Tuesday we get up really early and drive straight down to Invercargill with the ute and the trailer. Our mission today is to pick up a load of Axminster carpet. I got this lot off trademe which is more than enough to carpet Tilly. The weather looks good we have no rain on the horizon. Once we have loaded it up and begin to strap it down it spits. Typical! Oh well it isn’t enough to really matter. We do a bit of op shopping and we op shop all the way back to Herbert. We get in around 7pm, we are incredibly tired. We check the forecast, a chance of a few showers in the morning. Sweet, let’s sleep and worry about unloading tomorrow.

Waking up to rain, proper rain at 2am, serves us right for being lazy! Well our Wednesday just got more interesting. We head to the Hampden Tip, let’s buy all the fans we can. We score 8 fans, 1 dehumidifier for $25. They give them super cheap as we promise them they will be coming back as soon as we are done. We unload these long heavy rolls into the house. We spread them out and turn everything on. They take up three rooms.

We take off to the Ōamaru tip to look for building materials and perhaps some more fans. I come across this amazing shelf, it hasn’t been priced so I ask how much? $45. Sold! instead of recessing it in I am going to paint the edge behind and add led lights! Our Wednesday looking up, we head back to Herbert and start organising.

I get a call from the principal of the school next to our blocks. Oh the fence we have planned actually goes through your property. Is it okay if I give your number to the project manager? Absolutely, no worries I am sure we will work something out.

Thursday, oh wow really hot. 36 degrees! Not a great day to be inside a hot container and trying to re organise it. When we came back from Christchurch we just put everything in there no order whatsoever. Today is the day to change that. I have to take several breaks and drink a lot of water. In the end we gave up, got in the camper and waited for it to get shady enough that we could carry on. It all finally got done.

Friday morning, we are hitting the road. First let’s check on our carpet. The fans and dehumidifier are doing a good job, we empty it and leave it all on. From there we head south to Palmerston. First to sort the Camele’s tanks then we go to look at the new survey pegs. Eek, it looks like one goes quite far onto the neighbours property. Oh well worry about that later. From Palmerston we head to Lake Dunstan. We stop many times along the way, Ranfurly, Alexander etc.

Saturday morning we carry on towards Queenstown and go out to Glenorchy. Not without a mandatory stop at Fergburger and the op shops. We try to make it all the way out to Chinamans Bluff, but the fords get the better of us. Camele is not a 4wd so let’s not push it! We come back and check out the start of the Routeburn track. On the last ford which was the deepest we found a couple who had taken off a lot of the plastic underside of their rental car. Oops. The ford was quite murky now and they didn’t know there was a huge rock in the middle of it. Which of course we had seen and avoided both ways. In the end we stay that night on the banks at the Rees River.

Sunday, we head back in towards the Routeburn but head past to the Greenstone and Caples Track. First we reach Kinloch then we are back on small track roads. There are three fords to cross and it is raining. We decide we won’t hang around long just in case they get deeper! We make it to the end of the road. Looks like a good walk, we will come back and do it sometime! Tonight we wait for Wānaka. Heading back in to Queenstown the weather gets a lot better. We go up over the Crown Range and end up finding a freedom camping spot at the top. That’s it we shall stay here. Well Queenstown has a lack of spaces you can stay. 22 other campers were up there too. We found a spot high up which meant we really didn’t have neighbours.

Monday, time to head home. We op shop in Wānaka before heading to Ōmarama. At Ōmarama we take a quick detour to the salmon shop near Twizel. Yumm real wasabi and a load of fish later that is our lunch. However we don’t stop and actually eat till way after 3pm. In Duntroon we go down to the domain and find a shady spot to eat. On the way to Ōamaru we stop at Maerewhenua rock drawing site. This one we missed on our alps to ocean cycle as we were on a fenced part of the ride. We climbed the stairs to take a look. Before heading back, we stopped in Elderslie to see Pete & Bev. Pete was home but not Bev. Finally at 6pm we were back in Herbert. It felt like a long day but I am glad we had a chance to go away before cracking on.