Toarohra Waterfall

Toaroha Waterfall

A nice waterfall on the west coast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq6SBG238xM

http://www.rideroftheyear.org/

Amazing Kayaking!
http://www.rideroftheyear.org/
http://vimeo.com/14063499

Shortest Day of the Year

Today is the shortest day of the year here. I had the staff induction for Cardrona and learnt lots of facts about the place, even how many pies and hot chocolates they sell over the season!
The weather was pretty grey and drizzling all day but it wasn't too cold and the water was nice and flat for wakeboarding. There was a fundraiser for the local youth club with a BBQ and waterskiing. Iris and our house mates went for a rise on the biscut and Will and I went wakeboarding. It was great, there was even a hot tub and palm trees!

Boarding!

Had a awesome session with some mates on Coronet Peak yesterday! I am pretty tired and stiff today though! Probably not helped by the few beers I had last night when I met my workmates for the season.
Gotta sort out my board now. A few things need changing but you cant go wrong for a 10 dollar snowboard though.

Layout change and winter wonderland

Decided to spruce up the page a bit to keep it interesting.
Iris and I are on a little road trip to visit friends before starting winter jobs for the season.
We have a found a room in a great house in Wanaka that will keep us warm for the cold season and I have a job although Iris is still looking.
I will be a car parker in Cardrona ski field, while not too exciting, will however provide me with a season pass for the skifield! Hopefully will get a couple of runs during lunch breaks also.
The pics are from Lindis Pass and Twizel on the way to Christchurch last week.

Some photos, bridge jumping and the winter is here!

New Zealand!!

Here we are! After a good but frustrating time waiting for my working holiday visa in Sydney we made it here and I got the visa on my birthday a couple of days after we got here. Staying in my friend Adam’s house in Christchurch, we based ourselves here while looking for a car. After two years living in Herbert the van we had enough of that lifestyle for now and are enjoying living in houses, especially as the weather is getting colder!

The car we managed to get is a Nissan Cefiro (also known as Maxima) called Fiona as she is big and green like Shrek’s wife. It is a Japanese import as the country is flooded with them and makes it easy to get a good car for not much money.


Adam lent us his roofrack bars and with the windsurf kit and surfboard on the roof, we set of on a road trip. First stop was Wiamate to visit Jimmy, Mary and Lucy who have been almost two years in New Zealand after moving out from Ireland for good!
We had lots of fun here for a few days making butterflies, going to garage sales and doing up a bike for Iris that we found (more on that later).


On the way form their house we stopped by a harvest fair just south of Oamaru where the love their old Victorian era things and saw some cool old things.



Next stop was Dunedin, a cool student town and very Scottish. I got out for a windsurf here and it was howling! The water was certainly colder than what I have been used to in WA but it was great to get out!

After that we went west into the mountains stopping at a nice campsite in Laurence which had lost of animals. There are lots of small towns like Laurence here that were once busy goldmine towns during the gold rush and are now very quiet indeed.
Stopping in Alexandra we found a job picking grapes for 3 weeks near Cromwell so we now had a bit of a plan and were looking forward to some money coming into the bank account for a change!

With a week until the start of grape picking we continued with out plans and went to Queenstown to stay nearby in some Department of Conservation (DoC) campsites. These places are great to stay as they are in the countryside, often beside lakes or rivers with wonderful scenery around. Near these campsites there are usually some sort of DoC walking and mountain biking trails where Iris got her first taste of mountain biking and absolutely loved it! In one of the places however we missed the start of the track and found ourselves cycling and walking up a river through the water in places to get to the track. This was part of the fun though and we had a great time!
After a look around Queenstown area and some shopping in the op shop for great cheap outdoor gear we made our way back to Waimate for a couple of days.




There was a motorcycle street race on in Methven that weekend that I had organised to go to with Adam on the motorbikes so we quickly nipped up to Christchurch for that. Unfortunately plans changed as they do and we went by car instead. The racing was good though with a huge variety of bikes racing from old rusty bangers and old shiny bangers to very fast F1 bikes. There were some close races and a few crashes just across the hay bales making the day quite exciting!

Finding accommodation in Cromwell was quite easy, we found a nice ensuite room in a warm house with good housemates and moved in the day we saw it! The work however did not start well as we only done three days in total in the first two weeks! Just enough to cover the rent! With all this free time I decided to start my PG2 paragliding seeing as Queenstown is just down the road and I could continue on from my PG1 which I done last time in NZ.

It was fantastic to be in the air again and had two great days of flying; Iris even got a free tandem go for driving their bus down the mountain for them!
The same weekend we went to visit my friend Will who I had travelled with for a while in Australia who was working and living in a lodge at the top of the mountains nearby.






Next week at work didn’t last too long either with only two and a half days so we had another long weekend to fill. The decision was made to go to Waimate to see Jimmy, Mary and Lucy. We also wanted to finish Iris’s bike and bring it with us as she was pretty excited about cycling. We got the parts we needed in Wanaka recycle centre on the way and it’s good to go, cycling like a brand new bike!
Jimmy and I went mountain biking on the hill beside Waimate and had the best cycle for a long time. We cycled up the road and on the way down done it in sections to do some jumps a few times to get the feel of them.

This week we actually had a full week in work for a change and cycled most days. Nice to start getting fit again although it’s cold in the mornings!
Next week hopefully we will have a few days work before we leave Cromwell as I doubt we will find another job in the area before the winter season starts.

The end of an era.

The time has come to leave Australia. I have been here for just over two years now. It has been a very good trip with overall mostly good times. I have got used to this huge diverse country and seen a lot, from barren expanses of saltbush to the lush rainforests, bloody strange animals and even stranger people! Looking around I remember how uniquely Australian so many things are here that I found quite odd when I arrived. I find myself speaking the lingo I have picked up along the way, like the famous “mate” and lesser known phrases to the wider English speaking world like “feeling crook” (feeling unwell/sick) and referring to all large quantities as “heaps” (particularly South Australian, especially the phrase “heaps good”)
Herbert the van has been sold now (after almost 70,000kms done with him) and while the lifestyle of travelling around in a van is amazing, it is time for a change to enjoy some of the comforts of living in some sort of a building. Iris and I appreciate these comforts much more now after this experience! Particularly the three main ones of running water, power and space to stand up and move around without going outside!







To the windsurfing, the main reason I came to Australia in the first place. This season has been pretty up and down with wind and swell but I have has a awesome time!
The jumping at Coronation Beach by Geraldton has been great every time I have been there and it is definitely the best place to learn to loop I have ever sailed! Just avoid the place near Christmas and New Years as its packed!
As for down the line sailing Margret River and Gnaraloo are amazing! Unfortunately we had only 2 days of wind in Gnaraloo but it is a lot of fun and I have never done so many turns on one wave! It’s a mission to get there but well worth it, even for only 2 days of sailing.
The end of the season was spent mainly sailing at Margret River and hanging out with Morgan, Scott and Dan, some very good windsurfers from back home in Ireland. We got some amazing days there with some of the biggest waves I have ever been on!
Margret River is a nice change from the other spots in Western Australia as you are closer to civilisation and the weather is milder too.
The other spot I have to mention although I haven’t sailed there this season as it is on the east coast is Currumbin Alley on the Gold Coast in Queensland. The best starboard tack waves I have sailed when it works and a nice crew of locals to have a chat to on the days you are waiting for it to work.





At the moment Iris and I are in Sydney staying at a friends place hanging around waiting for my working holiday for New Zealand. It has taken a while so I hope I get it or we may be flying back to Ireland. We will see what happens so watch this space!

Aussie Nationals in Margret River

Australian Wavesailing Title's 2010 from Colin Leonhardt on Vimeo.

Christmas was great with Christina and Pawel at the campsite in Perth, lots of food and drink late into Christmas Eve when Estonians celebrate the holiday. Iris was very happy to get the pressies this year in the evening when she is used to it and not having to wait till the morning. We met up with Tim and Honorata also for a Christmas Day breakfast on the beach and some drinks in Fremantle. Good times were had!
Unfortunately due to shrinking bank balances we decided to do some work and spent 12 days on a station looking after the place while the owners went on holidays in Coral Bay. It was a little daunting to be looking after a property all by ourselves for the 7 days they were gone but we spent the first week there being shown everything and were quite confident. Iris looked after the multitude of animals and large veggie garden around the homestead while I went on water runs and fixed the vehicles.
The station is around 1300 kms north of Perth which also happens to be relatively close to Gnaraloo, one of the best windsurf spots in the world!



Very keen to windsurf we left the station the morning after the owners got back for Carnarvon to pick up supplies and drove the very rough dirt road to Gnaraloo with a exciting strong tailwind!
The wind was howling day and night for the first two days and I got some awesome although very overpowered sailing on my 4.2! There was a guy sailing well powered on his girlfriends 3.3 even!
After blowing so hard the wind just gave up and then there was nothing. The snorkelling and surfing is great in Gnaraloo but there is only so much to do when you are the to windsurf and cant. With the forecast looking grim for the next 5 days the decision was made to shoot down to Geraldton where it looks windy. Only about 700kms…