We flew in to Christchurch almost 24 hours from London with a short stop over to change planes in LA.The hospital had sent transport to meet us so that was one problem solved. The lady driving the mini bus was very informitive she talked about every thing that we passed.
The speed limit here is 100Km/hour and coming from the UK this seemed very slow. I kept woundering when we would get on the main road south , we seemed to be travelling on a country two way road with no traffic.The driver told me that this was the main road and the only road that went all the way down the South Island.
It took us an hour and three quarters to reach Timaru
and the motel.
Just after the new year we were living in rented accommadation in Temuka which is 20 Km from Timaru and our animals arrived much to my relief. they seemed absolutly un afected by the hole proccess. It had been five weeks since they had last seen us but they went into exactly the same habbits good and bad ones.

One of our main objective was to try and find a property that we could afford and that had a bit of land with it . The house prices have in creased in NZ but not any where near as much as the UK.We eventually found one in Temuka . It had what we needed , it was a good size house made of Omaru stone , about one kilometre away from school for Thomas, two kilometres from the shops and twenty kilometres from work.The house we could move into with out having to do anything to it , but the grounds 1 1/2 achers was covered in trees and jungle under grouth .Ah give me acouple of years and I will sort this out I thought ( its now been increased to a 5 year plan).
We found a local solicitor that origonated from South Africa and seemed to get on well with . She was very helpfull and gave us a good run down on how to buy a house here .One of the first things is that if you say you are going to buy a house for a given price to the owner and he also verberly excepts it , that is binding ! No gusumping here . The hole process usually take less than 4 or 5 weeks!Make shore your finances are in order!
We had surveys and surches done and as a condition of buying the house and moved in the end of Febuary .