Kia ora whanau, we are back on the land of the long white cloud. We arrived back just before the end of the year. We packed up both vehicles full to the roof, got up early and headed to Ōamaru.

For those who know me well, I freeze in a manual when I get to traffic lights or stop signs when there is another vehicle behind me. Our ute doesn’t have a great handbrake and she rolls back. Rowan has it to a fine art but I don’t drive enough to get the knack. I am a bit nervous of driving all the way on my own but once we had been going for a bit in Christchurch it all just came naturally. Rowan stayed behind me which made me feel more confident. When we finally got out of Christchurch I put my music on and sang the rest of the way. With all the stops to check on each other it took 4 hours to get to Ōamaru. We stopped at the dump station at the north end of town. Barely back in town and our neighbour Jimmy pulled over to say hi and wished us a happy new year. Small towns!

We unloaded all our stuff into the container. Parked up the ute and headed up Mt Misery. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, chatting away.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed, off to town we go. We let ourselves into Leona’s office and pick up our keys for Till. We get to the house and have a good look around, we just want to measure up and make a mud map. We come across the notorious chest freezer, it doesn’t smell like the stuff has frozen in the time we have been away. I bravely open it. It smells really bad, mostly rotten vegetables. The freezer obviously doesn’t freeze anymore, at least it appears to keep things a bit colder. Rowan leaves the house almost immediately. I don’t think we will be going back inside today. What we really need is a skip, there is not much we can do without first getting rid of the rubbish to get a blank slate. I have the bright idea to hire someone to help us.

I ask a few friends if they know anyone who would like some work. No one knows anyone, so we get on Facebook and ask. Within a small time there are heaps of messages. I reply to all of them with photos of the work so they are not fooled into the job. We have a few people coming to check out the job tomorrow. Maybe $30 per hour was too much but I would rather a hard worker and it is messy work. It is not easy choosing someone but if they don’t work out we can say thank you and try someone else. Leona sees my post and tells me there are a few people that should be alright because she has sold a house to them. Cory is one of her recommendations.

One guy comes but he doesn’t appear to be enthusiastic about the job. Then a couple come who also want their son to help, now we are at $90ph! Not just that they are cleaners, I really need more a labourer than a cleaner. So we end up giving Cory a shot first, we need a skip but everyone is shut at the moment. Rowan and I decide we need to clear a space so the rubbish at the back of the house can come down beside the house. We get the Hilux into position tie a strop around the tree and drive. Works a treat on the pittosporums.

We will put up a cute picket fence instead. The pittosporums are a bit rotten and not in good knick.

Hello all, I hope you are all having a nice Christmas.

We are in Sydney, we came over about 2 weeks ago. Bette has been missing us and we have been missing her. It made good sense to see her before we got knee deep in cleaning up Till Street. Rowan said it is silly to go back just before Christmas Day. We are flying back on the 28th.

I have been baking up a storm since being here, making sure I fill the freezer before I leave. Bette’s friends came over for an early Christmas lunch which gave me an excuse to do pavlova!

We have ended spending Christmas Day alone, as Rowan’s sister didn’t invite us to her place, and his mother took Bette there for the day, but it’s nice to have some time to relax! They will be back some time this evening.

Wishing you a happy Christmas x

Well, well, well. This Facebook section for sale is bigger, flatter, pricier. Two hundred thousand to be exact, but that was a price we were happy to pay for Dunback. We just didn’t go that high because why pay more if no one else is willing to.

This land is simple, no crazy old unconsented buildings to remove. Just a stormwater drain exceptionally close or on some of the land. 3 titles instead of two and double the size of land. The good thing is we have done a lot of the due diligence on the Dunback property we can easily transfer a lot of that to this one. So we get on our bikes (so to speak) and visit their home to sign up. We go through all the frustrating moments of a private sale. Trying to act cool but also wanting to know what on earth is happening. It takes a few days for us to have it under contract. The race was on at this point as we didn’t want to dump Dunback without having this one in place and being sure. We exhausted all of our resources and asked millions of questions. Placemakers team have been a real gem in us getting our build costs. They really made life a lot easier for us.

Once we crashed the Dunback contract we knew with 90% certainty that we would go ahead with Brough St. The best thing to do was to continue our due diligence and keep digging to see if we had missed any important information we may need. We chatted to local council and regional. Finally we ran out of time and we went unconditional and settled. There was no real time between the two as lawyers are closing down for the holidays. We held back a few thousand for a surveyor to put pegs in the boundaries in the new year, but it is now in Rowan’s name. Not a bad ending for 2023!

It is all coming along nicely, touch wood, it all appears to be falling into place. I can finally tell you all, I will do it in two parts. Two sections we were considering on purchasing. 133 Dunback Road, Palmerston. The properties have two old school rooms that were located in the late 90s. These were put on the land, consent granted but they never got past the piles being dug. We hoped to save the buildings and we played a bit of cat and mouse to get them under contract. After we viewed the properties we attempted to get them under contract before the deadline sale. We offered $165k, which we hoped would entice them to take it. It ended up being a mistake as we gave the vendors high price expectations. When they didn’t take the offer we took it off the table and stayed quiet for a week.

The day before the deadline sale we got a call from the agent to see if we were still interested. I was very noncommittal and stayed very vague, a proud moment because that is not a strong point of mine. I overshare when I shouldn’t haha. This is the same day we did the phone bidding for the Waimate auction. That was in the morning and we stayed around Oamaru area to complete some errands. Once all our jobs were done, we headed south. We stayed near Shag Point waiting for the agent to call us. Those who blink first loose. We finally get a call about 3.30pm and we go to meet her at the property. We find there is one other offer, it is conditional on a lot of things including lending. Let’s face it, it is not worth the price of fish and it will never get over the line. As the only offer on the table we went in at $150k. Which we expected would be a bit of a blow to them. From there we headed to Dunedin for a much needed day off from property. The agent asked us to go up in price, we said no take it or leave it. They took it but wanted a 5 day sunset clause if an unconditional offer came to the table. I thought rather silly since we only did a 10 day due diligence but I texted back and said we are okay with that. 

We enjoyed the day off and op shopped all of Dunedin. We had a cool Atomic coffee machine to pick up. On our way back to Kakanui we dropped into Palmerston to sign the changes on the contract. Much to our despair the added clause was completely different to what the agent told us it was. They put 2 days instead of 5 and the wording meant any offer could invoke the clause. Rowan put his foot down and said it is 5 days or nothing. The agent tried to tell us we can’t pull the contract. Well lady until we agree and sign it there is no contract in place. After a bit of back and fourth we finally had an agreement signed. Now to start our due diligence. 

Here are some photos of the project. Our builder said we could save the two buildings but it will cost a lot of money. These are not exactly an architectural gem.

Just as our i’s got dotted and our t’s got crossed we came across a private sale on Facebook that changed our direction.

Exciting times ahead, we purchased a property! Now of course our blog will be taking a turn from traveling (though we hope to do that too) to house renovation! If this is your thing please keep reading. This is not a fast in and out lick of paint so strap yourselves in, we are rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty!

I can’t talk yet about another couple of properties we are doing some due diligence on so I will just make this blog about our definite project.

As you know we had the property blues. All of these ones we thought we could do kept slipping through our fingers. Frustration was at an all time high. We cast our net wider. Our wonderful friend and real estate agent Leona from Professionals was kind enough to let us use her office. She gave us the keys to her red door and we got full use of the computer and printer. We got on trademe and went through every property in every location in the Waitaki district we thought could be a go. We didn’t stick to Ōamaru like we initially thought we would. After a few hours we got down to about 10 potential properties. Ones we even didn’t think were worth considering, like a mortgagee sale we take a look at. We fired off a bunch of calls, emails, texts and then we hit the road to look at an open home.

Here is an 1880s cottage, going at mortgagee sale with no land (we want land), in dire need of some attention.

The agent said, “sign this safety form, I have been in here once today, I am not doing it again!” Daryl is so put off by it I can’t help but think great, this means he will put off a lot of buyers! This property is a good project but a distraction from our goal. We put it in our back pocket as a potential Christmas job if we have nothing better to do.

Our week continues on, we try with all our might to get another under contract. Offering a high price which we thought would do the trick. It gets put on hold until the deadline sale. So we pull the contract and ignore the agent until the deadline. A calculated risk, that we hoped would pay off later. A burnt out property in Waimate is coming up for auction, do we want it? It is worth a bit once all back in place. The problem is we cannot fix this one, it is a demolition and start again. We go to auction with this one, but really don’t want it. We just do a phone bid as we couldn’t say no for a certain price! It ends up reaching $185k which is worth it to the purchaser, but not us.

We low ball a few sections with contracts and due diligence, nothing really happens. We eat and breathe property all day everyday and don’t have much time for anything else. While in the back ground we get some small progress with our land in Herbert.

I spray the perimeter fences, gorse, thistles and broom. We talk to Chris, our neighbour and digger man. A decision is made to make a pad on the land to get our crap from Christchurch to here. We end up meeting our lovely neighbour Jim who has a big tractor and he comes and cuts the grass for us. We sling him some beer as a thank you!

We set up this camper trailer to hold our garden equipment, do you like our $2 seal? He protects the goodies inside haha.

After our Waimate auction the deadline is due for this property we tried to get before the deadline. I will go into all the details later, but we put another contract in $15k less than we had before.

Thursday arrives, we get a message from another agent to say, hey the vendor is going to sign your offer, I will let you know when it is done. Okay cool, we now have due diligence to do on a section. We get in the car and head to Timaru for the auction on the mortgagee sale. While on the way we finally have confirmation for the one we offered less on. Now we have another property to do due diligence on.

Before heading to this auction, we think we better talk to an insurance broker, we need some form of insurance between auction and settlement in 28 days. We assume all the risk and the vendor could literally burn it to the ground and we still have to pay for the property.

We are discussing our price at which we can’t not buy this mortgagee sale, (27 Till Street). I do a quick cost in the car, on what it is likely to cost us to renovate, $50k+, it does need a lot to make it into a home. An hour of chatting and going back and forth we arrive at Harcourts and sign the paperwork to bid. We bump into Jan another agent we have tried to buy a property off in the past. A quick meeting between us outside and we discuss, $140k is our limit. Rowan says he hasn’t read the LIM (land information memorandum), I have. We quickly grab it and read through it again. Rowan is literally reading the LIM as the auctioneer does his introduction. “This is an as is where is mortgagee sale….”

The bidding begins, I leave Rowan to bid as he is the one who signed the documents. It stalls at our bid of $136k. They go off to see if it is on the market, which basically means any bid from here buys it. They come back in the room and say it is. Finally the other bidder comes to life as he didn’t want to bid until it was. We were going up in $1k increments. My heart was pounding. When it reached $153k I thought we had it. But no it continues, we finally have the hammer fall and we win for $166k. Well that is over budget haha.

Well I guess we have a house now, four walls and a roof, quite different to living in a tent. As I said it never rains it pours. We have 3 properties now, one confirmed and two to work out if we want them! I am not sure exactly what we will do with this place obviously fix it up and live in it. It will take some time to make it habitable.

So here are some more photos of the huge job he have ahead of ourselves. We won’t sleep well for the next 28 days with no insurance. We know the vendor has been working well with the agent, helping clear out the hoarding (two skip bins) and allowing people in to view. So here we hope she doesn’t damage it further. She paid $91k so I am hoping a good portion of what we paid reaches her pocket.

The other bidder Luke, who Leona knows does this quite a lot. Buys the old properties and does them up. He normally has a budget of $100k, we hopefully won’t spend that much on it to get the house liveable. His budget was $160k so he went up another $5k to try secure it. Coming up two years without a house, it is going to be strange having four walls and a roof.

Feeling a bit frustrated and at a stand stall.

We have been endeavouring to get some balls moving but all like to inch a little then stop. Our camper rust took a lot longer than anticipated. When we went for our WOF yesterday it failed on the things we knew it wouldand we told them it needed tyres etc. They did a full service on the car which is great. But they never made time for the things it needed. We have to wait another week before they can do the work to it. Super frustrating, we are not feeling free as a bird as we normally are. Rick and Liz have been super kind letting us use their place as a base and we are very thankful. We hit the road today even with no WOF, we will just need to be back next week.

Without going into too much detail, we have been trying to purchase some land, we are now looking at the fourth possibility. I have forgotten how useless sales agents are. They really do a disservice to vendors and purchasers. We just have to work with what we got.

I am loving the camper, even though she is illegal haha. I feel like Charmaine or some sort of South African name starting with a C is in order. When we finally got her back on Friday I was very happy to give her a good scrub. I washed all the curtains, the water was filthy and I took off all the fly screens to clean the windows properly. I really want to replace the carpet with vinyl, but it is not a top priority right now. Once it had a good clean we started putting our stuff in there. I am very proud of ourselves and we didn’t fill every cupboard to the brim! Actually when all said and done we had quite a few cabinets empty. We wanted to just bring enough for our needs and nothing more. The cooking gear is only a bit more than what we have used for the last year and same with our clothes.

I am looking forward to the van life and having a solid roof over my head. Quite strange after such a long time living in a tent.

The next few days are spent enjoying the area. With our hired car we head to Braemar Station to pick our ute up. Our first stop is Ōmarama to swap bike wheels. Then we stop at the Salmon shop and grab some breakfast in Twizel. I end up driving up and Rowan gets me to practice driving the ute south. I can drive a manual but I get really anxious of other drivers on the road. If all of you could please not drive the days I want to drive a manual that would be greatly appreciated lol.

The weather is pretty icky which doesn’t worry us now we are in a car. the waves are big on Lake Pukaki

The only other thing I really want to do is the Māori rock art that we missed a few days ago. It is not as impressive as the Aboriginal art because it is not as well preserved and it is not as old. However I still really enjoy having a look.

Over the next few days we just chill around the area. Rowan and I take a look at our section in Herbert which we are planning to do something with, watch this space.

I woke up before Rowan and Joanne. Pete & Bev we’re already awake. I had a cuppa while they had breakfast before church. They asked if I would like to join, but I don’t think I can be converted. So I spend the morning walking around the estate. It is quite large, I am interested to know how many kilometres I walked today. I found a lot of the places Pete was talking about last night. An old lake used to be here and the occupants from the late 1800s had small wooden boats they would take out on it.

I must have walked around for a good hour or more and when I returned it was about 10am and the others were finally getting up. When they got back from church Pete took us for another wee tour of the estate and I retraced my steps from earlier. We did walk further down the cycle trail than I went. All the way to an old bridge that Pete fought to keep when they did the trail. He won and they put the new bridge on top preserving the original one underneath. We then carried on to the stables and the men’s quarters which he is renovating. He wants to make accommodation for cyclists and such. He wants to find someone to manage the farm and the accommodation in return they get free rent upstairs which is a three bedroom place. I think he may need to pay them as well as you would need to be fairly skilled, but hopefully he finds the person he is looking for.

Bev makes almost everything from scratch, she is a great cook and I enjoyed her meals. They only buy in what they can’t realistically grow, things like grain and milk. But she does mill her own grain to make her own flour to bake her own bread. She pickles and preserves. It makes me want to live the homestead life!

Pete kindly drops us off to the car hire place. We don’t cycle the last day, which looked to be rather boring to be honest. Plus you know us, we don’t have to do everything recommended. We take our car back to the accomodation in Kakanui. We leave our bikes at Elderslie, but I forgot the rear wheel. We must pick it up in the morning so I can return it to the lovely Amy at Ōmarama.

A fantastic celebratory dinner at Del Mar. This is a restaurant we have wanted to come to for a while. Run by a local couple and she is from Argentina. The flavours are done incredibly well and the make their own gelato which is incredible too. Definitely a pricey meal but a must if you are a foodie!

A bit of distance to get today with a total of 55km. It is 12km to Duntroon which is our first real stop of the day. We pass the Takiroa Māori Rock Art, and decide to come do it on our way to pick up the car. This is the worst weather day we have had. It is cold and a constant drizzle. When we reach Duntroon we have a spot of breakfast and then go and vote at the school.

From Duntroon we head to the Elephant Rocks. If you have been to Castle Hill this won’t impress you but it was a nice ride through part of it. There is a spot to see a whale fossil and that is also an area from a scene in Narnia.

The climb today felt hard, I just think my muscles were sore because in reality it really wasn’t that bad. We meet two guys from Perth who were getting their gear taken from place to place which meant they were travelling light. I was happy to see they had push bikes not e-bikes. There was a fun down hill and another uphill to go.

Once we conquered the last hill we felt on top of the world. The views are spectacular.

From here it is going to be mostly downhill all the was to Elderslie. We have a cool old rail tunnel to go through. We have definitely left the really scenic part behind now and have a lot of farms ahead!

Pete and Bev have the trail go right through their property. The old original manor has long gone but the stables and such are left behind. Pete gave us a tour around some of the area. Chatting about the history. Tonight we are staying here in the old stable house. Rowan and I are up where the stable boys would sleep.

Just before we leave the house we realise we can’t find the keys. An hour and a half later we still can’t find the house keys. We looked high we looked low, there was movement of furniture and retracing steps to town and back. I left my number at 3 different places. We unpacked and packed again. Well do you think we could find them? No, what a mystery! We finally gave up and started our day. We had a gruelling (sarcasm) 5km to River-T winery.

The wine was lovely indeed. We had a little snack to go with it and we’re there for a good few hours enjoying the experience. Claire the lady serving us turns out to be our last nights accommodation owner. She is really lovely and not at all worried about us losing the keys. She has a spare set and said it is the first time in four years she has had this happen. After the tasting we got back on our bikes. The wind was incredibly gusty, it was a hard ride back in the wrong direction before we could turn off to get back on track. There is only something small like 7km to go to our accommodation. We follow down by the river and for the most part it is quite boring. There are a few pot holes and soft spots to look out for. Look how cute this church is we are staying in. Not exactly a hard day!

It is very well set up inside. There are lots of personal touches like eggs from her place and homemade muesli. I have a chance to relax and read. There are so many books and magazines that I spend a good 3 hours in and out of the house enjoying the peace with a great view through the wisteria. We have a really early dinner rather more a very late lunch. But we all don’t eat another meal before bed. The bed is super comfy.