Well hello winter

In New Zealand, 1st June marks the first day of winter. Ironically, we celebrate this with a long weekend for the Queen's Birthday. We took the opportunity to have a very quiet one to recharge the batteries, but did decide to head out to Wright's Hill Fortress, an old WWII gun station in Karori. It's only open four times a year so we thought we'd better take the opportunity.

Most of it is a series of cold, damp tunnels linking the three gun stations...

The Fortress was built to protect the Kiwi capital from Japanese invasion. However the guns were never fired in anger as it was only finished in 1944! And the Japanese never made it this far. The guns were tested though in 1946 and promptly shattered many of the windows around the Fortress!

However today, it is probably best visited for the views it provides of the harbour and even Makara Wind Farm.

 As you can see though, not bad weather for the start of winter. Don't mind if we have a few more winter days like this one!

Another view of home

Here's some more views from Ian's recent trek to the top of the hill opposite our house.

In this photo, the field in the bottom left is Tawatawa, one of our local dog walking reserves just two minutes' walk from our house. You can see a track cut into the hill just above it. That's our short track for walking Maddy.

You can just about make out the harbour entrance in the distance of this photo. That's how high up this hill is!

This is looking out over our house, the reserve, Owhiro Bay, Island Bay and numerous other suburbs, up towards the harbour. You can even see Somes Island (the old quarantine base) in the middle of the harbour.

Now here's one from a little bike ride up the coast with Scott. Some of you may recognise Kapiti Island. This was taken from the top of Paekakariki Hill Road.