Every year at Queen’s Birthday our family takes off on a bit of a tiki tour. Usually we go north towards the winter sun. This year, seeing as winter hasn’t really arrived yet, we went south. While in we were there we found winter and I think we may have brought it back to Auckland. Sorry.

One of the best bits about travelling is listening to the stereo. However, the best sound of this trip was the one made by the (almost) thirteen year old boy giggling in the back seat. It’s a good thing to hear raucous noise from an adolescent boy. It pleases his mother a lot.

We spent a lot of Saturday walking. We had a look at the Treaty of Waitangi, had a tour of Parliament and ‘did’ Te Papa. All by foot (with a couple of judiciously chosen taxi rides in between).

The high point at Te Papa for Ben was yet another sound. A bit of our family’s folklore is a very close connection to this country’s first ‘pop’ song – Blue Smoke (written by Ruru Karitiana and sung by Pixie Williams). When we heard the song we tracked down the source and found a copy of the record. Result? Some new photos for the family archive.

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