Diane and Tony

Tuesday 13th February 2024

Today we drove about 40 minutes north of Auckland to the home of Diane (my second cousin) and her husband Tony. We spent the day with them, looking at family photos, having a deliciuos lunch at the pub and then going to the beach. It is Tony's birthday today so it was very kind of them to spend the time with us.

Diane is the daughter of my mum's aunt - which we think makes us second cousins! Her mother Ruth (who I am named after) moved to New Zealand in about 1964 and Diane had never been to the UK. She has a huge number of photos and documents and we had a lovely time taking a look at them and managing to identify some names. I took photos of a few of them. The first photo above is my mum and dads wedding day (Tom look exactly like my dad in this photo - it is uncanny!). The middle photo is mum and Dorothy - they dont look any different now! And the last on is my grandad and granny on a visit to New Zealand - with Ruth in the middle and Diane on the right.

We went for lunch at the Riverhead Tavern - the oldest river side tavern in New Zealand! Then we took a short drive to the beach.

The east coast of the North Island is pretty rough - for surfers not swimmers! They had a massive storm here about a year ago with a lot of damage to houses and infrastructure. Unfortunately that meant that we couldnt get close to the local gannet colony - but we could see them from a distance.

Back to their house and Tony took us to take a look at his her of Murray Greys Murray Grey cattle - Wikipedia. They are beautiful and as they come from Australia they are suited to the climate. They have some lovely art in the house and garden and we particularly liked this corrugated cow made by a local artists. We had a wonderful day and hope that Diane and Tony will come to the UK at some point so that we can meet them again.