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Published: September 29th 2007
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We arrived in the North Island around 5PM, a little later than expected due to the ‘challenging’ conditions on the ferry. Windy Wellington as it is commonly called is the little known capital of New Zealand (no it’s not Auckland) and a surprisingly cultured, happening place - particularly when you have just spent 6 weeks in the south island!! With plans to meet our friends Andre and Bianca who we met at the Nishtha project in India and were now living in NZ, we battled with a few dodgy phones, eventually made contact and met up with them at their flat for a chat and some tea. Andre who is studying at the university had just got himself a new job as a night security guard, so I took him to work for his first shift and then returned to spend an enjoyable evening catching up with Bianca.
We stayed at A & B’s overnight and popped into town the next morning to visit the well renowned Te Papa museum. It’s a pretty big place that has permanent displays covering the land’s geology with the Earth Fire & Water exhibition, indigenous culture, NZ’s pioneering days and a big natural history
section. Talking of which alien or non-indigenous species is a big issue over here and there was a lot of information about how some of the plants and animals that are common today arrived on the islands. As you can imagine the Brits come in for a lot of flak (the introduction of the pervasive gorse bush springs to mind) and as for the missionaries, well... I liked the airport style arrivals board used to show what , when and where things had arrived over the years, the shot I took was one of many, many pages!
Before we move on I must just mention the poor Kiwi, not as in the nickname given to New Zealanders the world over, but the cute and rather hapless birds that can’t fly and one of many indigenous species hanging on to existence by a thread. Again the dreaded imports are to blame for its demise, with foxes, stoats, possums and rats devastating the kiwi population. There are some around still, where intense pest control using the controversial 1080 poison, traps, guns or any other means have allowed birds to be reintroduced and survive, but it seems like a full time job
to protect them from the evils of the modern world. If that wasn’t enough stress and suffering for this small animal, just spare a thought for the females who lay eggs that our 6 times bigger than that of any other bird of similar size...oooh that’s gotta hurt.
Earlier in the day we had phoned a lady called Evelyn, a family friend and another foreign import who came over in the 1950’s on one of the ‘emigrate for £10’ ships used to encourage the colonisation of Australasia and settled here as a teacher. She and her husband Roy live an hour or so north of Wellington on the west coast at Foxton Beach and at around 4pm we headed out of Wellington to fight with horrendous traffic jams and pay them a visit. As it was Friday night at rush hour, we hoped that the queues were just bad timing and not that the north island was even busier than we had been led to believe! Evelyn and Roy gave us a warm welcome and a REAL bed that was bliss after far too long arranging those stupid cushions in the back of a van. We went for a
long walk along the beautiful beach, with their dog Suki running around like a lunatic, distant views of Mt Taranaki volcano and the usual artistic collection of bleached driftwood. Evelyn gave us a tour of the town and we visited MAVTEC (Museum of Audio and Visual Technology) where the NZ national film archives are stored along with an awful lot of other decommissioned audio/visual gear. There aren’t too many tourists around here and the curator and his wife had to switch the lights on when we arrived and then gave us a personal tour of the place, filled with cameras, record players, radios and a few old harmonium organs just like mine! They also have a working radio studio and hold a film night once a month, when they crank up the old projector and show one of the films that are spread across 6 or 7 reels each!
After a couple of days and a very comfortable stay we said our goodbyes and took the road north toward Taranaki (Mt Egmont) the volcano that we had seen in the distance.
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