Banks Peninsula

Banks Peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand has been home since 2000. After sailing to New Zealand from Maine one thing lead to another: Robin & I became permanent residents, bought some bare land, built a house and as the saying goes “the rest is history”.

The Peninsula is less than an hour’s drive from the South Island’s largest city, Christchurch, yet it retains a strong rural character heavily dominated by farming. The Peninsula was formed from the craters of three extinct volcanoes with big grass covered rolling hills that run into the Pacific Ocean in a radial pattern around the circular Peninsula.

It was named after Captain James Cook’s ship botanist Joseph Banks. Cook’s voyage in 1769 circumnavigated New Zealand and was trying to find the imagined Southern Continent. The Peninsula’s latitude is well within the Roaring 40’s and therefore dominated by westerlies with an endless train of eastward moving lows and associated fronts that are broken by high pressure ridges. The pattern makes for ever changing and dramatic landscapes.