Monday, February 29, 2016

 

Examples of Art Deco

Mum was hyper in Napier. She took hundreds of photos of details of Art Deco stuff, even the tiny details on doorknobs. Here are a few examples of her images. The top two are inside the National Tobacco Company building. All of the columns that are part of the structure of the building, or just ornamental, are decorated with sculpted vines and flowers. The windows have coloured glass art on them. Even the door hinges, handles and knobs are decorated. An Art Deco lover could spend hours in this building; we had to just about drag Mum away to see the rest of the town. Of course, she found the Art Deco shops and got all excited by the jewellery and the figurines. Actually, I thought the little ladies were very nice. In one of the streets there is a life-size statue of a lady like these, with a funny-looking dog on a leash. Across the road there is a statue of a small boy climbing a streetlight pole. There is probably a lot more statues that I didn't see, but we will be back. The photo in the middle? Well, I said that Mum was impressed by Art Deco jewellery so when she found these left-over bits from the extras in "The Great Gatsby" the result was inevitable.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

 

Napier, Art-Deco Capital of the World

Our third stop in New Zealand was Napier, the port for the Hawkes Bay region. In 1931 much of the city was totally flattened by an earthquake and the city was rebuilt in the Art Deco style that was the fashion of the time. Today the rebuilt old city has one of the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world. Mum is an Art Deco nut, so one of the main reasons for choosing the December cruise on Voyager of the Seas was its day in Napier. We had a brilliant guide, John, one of the Tours By Locals team. He made sure that Mum got the most out of the day. Unka Mark and Aunty Vicki came on the tour with us and they say it was the best day of the whole cruise. The first photo shows us at a lookout point with views over the city and Hawkes Bay. There are several interesting (or peculiar) houses along the roads in this area.  In town, the classic building is the National Tobacco Company building, now a museum. I will show some photos of the inside in the next post. The  bottom images are of the T&G building and the Art Deco Centre. You can also see some vintage cars in the photos. There are lots of these in Napier and they come out whenever a cruise ship is in port. In February there are big Art Deco festivals where the town, the cars and the people all "go back to the 1930s"; naturally, Mum is planning to be there for one of them. She spent a lot of time (and a fair amount of cash) in the Art Deco shops, so has her gear all ready.

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Sunday, February 14, 2016

 

Wellington WW1 Memorial

When our Wellington guide, Robbie, found out that we were very interested in military history, he added a special extra to our tour. The Dominion Museum is holding a special Great War Exhibition, telling the story of New Zealand in World War One. The exhibition was created by Sir Peter Jackson, so naturally it is spectacular and very moving. The museum is next to Wellington's cenotaph and the two are linked by a series of two-dimensional soldiers lining the entry ramp. Sir Peter's crew have really brought exhibits to life. Two that really impressed this small bear are the tank crossing a trench full of German soldiers, and a mounted troop hauling artillery to the front while a French aircraft passes overhead. The exhibit that is the most impressive that I have ever seen took up a whole room. It is a diorama of the battle of Chunuk Bair at Gallipoli. This battle has the same significance to New Zealand as the Lone Pine battle (which took place at the same time) has to Australia. The diorama contains literally thousands of small figures of New Zealand and Ottoman Turk soldiers, nearly all different. You can identify NZ Major-general Godley and his staff, NZ soldier Cyril Bassett who earned the VC for his effort laying telephone cable, and there is even a combat cameraman. Robbie told us that Sir Peter had modeled this little guy on himself. Of course, Sir Peter wasn't at Gallipoli; he was born in 1961 😜. We really enjoyed our day with Robbie. If you are ever visiting Wellington, look him up on the "Tours by Locals" web page, you won't do better. The exhibition will be open until the end of 2018.

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Tuesday, February 09, 2016

 

Wellington Harbour

Our guide in Wellington, Robbie, took us all around the harbour shore. From the lookout on Mt Victoria we could see the airport. This is a tricky one for pilots. The runway is short and really large aircraft can't use it. The wind is pretty well always strong, but it varies in direction and speed quite a lot. You can find you-tube videos of some scary landings and take-offs from this airport. There are lots of small car parks around the harbour and from several of them we could see our ship. The hill behind the ship is the one that the cable car runs on; you can see photos we took from there in my November 2014 posts. Of course, harbours usually mean lighthouses. Across the harbour entrance we could see the two on Pencarrow Head that mark the northern harbour mouth. We saw these closer up on our last cruise, but the weather was too bleak to get better photos as we sailed out this time. On our side there was this small checker-board marked one at Point Halswell. This one marks the turn into the inner harbour. The area is a noted shell fishing ground and there have been several drownings of divers here. Needless to say, I wasn't given a chance to try the fishing.

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Monday, February 01, 2016

 

Windy Wellington

Our second port in New Zealand this cruise was Wellington, the capital. Wellington is known as "Windy Wellington" because the wind gets funneled down Cook Strait between the North and South Islands and hardly ever stops blowing. The sign on the hill near the airport tells how the locals see it, look close and you will too. We had a magnificent guide for our day in Wellington. Robbie took us around the city and bays showing us stuff that we didn't have a chance of seeing last time. We started by visiting two of the most unusual buildings. The one at the top is called the Beehive by locals. It is in fact the parliamentary office building. Parliament House is under renovation next door. The building on the bottom is the Old Government Building. It looks like it is made of stone, but is the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere. It was built in 1876 to be the offices of the NZ civil service. Today it is Law School of the University of Wellington. Even close up, you find it hard to believe that it is actually all wood. The other interesting thing in the photo is the electric trolleybus. These have been in use in Wellington since 1924, but are due to be phased out shortly. I think they are an interesting idea. After looking at buildings (more photos to come), Robbie drove us up to the top of Mt Victoria. There are a couple of lookout points there which give spectacular views of the city. You may be able to see Voyager of the Seas in the background. It was very windy up there and the Oldies wouldn't let me loose to climb on anything.

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