Coming to New Zealand has been such a fun experience, and it’s been great to see so many things that I remember from when we were last here. I have enjoyed seeing all the similarities and differences from what I remember – so I decided to write them down into a blog post – enjoy Part 3 of the series – a special, Meadowbank Memories edition!

The ‘Duck Bridge’
I have good memories of crossing this bridge on our 10 minute daily walk to school. The wooden bridge was fairly narrow, it could probably fit 2-3 people side-by-side, and was about 30m long; but what made it very interesting was that 1. It was over a tidal marsh – water at high-tide, marsh at low; and 2. When we were crossing over it as a marsh, a group Puekekos (a beautiful, large, blue-feathered and red-legged marsh bird) would also be searching for food. On days when we had a little spare time we would often stand quietly looking down to watch them feeding, and for old-times-sake we did it again on our visit – they may never have been in a ponga tree (Kiwi 12 days of Christmas – Warning: Auto-play Music) but it was always lovely to see them – when the gate of the basin allowed the tide to go down, which is done less often now. We had to go elsewhere to see our Puekekos, which, of course, were still not in a Ponga tree – they are wading birds that aren’t excellent fliers after all!

Chicken Drumsticks
I remember many, many Saturday nights spent eating chicken drumsticks from a local shop in Meadowbank – nowadays I’m not really into takeaways, however, chicken drumsticks is probably something I could never get tired of! I remembered the corner just opposite the church we went to, it was quite distinctive and it helped us track it down, it was a lovely experience re-living our old family tradition one more time.

Meadowbank Train Station
I remember the fun Megan and I had, running down the central platform, or the grassy bank at the side – waving frantically to the nice train drivers who almost always smiled and waved back, to us as they pulled out from the station. The station had two lines which split around the central platform, there was no point having two platforms as there would need to be two bridges, plus the station was only accessible from the one side. I remember going on the train into Auckland city, and the fun and excitement the train held for me and Megan in those days – usually the train meant an evening out, a trip up the Sky Tower, or a tour of the city, but it was always fun seeing how Auckland’s City transport worked.

[This is my last memories post – but hang on! Expect a Part 4 from someone else, who is it – nobody knows…]

Coming to New Zealand has been such a fun experience, and it’s been great to see so many things that I remember from when we were last here. I have enjoyed seeing all the similarities and differences from what I remember – so I decided to write them down into a blog post – enjoy Part 2 of the series!

Sky Tower
My memory of going up this building, the tallest in the Southern Hemisphere, was fairly vivid – and it’s been a big ‘Want to do’ thing for me. I remember standing near the base of the building, giving the sense of the immense size of it, looking at a massive pillar of concrete in the foundation and realising it was one of 16, and then going up the lift, which took quite a while to ascend the first proper floor after the elevator shaft – I hadn’t remembered the glass floor in the lift, though! One of my favourite memories of the sky tower was probably standing on the glass flooring and looking down more than 150m to the city below, but I also enjoyed watching the sky jumpers flying off the tower on a rope and a harness – there was a countdown timer by one of the windows so we could be ready to watch.

Waiwera
Waiwera, a place where there is a swimming pool for almost anything you can imagine – warm pools, hot pools, very hot pools, baby pools, slide pools, even a Movie pool – you probably wouldn’t be surprised if you found a back-filp  diving into free Wifi pool!!! -so wish that was a thing! I have fond memories of spending an afternoon relaxing and swimming, changing pools whenever it suited – it was a brilliant experience and I’d been looking forward to doing it again. One of the things I remembered best was the slide tower, which you had to climb up to do the big flumes, of course, I only remember the little slide as I was too small – but, this time I got to go on one of the massive, twisting slides. It was very exciting speeding down, slowly at first, then faster, then faster, then eerily fast, then, when you were wondering if it would ever stop – SPLASH!! -you were slowed down to a halt in what felt like less than 2 seconds. I had a lot of fun swimming there, though some of the pools were just too hot – the more than 48°C Lava Pool was definitely too hot by some way, at least for us – but on the whole it was an amazing experience!

Sugar Cane
Another memory, as well as something I’ve really been looking forward to is eating raw sugar cane, very tasty and unusual, it’s just a shame you can’t get them in Britain. When we had them on our 6 month visit, we had some large bought cane – this time when we had it we ate some relatively narrow sugar cane grown in Nan an Granddad’s garden. Sugar cane is certainly very sweet – but often the best things are hard to get at: it took quite some time to work out how to dissect it to eat it!

Coming to New Zealand has been such a fun experience, and it’s been great to see so many things that I remember from when we were last here. I have enjoyed seeing all the similarities and differences from what I remember – so I decided to write them down into a blog post – enjoy Part 1 of the series!

Coloured Traffic Light Arrows

One of the first interesting things I remembered I saw as we drove over to our wonderful cottage from the airport were the coloured traffic light arrows, unlike the boring green ones we have back home. The traffic lights at a relatively busy junction had red and orange arrows, as well as the usual green ones, which I thought was really exciting to see – though it must be quite mundane for people who see them daily. I remembered the lights from the reasonable amount of driving we did in Auckland when we stayed for the 6 months in 2009; however, despite the orange and red arrows being really cool – but couldn’t they stay green just a bit longer!?!

‘Tunnel’ Between the Armchairs
This memory was a more family related one, being at Nan and Granddad’s house, reminding me of all the fun Megan and I had when we went to their house on a Thursday after I finished school. Between the two armchairs in the lounge in their house was a gap underneath the chair’s arms – about big enough for a P1 5-year-old, but maybe not a S1 12-year-old (see selfie above)!! When Megan or I weren’t hiding there in a game of hide and seek, Nan and Granddad’s cat Bobby used to sleep or rest in there.

Dunkin’ Donuts
I remember Dunkin’ Donuts as being a small shop, just part of a small square building off one of the main roads, I remember that they sold delicious donuts (which you can probably already tell from the name), and also that we visited many times. From what we saw, it hasn’t changed much – but I don’t remember the violent downpours of rain trying to stop us from getting into the shop! We often used to stop there, usually on a Saturday to get some donuts to eat for morning tea.