Uncovering History...

The gold rush came to Central Otago in 1861 when Gabriel Read discovered gold in the Tuapeka River in an area known ever after as “Gabriels Gully”. The township of Lawrence sprang up around this defining find and the miners swarmed from near and far and thus begun the gold rush days of New Zealand...

 

Having spent hours pouring over old papers online we had deduced that our little home had been built, not by a miner, but by one John Crawford, Scottish immigrant and civil contractor to the shire council of Tuapeka.  We also uncovered that it was in existence in 1881 when we found a letter from John to the council complaining about the flooding from the Tuapeka Creek on his boundary. Interestingly he branched out and bought the local hotel – the Tuapeka Flat Hotel in 1882, and within a few short months there was a disastrous fire and an inquest into the cause. It’s not clear if it damaged the building beyond repair, but it terminated Mr Crawford’s days as a hotelier, and he returned to contracting and farming. 

 

Imagine our excitement upon finding this early picture of our cottage in the Lawrence Museum, which seems to have been taken around the mid to late 1920′s judging by the car in the shot.

 

Braeside Cottage

And then during a stay at our cottage in December last year we were delighted to have a visit from Elaine Crawford, her late husband was the great-grandson of John, and she was able to give us a lot more information which filled in a few gaps! The cottage was originally known as Braeside Cottage, as it was sited at the foot of a steep hill, and it was built most probably within twelve months of their marriage which took place in Dunedin in 1870.

Their third child, Duncan, is recorded as being born in the cottage in 1874, and we think it was mostly completed in 1871. Sadly John’s wife, Isabella, died following the birth of their fifth child, aged 31, in 1884. John went on to achieve 79 years, and passed away in 1914 – he must have missed his wife immensely. We sought out their shared grave in the Lawrence Cemetery, and often visit it when we are down at the cottage, taking flowers from the garden of the home they built. 

Even more enthralling, Elaine told us how John was a direct descendant of Margaret de Crauford  - mother to "Braveheart" William Wallace.  This is just the icing on the cake to us with David's Scottish background and my deep love of  the country. William Wallace was born in 1272 in Ellerslie, Scotland. He was the second of three sons of Sir Malcolm Wallace (a minor laird possessing little political power and nobility) and Margaret de Crauford (the daughter of Sir Reginald de Crauford, the Sheriff of Ayr).   Over the years the name became anglicised to Crawford.
           

It gives an even deeper level of joy and contentment to the times we spend within its walls, knowing so much of its origins and understanding a little more of those who lived here in such different, and often very difficult times. 

 

This photo, which is part of the Hocken Collection at Otago University, shows the cottage before the veranda
was added - circa 1916.





Musing on Winter...

I think you either love it or hate it... Winter.  I love it in parts.  Mostly love but sometimes I wish it was warmer in the evenings when it's too hard to light and keep an eye on the open fire in the other (further away) lounge and I'm busy trying to multi task - cooking my dinner, showering, drying hair etc.  It's the downside to living alone.  On the weekends when Dave is here, its a different matter - and nothing is nicer than curling up by the fire with a glass of red.... I love crisp sunny days when I can dry the washing outside but I hate dull, grey ones where the laundry hangs limply day after day before I am resigned to throwing it in the dryer.

In winter the green finches arrive... I never see these dear little birds normally and its such a delight to sit watching them outside my kitchen window as they bob about so merrily looking for seeds.  They come for my grape seeds - swept as whole fruit from my terrace in autumn, but I have started throwing out wild bird seed mix so that they may stay longer.  They hop around with their bright red legs, much the hoppiest birds I know in fact.... and spar with each other and the sparrows - they are so full of personality.... I  love them.

Trying to live a simple life without too much processed food lends itself to winter too... so much more appealing to cook soups and casseroles from scratch and throw the odd roast into the oven.  I have been baking all my bread for months now - having found a super simple recipe for Irish Soda Bread (no yeast) that I have adapted till it is literally perfect... from start to table in under 3/4 hr with so little fuss it should be illegal...   magnificent warm with butter, and toasts just beautifully too.  I make biscuits sometimes having become disillusioned with store bought ones always being too sweet and sickly - not to mention the additives.  I add 85% cocoa chocolate chips, cranberries, pecans, pistachios, spice - whatever takes my fancy.

Earlier in the year we started making our own cheeses - I gave Dave a voucher for a course for Christmas and we went for an all day course together in March.... we went and bought all the gear - which like anything - some is essential for a good result.  When our family business used to sell wine and beer making gear I remember the folk that improvised or just didn't bother with airlocks and hydrometers  etc and I also remember how bad their wines were...  Cheese making, like wine making, is essentially a science, and then a craft... get the technical side sorted and then you can play around with rind washes and combinations of cultures/moulds etc... walk before you run!  We have made some gorgeous cheeses and will continue to expand our repertoire as time goes on.  Our  Camembert is just soooo good, we have friends clamouring for it!  But when a cheese takes 6 weeks to make one is loath to gift it!  I have a tub of cream cheese in my fridge permanently now as it is just so easy to make and so much nicer than shop stuff.  Yum...

The Foxes Visit Dunedin

Now that we had the cottage all straight it was time to let Ma & Pa Fox see it.... so we all piled on the plane in Auckland and arrived at Dunedin airport bright and early one April morning.   Except it wasn't all that bright.... more, well, soggy and cold.

The Foxes by the Robbie Burns statue
at the Octagon

As they hail from the Borders it was wonderful for them to experience NZ's own little piece of Bonny Scotland...

St Paul's Cathedral

The Law Courts
 

The Foxes and the Railway Station

Main Road to Port

We had a fun morning exploring the heritage buildings in the city centre before heading out to Port Chalmers to have lunch at the pub I'd read about... it was a lovely lunch and well worth it.



Bert is ready for lunch

I  love fishing ports
 

 

The next day was drop dead gorgeous so we headed up into Central Otago, stopping at the lovely Speargrass Inn, which dates from 1871, for lunch, before carrying on to explore Mitchell's Cottage high on the hills overlooking the Fruitlands.

 

 

Then it was off to Foxglove... all my passengers went to sleep so they missed the scenery but they loved the cottage when they arrived. 



Speargrass Inn, Fruitlands

 

 

 The view from the cottage is gorgeous, we were lucky to have struck it on such a clear day...

 

Ma got all teary eyed when she found some holly with berries on it...

 

All in all it was a good few days, Ma managed to attend the service at St Patricks in Lawrence on Sunday morning!

Ma & the Holly Bush



David & Bert explore

Mitchell's Cottage, Fruitlands

The Transformation of Foxglove Cottage

 

We took possession of our cottage on my birthday, March 9, 2012 and went down there the following weekend to start work.  All we planned to do was strip out the gear left behind and get rid of the kitchen that the previous owner had started installing - as it was not up to much...

 

 

Having hired a van we visited Bunnings in Dunedin and spent up large on tools, ladder, bits and pieces of necessities and a couple of items of furniture from Trade Me.  We found a dining table and a bookcase and coffee table that eventually transpired to be much too big... be had it cut down so that it ended up just perfect!

 

Very fortuitously, the real estate agents husband was a cabinet maker and furniture maker... meaning he possessed a lot of building and handyman skills too... we set about involving him in our wee project.. 

 

 Which was just as well, as there was more to do than first it seemed... like rip out the kitchen floor and the rotten joists below and do a bit of work to replace the lot with concrete....

 In the bathroom we also had to remove the awful shower fittings and seratone wet area that was so not sealed properly...  In May we came down again, with an even bigger van and more second hand furniture fetched from Dunedin.  Meanwhile back in Auckland we were also filling David's garage with a few bits of furniture and a heck of a lot of kitchen gear, decor items, paintings etc which we decided to ship down once we had got it all together and once the floor coverings were down....  It was just as well that the wee wood burner was functional because it was rather cold...

 

 We also visited Harvey Norman and picked up our kitchen appliances - fridge, ceramic hob, range hood, under bench oven and front loading washer.  We swung by and picked up a nice leather sofa we had bought on Trade Me.. oh, and 4 rather lovely dining chairs upholstered in Cath Kidston oil cloth, and a few other bits of furniture...

lucky it was a BIG van.  We used every inch of space.... really!

 

In June the vinyl in the bathroom and kitchen went down... that was very exciting!  And even more exciting - our bathroom package arrived from Auckland and the plumbers installed our bathroom - yay!  We had a tap at last inside - and we no longer needed to get water from the standpipe in the garden for a cuppa.  We loved the bathroom.....  although we had only seen it in photos until we visited in July...

The flooring throughout the rest of the house was stabilised with an overlay of ply in August and then the carpet went down too.... The gas fitters installed our LPG station for the hot water heating and we had the bottles delivered... and we ate lots of fish and chips in front of the fire!
 

 

 

In September we were down again for another visit and we saw our carpet for the first time... and the kitchen was beginning to take shape, which was Beyond Exciting...  and we were able to assemble our bed.  There was time to try out the sofa and relax, even!  We popped up to Alexandra and collected our new bikes...

 

And there was still time for

Fish and Chips...

Come November and were back again - eagerly anticipating the delivery of our shipment of goods from Auckland this time.... A very special visit as we were no longer staying in the Jafas Motel... we were sleeping under our very own roof! The kitchen was finished, our mattress had been delivered... oh so exciting to make the bed for the first time!  The garden was an absolute picture with the lilac flowering profusely as well as all the roses.

The big event of course was the arrival (a day late!) of our gear from up north... unpacking was just like Christmas... only better.

 

We unpacked all the little touches like rugs, throws and books... and set about decorating.... well, I did.  David chopped some wood...

 

We even had time to hang our curtains!

 

The sparky had been busy and had put in loads of power points, and sorted out some dodgy wiring, fitting new circuit breakers to the fuse board, and installed an extractor fan, heated towel rail and fan heater in the bathroom... and were able to take our first shower... bliss... and the joy of discovering we had amazing water  pressure.... fantastic!

 

We simply hated having to leave... 

 

 

In December we were back for our first holiday - 10 days!  We had time to finish decorating, as well as enjoy New Years Eve celebrations with our new friends, Graham and Jill, Jennie and others at Anthem House even though we were still feeling the cold, despite it now being summer.  We tore ourselves away for a couple of days touring the Catlins, an area of outstanding natural beauty and prolific wildlife.  We saw seals, hectors dolphins, yellow eyed penguins and a few angry sea lions!

 

 

We stayed at Porpoise Bay right on the waterfront and were treated to a rather worrying sea lion attack on some surfers....

 

and a splendid display in the early morning by the amazing Hector's Dolphins as the surfed the breakers for over an hour... magic.  We had a great dinner out at the Niagra Falls Cafe, and saw some beautiful sights - the Nuggets, the Purakaunui and McLean waterfalls, the lighthouses at Nugget Point, Waipapa Point and at Bluff - we hated Bluff by the way!  "What's the best thing about Bluff?  Seeing it in the rear

view mirror..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We carried on to Invercargill and visited a few shops, buying a barbecue and some outdoor furniture... before heading "home" to Foxglove.  For an overnight trip we packed a lot in... 

Back in Lawrence we spent an enjoyable time foraying into Central Otago to Roxburgh to buy cherries, apricots and raspberries, we rode our bikes and went for walks.  The evenings are superbly long in the   south, it doesn't get dark till nearly 11pm in summer.  We certainly made the most of it.  We loved reading by the fire (yep, even in summer!) and drinking wine in the garden by the lilac tree...

 

 

 

We are very social when we are down at the cottage, being right in the village we can see the world go by and have met lots of people including the descendant of the original owner, a meeting I will blog about another time.  Lots of people drop in and we get lots of invites to dinner and drinks, in fact we soon realised we were to need more dining chairs - we kept having to get the directors chairs from the outdoor set round the dining table...

 

 

Not long after we had to leave in the second week of January, Malcolm and family came to put up the garden shed we ordered... somewhere to store our firewood, garden tools and the bikes.  She's a whopper of a shed at 3 metres by 3 metres.  Around the same time, the talented Graham was busy designing and handcrafting the french doors from cedar that replaced the ugly aluminium ones so we had an eventful trip back down again in February when we were able to see both new additions and very promptly filled the shed with the stack of wood that had been delivered a few days beforehand...

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sparky had been in our absence again and fitted the chandelier pendant above the table and installed the reading lights over the bed..

 

 

 

 

  

 Also my Valentines Day

 gift to David had arrived...
 

                           ...River's Reach by Diana Adams

   

Gradually we got it all sorted and by the end of our visit the following February - a year later... it was pretty much finished. 

We still have to paint the outside, we've experimented with test pots and chosen our colours...

We bought two more dining chairs....

Sent to England to have a plaque made for the front...

and bought a really cool old garden seat at a local garage sale for the front porch...

We've seen all the seasons, seen snow falling, watched spring burst... something we don't experience in the North...

And now its just about a few little jobs each visit and a whole lot of relaxing!

We still have the odd feed of fish and chips...

... but we much prefer to put a leg of merino lamb in our oven to slow roast.

 Here's to the good life!