This page shows some photos of the house we moved to out in Petone in Lower Hutt City. This is just a 10 minute drive or train ride away from Wellington. About half a kilometre down the road from where we live, you have access to Petone Beach (not the nicest beach, but better than none!). In the opposite direction, you are about 1 kilometre away from Lower Hutt City centre, and the regional shopping centre Westfield Queensgate. The house is down a little cul-de-sac and for the most part is quite quiet (the lack of insulation and thus sound proofing does mean we can hear our neighbour cheering when the All Blacks score a try though!). We have a pleasant little garden inhabited by a wide variety of little birds, and it seems that a pair of blackbirds are nesting in it at the moment.

This is the front of our house. Pretty sizeable actually. In fact, really a little too big for us. It has three bedrooms. We use one, but have plans to use one of the others as a 'games room'. Currently, the 'games room' contains a football. Nice white picket fence though, eh?

This is our car. It took us a bloody long time to find a car we actually liked and was within our price range. Typically, its a Ford Escort. I call it the Hoonmobile as apparently Escorts are used by hoons (i.e. boy racers). In my experience of New Zealand so far, its the Ford Falcons, Subarus and Holdens (Vauxhalls) that are the usual boy racer cars though. Most of these would have exhaust pipes big enough for newly qualified vets to practise Cow birthing on. Bloody idiots.

This is our kitchen. The biggest kitchen I've ever had. Actually, its freezing in the mornings as there's a huge skylight over one end. I'm guessing that'll also make it far too hot in the summer, but hey-ho.

A view of our house from the garden. Some nice patio doors (single glazed and drafty) and a very large decked area (Charlie Dimmock would be proud of that!)

A view mainly interesting for my disembodied head in the window.

The garden. We've had a badminton net up in the garden (which stretches across most of the width). The garden isn't big enough for the net, but that doesn't stop us trying to have a game every now and then.

An iconic Kiwi image present in our own back garden - the Silver Fern. Well, its actually green, but its a fern in the well-known Kiwi tradition.

And here's one of the pair of Blackbirds nesting in our garden. A friendly chap to most visitors in the garden. I do, however, have a feeling he may be a closet racist as he has a thing against Starlings and chases or attacks with a certain level of abandon whenever a Starling attempts to take food from the garden. Interestingly, he does not react in this way to any other type of avian life.

And the female of the Blackbird pair. Doesn't seem to suffer from the 'racist' tendencies of the male though.