Christchurch is still recovering from the earthquake.
Most of the iconic buildings are still covered in scaffolding.
Which made them less pretty.
The river valley was nice though.
- Tag Archives christchurch
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Christchurch Botanical Gardens
It was raining and cold in Christchurch but the flowers were open and everything was really green.
Even the bees were out working before winter sets in.
The birds in New Zealand are not what we see at home.
And the flowers are a bit more colouful.
Well some of the birds are similar like this magpie.
Okay and there are mallards here too.
They were enjoying the water in the river next to the park.
They didn’t mind the cold water at all.
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The Rest of the Canterbury Museum
The rest of the Canterbury Museum gave you the impression that a resident that was a chronic hoarder died, and they didn’t know what to do with all of her stuff. But they had this big empty museum. So they cleaned it all off, sorted it into categories and put it on display.
There was a spoon, and an old deck of playing cards.
A bunch of old clothing.
A collection of fans.
A bunch of silver.
Some china.
Hunting trophies
Hundreds of T-shirts
A giant hunk of iron they claim contained microscopic diamonds.
And an entire room full of Travel New Zealand Posters.
Even a stationary bike!
A scale model of a star. This is actually the companion to one we saw in Los Angeles last summer. The solar system is located in Kent, UK at a scale of 1:4.6 billion. Pluto is 1km away from the sun in that model, and the stars are located in California, Australia and the Falkland Islands. This star is the 7th closest star to the sun.
A sea sponge skeleton.
And last but not least, an Egyptian mummy.
One woman had a house so full of shells that they didn’t even bother taking them out, they just moved the entire cottage into the museum!
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Canterbury Museum: Antarctic Exhibit
This is one of the first vehicles used in Antarctica in 1914. It had a 9hp motor and could only move at a walking pace. It broke down constantly, and one time had to be hauled by the men over 19km.
Things got better by 1957, with a 180hp motor.
They also had a collection of the things the explorers used to pass the time while stranded on a frozen wasteland.
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Canterbury Museum: Maori Exhibit
Previously we were exposed to Maori culture in the Cook Islands. Here we got to see a bit more of their tools rather than how they live today. These are all types of fish hooks or tools used to make the hooks.
When the Maori arrived in New Zealand there were no land based predators but some very large birds called Moa which they hunted to extinction.
There were many examples of the types of carvings these people made. The large eyes, open mouth and exposed tongue are to ward off bad spirits. They used polished shells for some of the eyes.
