Wednesday 14 August 2013

Park and Past



14 August 2013

What did we do today?

We decided to go for a walk through Hagley Park along the riverbank. It is lovely and peaceful there and you can almost forget about the earthquakes...

– apart from the cracks in the bridges and the road works on the other side of the river. 




(It’s a shame they’re going to spoil part of it by building stadiums for the cricket ground for the world cup.) 

Carl was saying yesterday that because of the road works he never knows from one day to the next which way he was going to be driving. At one point he was following a route that he’d planned to avoid the disruption, when he discovered that the route he was going to take was blocked by, you guessed it, road works. A guy in Christchurch Museum said that he’d heard that they were going to reach their peak in (I think) 2015. If this isn’t the peak, I hope I’m not here when it happens! And we walk everywhere!!

While I’m mentioning Carl, a few other things he mentioned yesterday. I hope I haven’t already mentioned them.
1)      The Port Hills rose one metre in the quakes.
2)      He heard a story from the day before/a couple of days before the 4th September ‘quake. An American couple were enjoying the punting on the River Avon. Suddenly the man says to the guy punting – “You’re going to have a big earthquake soon.”
“I doubt it,” responds the Punter. “We never have earthquakes.”
“You are now,” his passenger told him. “See those bubbles rising up through the water? That’s a sign that pressure is building up below ground…”
3)      The first, September, earthquake’s fault line ran from Rolleston to Greendale and initially scientists called it the Rolleston fault. But the local body politicians and developers who were trying to make Rolleston sound like a great place to live, decided that having an active fault named after the area wasn’t so great, so they said to the seismologists: “No one lives at Greendale. Why don’t you call it that?”
So they did.
4)      There was an area called “Swampvale” or something similar and some developers thought it would be a great place to build their soulless boxes, so they applied for building consent. The local council turned them down, and the name should give you an idea why. But the developers went to the environment court and won the right to build in this area called “Swampvale”.
One week later “Swampvale” was sinking into earthquake-made liquefaction and all the developers were up in arms over the money they’d lost. Now they’re talking of building in the zone called Marshlands…
Obviously developers have the same IQ as politicians.
5)      Carl obviously works as a tour guide and he was taking a group of international seismologists around on the 15th February 2011, led by a prominent New Zealand seismologist. Carl asked him if there was any chance of another big quake. The scientist told him that there was no chance… Of course they didn’t know about the fault that was going to rupture exactly one week later…

It was a lovely day, not too hot and not too cold, so we just wandered along the river and watched the dogs play and the joggers jog (some with more dedication than others.) We saw the pond yachts sailing on the pond and the ducks swim down the Avon. Then we turned into the botanic gardens and called into their information office. We both bought some lip salve, which’ll hopefully stop our lips from drying out so much.

Then we went for a wander.

Being “winter” there aren’t too many flowering plants about, although we did find some crocuses and pansies (but no daffodils to speak of.) However we did manage to find the Cork Oak that we search out each time we visit.


Sequoia - redwood

Sequoia



Cork Oak

It's pink!

A few steps on and we were at the rear of the museum so we went inside and had lunch upstairs looking out over the gardens and the Art Centre.


The museum’s free, but they suggest that you give a $5.00 donation, which we were glad to do. We also left our bags and jackets behind, which made the afternoon much more comfortable.



About the only evidence of the earthquakes that we saw was the broken statue of Sir Robert Falcon Scott, and that had been standing outside somewhere prior to the quakes. There were also a few cards about where exhibits had been removed for repair due to the earthquakes.


We saw the Paua House, which was pure Kiwi Kitch. (We stood for the national anthem at the beginning of a short film about Fred and Myrtle Flutey, and the only other couple of people copied us, assuming rightly that it was one of New Zealand’s anthems.
D.C.'s photo

The Antarctic Exhibition is always very interesting. Of course Christchurch is the stepping off point for both the New Zealand and American teams heading off to their respective bases in Antarctica.
Tractor that Sir Edmund Hillary used to get to the South Pole
English snow cat that crossed Antarctica


Heading off to the Pole



Don't know if he's a relative

Before we left we were talking to one of the staff (he got us our bags) and he was saying that there are over 150,000 exhibits and only about 200 were damaged in some way. (My numbers are probably slightly out.) He said that a few years ago practically all the soft foundations under the building had been hollowed out and that tonnes of concrete had been pumped in. That was what had saved the building and the exhibits during the quakes. During the February one everyone inside made a dash for outside, despite the staff saying that they were relatively safe. In fact outside all the slates were sliding off the room of Christ’s College next door and flying through the air like Frisbees. He also said that if the shaking had gone on for another six seconds, the Art Centre over the road would have collapsed. Fortunately they are repairing and strengthening it now.

We said how the staff must have dreaded checking the exhibits, especially the fragile items like the china. He said yes, but that going through those evens made him re-evaluate things in his life. His material possessions that were damaged didn’t matter. What mattered was that the people close to him were safe. He said that, what you didn’t hear about, 1000s of people were injured in the quakes.

The museum was closing at that time and we were practically kicked out, so we walked back along the banks of the Avon. As we still had half of D.C.’s meal from last night to tea tonight, we stopped off and got some Thai from the Thai Container shop. It’s a restaurant made up of a caravan (the sales window) and a container (the kitchen). The food was very nice.

Carved from ivory

Museum


Arts Centre

Christ's College


Sunset over Hagley Park







Female Paradise Shellduck - not zoomed or cropped


Knox Church

For Donna


 D.C.'s photos




We've tried not to take photos of homes, but this is the owner's comment about the above property.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you are having fun, brings back heaps of memories. And the photos are amazing! From Sophie Mischefski! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks like you are having fun! It brings back so many memories, the Sophie signs are extra cool, and the photos are Amazing :D From Sophie Mischefski.

    ReplyDelete