Nicolas Steenhout wrote in message
. ..
Hello hello,

Wotcha Nic. Good to hear from you and that you are on form.

For those of you who have been on a while, you may remember me. I moved
from Chicago, IL to Savannah, GA just about a year ago. I love Savannah
and the warm weather. Fantastic. Work has simply been keeping me overly
busy since I arrived, no time for much anything.

However, I'm on the move again! I met a wonderful woman on an online
support group for folks who were widowed young (of all places!). After
talking for nearly a year, we realized that some feelings had developped,
and she came to visit to see if what was online translated in real
life. It did, beyond our wildest expectations. Since I cannot sponsor her
to move here, I'm moving to her. To New Zealand.

Oh dear grin it'll be cooler than Savannah.

I am able to bring my Big Blak Wunder Dawg, Wix my service dog. She won't
have to do quarantine, but that was quite a bit of hoop jumping and endless
blood tests.
I am unable to bring my trees :-( I looked into the import requirements of
some plants (rosa and acer in particular). It's just wild. Tempting as it
is to sneak something past, it's just daft so, I won't do it.

You should see what the poor Defence Forces dogs have to do to come back
into Australia! Our and NZs Customs/Quarantine services are VERY hard on any
plant or animal life that comes in from 'outside'. This means we are
respectively free of lots of nasties though, Big Blak Wix *s* (are there
pics?) will not have to have another rabies shot whilst in NZ and you will
be able to bring her over to Aussie with no probs.
Don't even think of bringing in any plant matter the penalties are
horrendous. Australia has some really cute Beagles who sniff for that stuff
in all our airports and I'm sure NZ has something similar.

On the other hand think of all the NZ native species you can have a crack
at.
Acers and Rosas will exist in NZ (and grow quite well) so you can
re-establish them as well.

A good intro site for bonsai in 'Asia' (Aust. and NZ included) is
Bonsai in Asia Guide
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Palace/7574/

the applicable page of NZ links is
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Palac...ewzealand.html

written by John Oldland, who's my club's president. WA Bonsai Soc.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~jold/bo...ety/index.html

Find the NZ Government site, if you haven't already and you should get
buckets of info.
A good job site is
www.nzjobs.co.nz
I use it and it is well put together.

Cheers and Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere in advance.
Heidi Aussie

PS. The Rugby World Cup is on this year.