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Published: January 24th 2014
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Wednesday January 15th, 2014. Auckland New Zealand & Arrival in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Sprawled between the clam waters of the Kaipara, Waitemata and Manukau harbours, Auckland is the most populous region of NZ. It is the largest Polynesian city in the world, and as such, has a distinctive cultural flavour. It is home to almost one third on NZ's population and, for the first time, we felt like we were in a city. Built on an isthmus, Auckland has 48 dormant and extinct volcanic cones. Some of the beaches have wild oceans while others are serene coves. There are also rainforests on its southern and western flanks. The cosmopolitan CBD (Central Business District) has everything a big city should have, from fine dining and boutique shopping to immaculate heritage
buildings and parks.
We packed our stuff (back into a suitcase and small rucksack each) and went down for breakfast. After we had eaten our tea/coffee, juice and toast and marmalade we donated the rest of our goodies to a couple of fellow backpackers. We then dumped our stuff in the car. We had no plans at all for today, but D had paid for a days parking
in the same lot, so we walked back down towards the CBD. We were crossing a street when a lady stopped us and asked "Have you been to the Art Gallery - its marvellous?). We replied that no we hadn't but we would love to take a look. She pointed the way and off we went. We have no idea why she picked on us but we are glad that she did!
Auckland Art Gallery (Toe o Tamaki) is the principal public art gallery in Auckland and has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand. It frequently hosts travelling international exhibitions. Set below the hilltop Albert Park in Kitchiner Street, the gallery was established in 1888 as the second public art gallery in New Zealand. (Dunedin was the first in 1884).
The Auckland Gallery collection was initially dominated by European old master paintings following the standard taste of the 19th century. Today the collection has expanded to include a wider variety of periods, styles and media, and numbers over 15,000 artworks. There are early NZ landscapes and portraits of Maori by Charles Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer. There is a sculpture terace and the McCahon
Room which houses changing displays of one of NZ's most respected artists, Colin McCahon. We knew we wouldn't have time to see it all as we needed to go back to the Sky Tower and then we had to return the car and get to the airport. While we were there we saw lots of interesting paintings and exhibits. The first interesting ones were Teleplasmic Mass - Prince 2007 & Teleplasmic Mass - Springsteen 2007, Works by Robert Hood which use plastic wrap as one of the media. These are a poke at the contemporary consumers desire for improvement in a world where ideas (and plastic) are constantly re-cycled. Other works which interested us are shown in the photos. M loved the picture of the racehorse Eclipse by Captain O'Kelley. M also found some more works by her favourite 'artistic discovery' on this trip - Frances Hodgekins.
We left the art gallery without seeing everything and made our way back to the Sky Tower which we had taken time to find out a bit more about. The Sky Tower is an observation and telecommunications tower located on the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets. It is 328 metres (1,076
ft) tall, as measured from ground level to the top of the mast making it the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. Due to its shape and height, especially when
compared to the next tallest structures, it has become an iconic structure in Auckland's skyline.
The tower attracts an average of 1,450 visitors per day. The upper portion of the tower contains two restaurants and a cafe — including New Zealand's only revolving restaurant, located 190 m (620 ft) from the ground, which turns 360 degrees every hour. There is also a brasserie-style buffet located one floor above the main observatory level. The tower has has 2 observation decks at different heights, each providing 360-degree views of the city (there used to be 3 but now there are too many dishes getting in the way of people climbing up the ladder - LADDER thought M!!!). The main observation level at 186 m (610 ft) has 38 mm (1.5 in) thick glass sections of flooring giving a view straight to the ground. M had stood on one of these yesterday - petrified. However, having learned that the glass is more solid than concrete she was much more up for
it than yesterday.
The tower also features the 'SkyJump', a 192-metre (630 ft jump from the observation deck, during which a jumper can reach up to 85 km/h (53 mph). The jump is guide-controlled to prevent jumpers from colliding with the tower in case of wind gusts. We were queueing for the lift when the information screen announced "Jumper in 30, 29, 28 ... seconds). We watched the mad girl throw herself off and could see her long blond locks flowing behind her as she bounced when the cable was at full capacity. After watching her bounce a bit more, we caught the lift down and made our way to the exit. On the way we passed the mad girl - who wasn't a girl at all (stereotypes and all that!). - he was a long haired blond guy making his way to the shop to return his jumping gear.
We found a lovely mall close to the tower where we had a fabulous Thai/Chinese fusion lunch. M had chicken and D had pork. It was really ethnic and most of the customers were Asian.
We returned to the car and drove to the Happy Campers depot
where we returned the car. The lady taking the keys gleefully announced that we had broken the record and had travelled further in our type of camper than anyone else. The previous record was 6000 km and we had done over 8000! Their courtesy shuttle drove us to the airport where we had a few hours to kill before our flight. M caught up with some blogs and we shared a bottle of wine. The flight to Sydney was on a Airbus 380. We hadn't been on one of these before and it was fantastic. Loads of leg room. All the impoverished were on the ground floor and there was an upstairs for the posh people. We landed and after waiting ages for our bags (almost the last off - but then they were probably the first on!) We grabbed some local lolly from an ATM and went and found a taxi. His sat-nav took us straight to our friend Rachel's pad. She came out to meet us. It was lovely to see her. She has a fantastic house which she is letting us look after while she is away on holiday. She doesn't depart on her trip for 9
days, so we have plenty of time to catch up and enjoy each others company. We had some lovely wine and chatted for about an hour before we collapsed into our lovely bed exhausted. We are looking forward to a not so frantic couple of weeks now.
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