My last day in Wellington, the city museum, with its prominent exhibit on the Wahine Disaster, when the interisland ferry sank with great loss of life. The next day, I took the interislander ferry down to Picton to catch the train on to Christchurch.
The ferry was large and steady, with restaurants, a cinema, a bar, and a magician. University students in sandals were prominent among the passengers. They lay down on the furniture to try to sleep, though it's only a 3 hour trip. One of them sat by the entrance and strummed at a guitar, but very, very lightly -- his delusions about being a hippie troubador struggling with a dim perception that playing a guitar on a crowded ferry might be an insane thing to do. There was other entertainment: The PA came on to tell us about the magic show, and, in an announcement that trailed off into a giggle, that Sunny Ray and the Joy Project would be playing in the bar for our enjoyment.
The sea was so calm the ferry started off without my noticing. It threaded a narrow, crossed the small stretch between the island, and then skirted a steep, thickly treed coast before berthing at Picton. Picton's a small place mostly devoted to the amusement of small children, with parks, minigolf, a pool with toy-yacht rental, and a barn-like aquarium. A happy old man in a safety vest took kids for rides on a miniature railway, for a nominal fee. One of the many reasons to be jealous of train nerds -- what could be better than a simple passion that's easily gratified and isn't bad for your liver or dangerous in overdose? -- is that they peak at about 90. Too old to be embarrassed about spending their days operating a toy railway.
The trip down to Chistchurch is at least as spectacular as the one on the North Island. The tracks run through hatchet cuts in soft hillsides, by a seal colony, past rocky beaches with surfers wiping out just offshore, and then across flat gravelly riverbeds. There are signs of agriculture not involving sheep, unless they're involved behind the scenes somehow. Later on, vast bare hillsides signify their return. Sheep: the silliest, most helpless, and most successful of the country's animals.
Christchurch is being rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake. The central city is all vacant lots, debris fields, boarded-up and half-ruined buildings with plywood in the windows, "Danger!" signs, construction sites, and cheerful public art projects. Grinding and banging noises from construction sites are constant. Itineraries for the earthquake tourist include "re:start", a shopping complex built, at least originally, of shipping containers, and the "Cardboard Cathedral" (which uses cardboard prominently, but is mostly concrete and steel siding). There are empty plinths, looking like their statues bolted when the trouble started; a bronze likeness of Queen Victoria from her dumpiest and dourest period survives, unamused by the whole business but serenely confident in the recovery of this important outpost of her empire.
There's a public argument over the future of the damaged Anglican cathedral. The campaign to restore it has posted signs that say, "Does this look like a ruin to you?" along with an aerial shot of the building carefully cropped to conceal the fact that the back half of it has, in fact, fallen off. Placards in the square push back gently with vague "life-is-change", "to everything a season" sorts of message, the subtext of which is, pretty clearly, "let's dynamite this bad boy and get on with our lives". Stabilizing the ruin and leaving it seems like the best option, though there are probably good reasons that wouldn't work.
Allowing for the fact that its downtown area was just destroyed in a major natural disaster, Christchurch still isn't the most conveniently laid-out place for the tourist on foot. The enthusiasms of its planners were for gardens and the motor-car. It's a grid of 3-lane streets, which often come together in 5-way intersections -- a bit tedious to walk after the compact downtowns of Auckland and Wellington. A wide gray creek, nostalgically named the Avon River by early settlers, oozes through the town, unhurriedly freighting fallen leaves and occasional plastic bottles down to the sea.
There's a rainy morning in the museum, looking at its dioramas of Maori life and its lonely mummy. The ancient Egyptian class system continues after death, just as intended: Pharaohs and viziers rest in the great museums of London and Cairo, and this middle-class girl is by the children's play area upstairs at the Canterbury Museum of Christchurch. Things I don't bother with include the "Antarctic Experience", which promises the chance to "experience -15 degree wind chill" -- exactly the experience I came here to not have. Maybe there's an attraction around here that will allow me to experience life in a large city with inadequate public transport, or the experience of working at a computer all day.
The ferry was large and steady, with restaurants, a cinema, a bar, and a magician. University students in sandals were prominent among the passengers. They lay down on the furniture to try to sleep, though it's only a 3 hour trip. One of them sat by the entrance and strummed at a guitar, but very, very lightly -- his delusions about being a hippie troubador struggling with a dim perception that playing a guitar on a crowded ferry might be an insane thing to do. There was other entertainment: The PA came on to tell us about the magic show, and, in an announcement that trailed off into a giggle, that Sunny Ray and the Joy Project would be playing in the bar for our enjoyment.
The sea was so calm the ferry started off without my noticing. It threaded a narrow, crossed the small stretch between the island, and then skirted a steep, thickly treed coast before berthing at Picton. Picton's a small place mostly devoted to the amusement of small children, with parks, minigolf, a pool with toy-yacht rental, and a barn-like aquarium. A happy old man in a safety vest took kids for rides on a miniature railway, for a nominal fee. One of the many reasons to be jealous of train nerds -- what could be better than a simple passion that's easily gratified and isn't bad for your liver or dangerous in overdose? -- is that they peak at about 90. Too old to be embarrassed about spending their days operating a toy railway.
The trip down to Chistchurch is at least as spectacular as the one on the North Island. The tracks run through hatchet cuts in soft hillsides, by a seal colony, past rocky beaches with surfers wiping out just offshore, and then across flat gravelly riverbeds. There are signs of agriculture not involving sheep, unless they're involved behind the scenes somehow. Later on, vast bare hillsides signify their return. Sheep: the silliest, most helpless, and most successful of the country's animals.
Christchurch is being rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake. The central city is all vacant lots, debris fields, boarded-up and half-ruined buildings with plywood in the windows, "Danger!" signs, construction sites, and cheerful public art projects. Grinding and banging noises from construction sites are constant. Itineraries for the earthquake tourist include "re:start", a shopping complex built, at least originally, of shipping containers, and the "Cardboard Cathedral" (which uses cardboard prominently, but is mostly concrete and steel siding). There are empty plinths, looking like their statues bolted when the trouble started; a bronze likeness of Queen Victoria from her dumpiest and dourest period survives, unamused by the whole business but serenely confident in the recovery of this important outpost of her empire.
There's a public argument over the future of the damaged Anglican cathedral. The campaign to restore it has posted signs that say, "Does this look like a ruin to you?" along with an aerial shot of the building carefully cropped to conceal the fact that the back half of it has, in fact, fallen off. Placards in the square push back gently with vague "life-is-change", "to everything a season" sorts of message, the subtext of which is, pretty clearly, "let's dynamite this bad boy and get on with our lives". Stabilizing the ruin and leaving it seems like the best option, though there are probably good reasons that wouldn't work.
Allowing for the fact that its downtown area was just destroyed in a major natural disaster, Christchurch still isn't the most conveniently laid-out place for the tourist on foot. The enthusiasms of its planners were for gardens and the motor-car. It's a grid of 3-lane streets, which often come together in 5-way intersections -- a bit tedious to walk after the compact downtowns of Auckland and Wellington. A wide gray creek, nostalgically named the Avon River by early settlers, oozes through the town, unhurriedly freighting fallen leaves and occasional plastic bottles down to the sea.
There's a rainy morning in the museum, looking at its dioramas of Maori life and its lonely mummy. The ancient Egyptian class system continues after death, just as intended: Pharaohs and viziers rest in the great museums of London and Cairo, and this middle-class girl is by the children's play area upstairs at the Canterbury Museum of Christchurch. Things I don't bother with include the "Antarctic Experience", which promises the chance to "experience -15 degree wind chill" -- exactly the experience I came here to not have. Maybe there's an attraction around here that will allow me to experience life in a large city with inadequate public transport, or the experience of working at a computer all day.
