Catch up since last Spring - 1st. of 4

It is such a long time since I have caught you  up with the local Island news.

Summer is over and autumn is also over mostly as well. The island has closed down and belongs to the 'permanent's again. Let’s see if I can add some photographs of the summer.

 – first blog being the external restoration of the historic house known as  Mansion House.

I have talked before how it was one of the homes of Sir George Grey, an early Governor of New Zealand, and is now under the care of The NZ Govt. Dept. of the Department of Conservation. It will have been over 20 years since it had any major work done to it. It took the last of winter 2012 right through to March 2013 to complete the work. To protect both the building and the public the whole building was basically shrink wrapped in plastic which the builders worked behind. Looked quite fantastic. Apart from external  plastering, re-painting and re-building two fancy looking chimneys, a large part of the roof was replaced with gorgeous looking slate imported from the UK to match the existing. Quite a specialist job to install it. The young girl tourists were more interested in a couple of the builders than the house  refurbishment – the one on the left especially, code-named Seymour – it was not just all his tattoos they wanted to  'see more’ of.

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