smashing museum, blustery morning

---

It's 8.30 am and outside there's a gale going off, making the boring view a little bit more dramatic :-) I'm off to Coromandel later this morning, so hopefully that wind will blow the clouds away - southwards preferably!

Yesterday, after a rather windy and wet morning at Pukehina Beach with Bronnie and some of her friends (since she's only just come back from GB after nearly 8 years away there's a lot of gossip catch up going on :-) ) all four of us went to the Rotorua museum, which is housed in what used to be the main bath house until the 70s (? - a mock tudor building with gorgeous gardens. The museum itself is very well laid out, having retained some of the old rooms where patients were "cured" with electric baths among other luxurious treatments! Sunken bath tubs with steps down them, hot pools and a look round the pipe system in the cellar (v. hot and stuffy!). Local artwook sets the mood.

The other wing of the building houses more exhibitions about the 1886 Tarawera eruptions (seen enough about that in Buried Village, but got drawn again to a big painting of the pink and white terraces), Maori life and the history of the Maori Batallion in WWII with a very moving film interviewing veterans and family members of those that never came back. I'd never even thought of the possibility of sending people to the other side of the world to fight - the idea is very perverse to me. As Maori funerals (tangi) last several days the people of Rotorua spent most of the time at the meeting houses without going home, because no sooner had one tangi taken place the next telegram had arrived. At the end of the film all four of us were crying our eyes out - it was immensely moving.

A feast of fish and chips and deep fried mussels (enormous ones!!!) rounded off the day.

---