After spending 4 months of the winter renting and looking after my good friend’s Greg and Kristina’s house above by the Hawea river, ( they have been stuck in and out of Lockdown in Melbourne since the end of March ). I was due to leave on October 20th and head to Christchurch and then on the 29th October to my brother Bill’s house on the North Island by Lake Rotama to do some work and go fly fishing over a two week period.
From the North facing windows of their house I had a the beautiful view of the lower mountains to the North east with the Hawea river this side of the willow tree’s in the center of the photo.
Before I was due to leave Greg’s I put my Toyota Estima in for a service which was due. When I went to pick it up they said it had a serious issue with the transmission and it would either need a 2nd hand one or have it re-conditioned , they couldn’t find a 2nd hand one so it had to be re-conditioned.
Because I was due to leave on the 20th that was now out of the question and they had rented the house out to a retired farming couple from Timaru from November 1st. So on the 29th Oct I moved out and into my friend’s Joy and Rex garage on Capell ave in Hawea which is 5 doors down from my own house which is rented out and has been since 2000.
The photo right is the garage, the car is Greg’s Nissan Xtrail which he said I could use rather than leaving it standing around which was very nice of him, also when I brought my Estima in March I had looked at a lot of types of cars and in the end it was either the Estima or a Xtrail so its interesting that while mine is out of action Greg had a Xtrail 🙂 its a nice car to drive but the Estima has more room in the back for converting into a sleeper.
I imagined it would only be a couple of weeks before my car would be ready but it has now been 5 weeks and the reason I’m calling this Limbo is it feels like I’m stuck here because every week I phone to see how it is all going with the car it seems to be getting further away instead of closer. But as you can see from the photo left and a few more further down the page it is a nice place to be with a population of about 1500 people with one cafe, one Restaurant, one pub and a garage.
The lake is a 2 minuet walk from where I’m staying, every evening I walk along the front after dinner and every other day I go for a bike ride to John creek and also further down the Hawea and Cluther rivers, there are some GR8 river bike trails in the Hawea and Wanaka region. It makes for a beautiful Limbo place especially Hawea. I’ve had some mental issues with the handling process of my car mainly during my sleep time either not being able to sleep for 3 hours thinking about it or waking during the night and doing the same. But during my waking day and living in this Environment my Physical and Spiritual bodies are thriving in this Beautiful Limbo.
Some evenings on my walks along the lake there are nice sunsets like the one left and sometimes there are strong winds with waves crashing onto lake shore and some days its clear and calm, its all very refreshing and even though some nights I don’t sleep well the relaxing and peaceful environment heals the mental issues I have been through the last 5 weeks. I had to cancel my trip to my Brothers in Rotoma which was from the 29th October to 12th November. On the 18th December I fly to Canada for a season at Red and then onto England on 17th March 2022. Luckily I had my flight to Bills put onto credit and will go there in May/June 2022. 🙂
I phoned a guy in Cromwell a few days ago whose re conditioning my transmission and it looks like we are going to go into a 6th week and sometime next week hopefully I will get my car back and carry on with my delayed journey to Christchurch, first to do some work at Kirsten’s house in Redcliffs and visit my brother Gary in Amberley at weekends. Until then I will do my riding every other day and rest the other day. Left is one of my favorite bike route’s around here. Gladstone is now called John Creek and being a Leo (fire sign) living and being by water cools the fire within. It is nice being retired. 🙂 Doing the odd day of work here and there is good and tomorrow I will be taking a day off and working at Donald’s place. Donald has re vamped this web site for me and has done a GR8 job and its nice to be writing in it again after a 3 year absence without posting my journey (thanks to google shutting me out due to password issue’s). Cheers Donald.
Finally I had some good news yesterday about my car ( 5 weeks), it is finally getting closer instead of further away :-), the transmission finally came back from Cromwell yesterday ( Friday 19th) and they are fitting it back into the car Monday and Tuesday so hopefully ( fingers crossed) I will be able to pick it up Tuesday afternoon or wednesday morning. Yesterday I took another day off and did another days work on Donalds home, two days this week, something is definately changing :-), cheers Donald its GR8 writing again .