Steampunk Time in Oamaru

Thursday 26 February

Another abrupt change of weather - rain half of the night and most of the day. Nickie & Russ were working, but we set off to check out a potential house purchase at 130 Maudes Road. At least in the rain you see whether a place leaks or floods!

It was a nice 2hectare plot with a 3 bay garage, 3 paddocks, several woodpiles, a hen house and a neat little single storey, 3 bedroom house beautifully clad in Oamaru stone. I think we both agreed it was cute, but didn’t quite tick all our boxes so we’ll keep an eye out for other prospects in various areas.

After lunch, Russ put in some more hours and we took Nickie to experience the madness that is Steampunk HQ. Naturally I wore my new steampunk earrings from the SPCA in Timaru... every time I come here I get sucked into the steampunk style and one day would like to create a full outfit!

We had a lovely time pushing buttons, pulling levers and twiddling knobs, viewing pseudo-Gothic sci-fi creatures, being mesmerised by The Portal and flying to the moon in a farting space rocket which had us in fits of childish giggles!!! The twinkly lights and mirrors of The Portal were so enchanting and magical that we had to go through twice more at the end!

Paid a visit to Buggy Robot in the Victorian Quarter - all his funky creations are right up my alley... if we buy a house here then I want the "Attack of the Robots" poster for our place! Then spent an hour or two op shopping (got Louis a new possum merino sweater for $15!) before returning to Old Bones.

I took a freezing cold walk along the closed section of Beach Road which looks even more collapsible than before, then the Fernandi cooked us lamb chops for dinner.

We’d had plans to catch up with Jenny & Warren but it was so wet we were all hunkered down in our caravans - with my focus on downloading over a year’s worth of photos from my phone to my hard drive… so many that I had to break it down into batches of 4-500 photos at a time, over and over again!

Any guesses, to the nearest thousand, how many photos that was?!? (Just over 27,000!!!)