Why New Zealand?

After spending my first 40 years of my life in the UK, I came to a point where I wanted a better lifestyle for my family. I was accutely aware that the UK was changing beyond recognition and I came to the realisation that we would have to something radically different to get the lifestyle I wanted.

Cutting a long story short, we all came to NZ for a months holiday in August 2005. We hired a campervan and 'did the north island'. Three things things struck us:

• the country had some breath-taking scenery - mountains, forests and sea


• with only 4.5 million people in the country the size of the UK there is more than enough space for everybody


• the people are friendly - they stop you in the street and talk to you. When was the last time that happened to you in the UK?

We all rather reluctantly returned home and started living our old and rather boring lives again. We spent a few Sunday's looking at http://www.open2view.com/ and we started dreaming about owning a bit of land in the country - keeping some sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, bees and growing fruit and vegetables. We soon decided as a family that we wanted to live in New Zealand so we started making our plans.

We started to clear out the house - we went to car boot sales to get rid of some of our belongings. We hired 'George' to paint the house to get it ready for market. We found some really good (and in-expensive) emigration consultants (http://www.immigration-new-zealand.com/) who helped us apply for NZ residency (Dec 2005). We received an un-solicited cash offer for our house which we accepted (Mar 2006). I gave up work (thanks Graham for the gardening leave - we would not have got packed in time if you had made me work my notice!). We put all our furniture into storage with Robinson's (http://www.robinsons-intl.com/) and we moved into temporary accommodation (http://www.yellowtopcountry.co.uk/) at Yellow Top Country Park.

In June 2006 we had our farewell party at the Kingfisher in Holme-on-Spalding Moor and said goodbye to friends and family. A few days later we left for our new life in Christchurch New Zealand.