Day 87-88: Flying to Australia, Brisbane

A quick post, to play catch up.  We all flew from Christchurch to Brisbane.  The plan is to spend a few weeks in Australia, see the Great Barrier Reef, and then an Opera in Sydney.  At that point, Mary and Monroe will head back to Boston, and Molly and I will do...something.  Travel some more, most likely.

Views as we took off from Christchurch:

Brisbane was actually pretty neat.  It feels like a town that only recently grew to city size, and isn't quite sure what to do about it yet, but it was warm and welcoming.

This wall is completely set up to be a mecca for rock climbing, with bolts and spots for top roping throughout.  And it's just across the river from Downtown.

We were riding a free ferry around on the river.  I love boats, so this was pretty cool.

The city at night.

And this hastily scrawled card, by one of the other guests at our Bnb, will be important later.

Generally speaking, Brisbane was nice enough.  I don't know that I loved it as a city, but I wasn't there very long.  It was warm, muggy and wet, so it did remind me a bit of Houston in that way.

Day 86: Driving to Christchurch, In Christchurch

Hindsight being what it is, we should have come to Oamaru so much sooner.  It is lovely, relaxing, on the water, and much less expensive (read: not overpriced) compared to Queenstown.  But that's hindsight for you.

Here's the view from our Airbnb place. 

In the yard that morning, I found these guys:

Two enormous puffball mushrooms, each easily as large as my head.  I'm pretty sure they are edible, but wild mushrooms still freak me out a little when it comes to eating, so we let them be.

And a not quite as long drive later, we arrived in Christchurch.  The devastation of the series of earthquakes that have really never stopped affecting the city was very apparent.  Lots and lots of empty lots and construction everywhere.  The use of shipping containers for temporary and not so temporary commercial structures.

And some very cool play grounds:

Along with this great waterworks playground.  Where else will you find working dams, weirs, pumps, flood gates, and Archimede's Screws in a playground?

And the lay out is an urban designers wet dream, with the city's river, the Avon, bordering one side, and all sorts of concentric and close set circles and arcs.

The advantage, as much as it is one, of lots of empty lots is lots of 'canvas' for artists to use.  Like this:

Or this:

I liked this caption from the wall text about the above sculpture.

A newish looking trolley rolls around and through some newish looking shopping centers in town.

More public art, in the form of astroturf covered oversized furniture.

A silent dance space, with some dancers.

The Christchurch cathedral is falling apart, and there is a huge debate on whether to rebuild it, or to build a different style of building that is less susceptible to massive earthquakes.  Below I have pictures of the temporary cathedral in the city.  It's also a designer's wet dream, but pretty cool.  It's constructed of heavy duty cardboard tubes, steel, and plastic, and even as a 'temporary' building, it'll last 50 years.  Pictures near the bottom of this post.

There was a busquer's festival in town that week, so we were treated to more musicians, acrobats, comedians, and pan handlers than you would expect.  But we did get to watch a bit of fire spinning as dusk approached.

Here's some pictures of the temporary cathedral.  It was locked, so we didn't get to go in.

A neat and poignant memorial to the people killed in the first massive quakes.  A white chair, no two alike, for each person who died.  It too is supposed to be temporary, but I hope they find some way of making it more permanent.

Also, since we were there (I'm obviously still very far behind on posting) another quake, this one "only" 5.7 on the Richter scale has hit the city.  No one was serious hurt or killed this time, but its obviously not easy for the city that has lost more than a fifth of its population, and is still trying to rebuild from five years ago.  Still, we did like the city, and its charm and spunk as it continues to tread onward, even as the very earth seems to not like it very much.

Day 85: Leaving Queenstown, Oamaru

The beginning of an end, so to speak.  We left Queenstown, and started our two day trek to Christchurch, where we will fly to Australia from.  Along the way, a drive across the middle of the South Island.  It is a sunny, sunny place, much like the Eastern slope of the Rockies and Cascades in the States.  (Lots of irrigation in a place that would otherwise be a desert).

Along the way, many many road side vegetable and fruit stands made larger than necessary to attract a critical customer:  The Asian Tourist.  This particular one had rose gardens:

And random, naked lady statuary.

The next town had overly large constructed fruits:

You do you, Cromwell.

And eventually, we reached Oamaru.  Oamaru is a lot more quaint and attractive than you would assume, and a lot of that had to do with the elaborately carved detail work on the white, limestone buildings that make up most of the core of the town.

The town is close to a very rich vein of Oamaru Stone, and so in the late Victorian age, when the town first bloomed, much of the buildings were made from it.

This sign is from a stoneworker who still does some carving of the stone, mainly of smaller pieces for tourists.

But you can see how the buildings have a charm lacking in most other towns in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the ice cream store where this cart was located wasn't open at the time for us to test the theory.

Oamaru is also home to a thriving steam punk scene, museum, and various parades throughout the year.  The officialish symbol of the town is, in fact, a penny-farthing (the big wheel in front style of bicycle.)

We even found this, as far as I could tell operational, steam-punked out penny-double farthing, using a tracker tire as the front wheel.  It was a bit rusty and locked up, but all the parts seemed like they would work with a little TLC.

A theme we ran into several times before, and since, in New Zealand.  The play grounds are always pretty awesome.  I think Molly got some better pictures, but this one had a publicly accessible gas grill ($2 gets you 25 minutes of heat), an honest-to-God human sized hamster wheel (the round tube just to the left of the arrow shaped building), and a slide that started at least 20 feet up.  There's also an old school playground merry-go-round on the left side of the frame.

This being the coast of New Zealand, the surf was pretty intense.  The Marina was protected by some pretty intense breakwaters, including this one made of giant cement caltrops.  

And enourmous granite and limestone boulders.

And seals.  They added those in for good measure.

Oamaru is also famous for being a nesting ground for various types of penguins, but due to tourists and locals upsetting the beaches, and the penguins diminishing in numbers, and also the need for revenue for the town, you now have to pay to watch them come in to the beach in the evening to nest.  I passed.

Tomorrow, on to Christchurch.