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Published: January 13th 2011
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Polar exploration
The first vehicle to reach the South Pole, many years after Scott. No, the weather's not that bad here, though it has turned cool again. But today is the day that I finally made it to "The Heart of the Great Alone," a travelling exhibition of early Antarctic photographs from Queen Elizabeth's private collection, hosted by the Canterbury Museum.
All the pictures were from two expeditions: Scott's last expedition and Shackleton's star-crossed expedition in the Endurance. Since I've read Shackleton, Apsley-Garrard, and other biographical and autobiographical accounts of those expeditions, I'd seen some of the photos before, but these were exceptionally clear prints, newly made from the original negatives. One set of pictures, from Shackleton's Elephant Island camp, were not very clear, but since the photographer had by that point been reduced to using the nineteen-teens' equivalent of a Kodak Instamatic, that is not surprising. All the better equipment had gone down with the
Endurance As it happened, as I was on my way to see this special exhibit, the tram driver casually mentioned that Sir Ernest Rutherford's rooms at the University of Canterbury were open for public viewing on Wednesdays through Saturdays.
Even I, a Latin and English double major, recognized the name of the man who first realized
that atoms weren't solid, and I was eager to see the place where he had worked. The university has now moved to new quarters, but his lab and a lecture room he used as a student have been preserved, though, disappointingly, there is nothing left in the lab.
Too much of an attempt had been made to turn the rooms into a multimedia presentation. I appreciated one bit of enhancement -- a recording of Rutherford giving a lecture -- but most of it I found annoying and distracting. There were two introductory rooms, neither of which had been inhabited by Rutherford: one was furnished as a student's room of the 1890's, with a recording of period school songs,
though it had, a small sign said, actually been a professor's room. The other, which had been a lecture hall, was full of interactive displays about Rutherford and the atom.
Rutherford's lab was in an unimproved basement below the lecture hall, a room previously used as a cloakroom. He had specially requested it because its concrete floor was less subject to vibration than the wooden floors in other rooms. There had been extensive remodelling, and only a part of the
Emigrants' trunks
One trunk the size of these was all the luggage you could bring. basement was still there.
Annoyingly, feeling evidently that this bare basement area would be insufficiently interesting to their visitors, the curators had added a projection TV, displaying a badly photoshopped image of Rutherford (with the head made from a real black-and-white photograph or newsreel and the body, in color, from some other source) apparently talking to off-camera friends and fellow scientists such as Marie Curie, who, even more annoyingly, "answered" him off camera. After a few minutes of waiting to see whether anything real would be shown, I gave up on it.
Upstairs, two stories above the lab, was the lecture room. It had been decorated as a science classroom, and the implication was that Rutherford had taught there. In particular, the blackboard had been rigged to display various equations, as though an invisible lecturer were writing them. In fact, as the fine print revealed, Rutherford's only connection with the room was that he had had an English course there as an undergraduate.
No photography was allowed in either exhibit, and I did not break the rules, though I noticed that many people did in the Rutherford exhibit, especially in the lecture-room, well away from the guides.
The polar exhibition had good security and I am sure that anyone taking photos would have been asked to leave.
When I had seen these two exhibits, I went back to the Canterbury Museum proper (for the special exhibition turned out to be in another gallery behind the museum) to see their regular Antarctic gallery. There there were more artifacts, including some more modern ones from Byrd's expedition.
I also took the time to see an exhibit called Fred and Myrtle's Paua House. Fred and Myrtle were real people, a couple who lived in the far south of the South Island. For decades, they collected abalone shells, polished them, and hung them on the wall of their living room. Ultimately, they had over a thousand abalones.
Their home drew tourists by the busload, and they became known all over New Zealand. When they passed away, about a decade ago, their living room was recreated at the Canterbury Museum, with the permission of their family. All the original things were moved, for instance, the carpet was their own carpet.
I went back to the hostel for lunch after that, and while I was eating, resting, and talking
Botanical Garden
I just walked along the edge of it. to Jim, the weather turned. A cold wind began blowing, and I decided not to go out again. I had been half-considering going back to look at that children's book I had been attracted to back in December.
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