Auckland to Wellington to Sydney to Canberra to Melbourne

I have been most remiss in not posting for two weeks. It's been a busy two weeks in New Zealand and Australia. I shall try to post everything salient.

I took the tourist bus in Auckland the next day, and bought a two-day ticket for NZ$65. Well worth it. On the first day I went to the Anglican cathedral (picture to follow),which would have been nicer to visit if there weren't a recording being made in it, which meant we couldn't go in. Pictures will follow when I get to Singapore or London. Then to Auckland Zoo, where the kiwi birds were quite elusive. The usual gaggle of non-New Zealand fauna were on display. I also visited Old St Mary's (next to Holy Trinity Cathedral), the Michael Joseph Savage memorial, (more pics to come), the twee shopping district, where I had a hot cross bun, and then back to Queen Street and my hotel.

I shall digress here by saying that I had little or no remembrance of my Auckland hotel room until I began this blog entry. This was quite strange. But I will now be taking pictures of every hotel room I stay in so that I have something to anchor my remembrances to.

On my last full day in Auckland I took the bus again and went to the Auckland Museum. It is both a museum and a site of remembrance of their war dead. Even more than in the UK or the US, New Zealand and Australia remember their soldiers who died in the several wars from the Boer War onwards. There are many war memorials, and in front of the museum in Auckland is a Cenotaph nearly identical to the one in Whitehall in London. Inside the museum there are lots of Maori artefacts, including one of their ceremonial houses, which I couldn't enter as I would have had to take off my shoes and I am not comfortable doing that these days.

Another aside: the woman who is shrieking in the next room is having a better time tonight than I will have.

After a Waldorf salad in the café (I am very proud that I've figured out how to produce an "é" on this Bluetooth keyboard) I got back on the bus, returned to my hotel, and packed to take the train to Wellington. After a hitch in getting a cab, I was off to the train station, where I got on the NZ Explorer train, which would take me to Wellington in 6 hours or so. It was beautifully appointed inside, but the best was yet to come. After an hour moving through the southern suburbs of Auckland (which they tell me is one of the biggest cities in the world, landwise) we moved to different terrains. If there is one thing that New Zealand has, it's scenery. Too bad they can't export scenery: they would make a mint. The highlight of the trip for me was seeing the corkscrew way the train (electrified by overhead catenary all the way) got up one particular mountain. You could look down and see the track where you had just been. The old volcanic mountains dominated the trip, with few rivers but lots and lots of sheep and cows in fields.

And so to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The Travelodge is built on the side of a hill, and you enter from your taxi on level 7. The room was smallish but well-furnished with a shower not a bath, which my aged feet and tricky balance appreciated. The next day I looked around for the tourist center, where I bought a ticket for the hop-on-hop-off bus. This was not a bus, it was a van. And, you had to tell the driver when you hopped off when and where you would hop back on again. Very annoying.

Our first stop was Mt. Victoria. Our dear old Queen left her name all over the Empire. There's something named after her everywhere, it seems. Great pics of the city from there, so I took them. Next stop was the Cable Car (with museum attached), where I bought some overpriced postcards and stamps. Walked down a very steep hill through the Botanical Garden to rejoin the bus an hour later. Did I mention that for the end of summer it was boiling hot? Over 30º C all the time.

Another old church, Old St Paul's, near Parliament, was quite interesting inside. It was made entirely of wood, no stone at all (earthquakes tend to topple stone buildings whereas wooden ones tend to last). The docent was very nice and told me all about the Marine flag hanging from the roofbeams. Parliament looks like a completion of London City Hall (the Testicle) so it's called the Beehive. On that day a Maori treaty was being signed in the debating chamber. I saw the group of Maori outside laughing and rejoicing, and thought someone had gotten married in there. I saw the news reports that night on TV and realised what I'd seen was a historic occasion.

The next day I braved the public transport system (I got conflicting instructions from a bus driver and the concierge and both were wrong) and took a bus to Wellington Zoo. I was trying to get a picture of a kiwi for HWMBO and their publicity had promised a kiwi encounter.So I turned up at the appointed hour and the docent first showed off a tuatara while her assistant brought out the kiwi. She put the kiwi down on the floor of the exhibit and I thought that it was remarkably docile. When the docent finally turned her attention to the kiwi, it transpired that it was actually a Norwegian Blue Kiwi. In other words, it was stuffed roadkill that had lost one leg in the fatal accident. I was crushed,but managed one picture before leaving. We heard one kiwi call out from the next room, though. Advice to all who go to Wellington Zoo: avoid both the kiwi and the café, as both promise more than they deliver.

Next day I flew to Sydney. However, I'm too tired to post about that yet. Next post. Off to Hobart tomorrow for the Museum of Old and New Art. May post more tomorrow evening. Sorry this is boring and long. I am posting it as much for myself as for you, so I can remember and have something to hang my pictures on, as it were.

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