. Everyone is so friendly and helpful (although we’re waiting for the first hostile local!) and all our neighbours have promised us BBQ’s once the weather gets better.
So, I’m not sure if there are any other forumites out there in the Rototua area (there must be, there are so many of us here …..) but we are about 25 minutes drive south. I don’t think we’ll be making any Christchurch meetings after all :D but I must thank Mark and Anne for there hospitality whilst we were there. It was also nice to meet a few people from here, and put faces to names.
There’s so much I could say about our first three months, but it would probably bore the pants of you, even if you bothered to read this far! But, if anyone has any questions, feel free to fire them at me. It may take a while to reply, but will happily share anything which may be helpful.
Emily
We finally arrived in Christchurch on 1st August, and have packed so much into three months it feels like we’ve been here forever. During our preparations, we gained so much knowledge and friendliness from this forum, I feel as though I ought to share our experiences. However, despite all my good intentions, I never got around to keeping a diary, let alone enter anything on our blog page :o But, I know we were always interested to hear how people did things, so here goes.
We intended to stay on the south island, but Simon got a good job offer up in Rotorua after a few weeks. So, having spent 5 weeks on holiday in Christchurch, we had to knuckle down to normal life. We accumulated an amazing amount of new ‘treasure’ in those 5 weeks, along with two cars, so we drove from Christchurch to Rotorua over a Friday / Saturday, with Simon starting work on the Monday. (We’d already sorted out a rental, on a non-stop 5 day visit the week before!)
Having spent most of the last couple of weeks house and rental hunting in the area, we actually viewed our house on the Monday, finished the contract on the Tuesday, and moved in the following week on the Friday!! We’d already organized the movement of our container goods from Christchurch to Rotorua (about $6000 – daylight robbery if you ask me, compared to the amount it cost to ship it from England) so they arrived the next Monday – just two weeks after we arrived in Rotorua.
It’s a lovely rural spot of three acres, with a trout stream running along it, which is great for paddling and swimming. Really peaceful, and just what we were looking for. The downside is that it only got a really, really small house on it, so we are currently awaiting council approval to bring a re-located house down here. We also viewed this, and got verbal approval from the council before we made our unconditional offer, we hope there will not be too many unforeseen problem…….. If it all goes OK, it should be here within a couple of weeks, and then the real hard work starts!
Another downside of living so far out in the sticks is that we are unable to get broadband. Dial up is so, so, so slow, so we are looking into satellite broadband, but this costs about $500 to install and a minimum of $100 per month to access, but I think we are going to have to do this, if only to get some usable contact with the outside world in England!! (An e-mail takes about 10 minutes to send from pushing the button, and it frequently falls over and looses things, by some sort of internal security cut off I think). We have to have sky tv as well, but I guess we’d already decided to get that having got hooked in Christchurch!
However, we feel that we’ve settled in really well; our son is happy at the local school, our daughter is at the playcentre, we go to the hot thermal pools and swimming in one of the local ‘secret pools’ at least once a week with school friends. Everyone is so friendly and helpful (although we’re waiting for the first hostile local!) and all our neighbours have promised us BBQ’s once the weather gets better.
So, I’m not sure if there are any other forumites out there in the Rototua area (there must be, there are so many of us here …..) but we are about 25 minutes drive south. I don’t think we’ll be making any Christchurch meetings after all :D but I must thank Mark and Anne for there hospitality whilst we were there. It was also nice to meet a few people from here, and put faces to names.
There’s so much I could say about our first three months, but it would probably bore the pants of you, even if you bothered to read this far! But, if anyone has any questions, feel free to fire them at me. It may take a while to reply, but will happily share anything which may be helpful.
Emily