South Island, New Zealand: Nature Post

Everyone we met in New Zealand said that the South Island has more spectacular scenery than the North Island, and I suppose it is grander in scale, but it really depends how much you like mountains, because that’s what most of it is.  Personally, I preferred the glow worm caves and all the crazy bubbly stink pools in the North Island, because you certainly don’t get glow worm caves and sulfur hell-stench everywhere (though the lack of the latter is probably a good thing), and to me, all mountains basically look the same, but sure, it was pretty, especially in places where the trees still had some fall colour left.  I will say that the South Island produces a ridiculous amount of rainbows.  Sometimes we saw four or five separate ones in a day.  I mean, it was almost too many, if there can be such a thing as too many rainbows.

  

One of the main “mountain-appreciation” things we did was go on a cruise of Milford Sound.  I confess I had mixed feelings about this, mainly because it is so far from civilization; we had to spend two nights in Te Anau, which I hated more than anywhere else we stayed.  It was pretty much just a small tourist town, but it was the off season when we visited; being late autumn, it was too early for ski season, and too late for summer activities, so almost everything in the town was shut, except for their terrible supermarket and a just-OK chippy.  I can live off bread, hummus, chips, and ice cream for a surprisingly long period of time, but I at least demand a certain minimum quality of bread, and this supermarket bakery did not deliver.  Plus the place we were staying was not very clean, which didn’t help matters.  But Milford Sound is indeed rather majestic, and possibly worth putting up with the discomfort (well, not to me, but a less finicky person would be happy enough I think).

  

As it was not particularly warm outside, we opted for the two hour cruise without kayaking, which I think was a wise decision (not least because if we took a three hour cruise, I would have been singing the Gilligan’s Island theme song the whole day).  Two hours was certainly plenty of time to appreciate the fiordland (I was starting to get sick of it by the time we turned back, especially after they parked the boat under a couple of waterfalls so we could sample the glacial water, which would have been fun if it was warmer, but as it was nearly winter when we were there, just left me cold and cranky).  We were fairly lucky in that it was a clear day, with no rain on the Sound, and we got to see seals and dolphins.  I may be alone in not really liking dolphins (I find them insufferably smug, except for poor Opo), but I guess it was cool that there were some around, since obviously they can’t guarantee that sort of thing.

  

However, there was a local animal I was taken with: the mountain kea.  They are basically big parrots that live in the mountains, and though they look charmingly dumb, with their waddle and annoying “caw-caw,” they are apparently as intelligent as a 5 year old child.  As they were described to us at one point, “they can open your backpack, remove a plastic container containing cake, open the container, take the cake, reseal the container and put it back in your backpack, and then eat the cake on a ledge whilst laughing at you.” We were warned not to leave the car door open when driving up to the Sound, as they will steal things out of your car (they’re often described as “cheeky” which I assume is code for “obnoxious”).  We stopped at various points of interest on the way there (and because I was about to puke, it being a winding mountain road and all. “Scenic drives” are never for the motion-sickness prone, and New Zealand has a LOT of them) and they came right up to us on several occasions, though you’re obviously not meant to feed them or anything.  They’re great though.  By far my favourite bird of the trip (and New Zealand’s got a lot of weird birds).

  

I was quite relieved when we left Te Anau and headed for Queenstown, Queenstown being a sort of extreme sport and resort town in the vein of Aspen (I say this having never been to Colorado) or something.  So it had an extremely well-stocked (albeit expensive) grocery store, NY Style pizza, a shop selling warm cookies, luxurious accommodation (with free hot chocolate); basically many things I deem essential to my happiness.  And it was quite picturesque (albeit of the mountainous variety), but I was most excited for the (very expensive) street luge track.  I’m not an extreme sports person, but I am quite happy to speed downhill in some kind of cart device (like that summer toboggan in Lake Bled).  I may have taken it a bit too seriously (I was loudly swearing at people who wouldn’t get out of my way, and I almost flipped the cart a couple times), but it was good fun, and you got to ride a chairlift up to the top each time.

  

I was sad to leave Queenstown for Franz Josef Glacier, as it was an even tinier village than Te Anau, but we only spent a night there, and our motel room was surprisingly nice, so it was fine (and I had learned my lesson, and stocked up on food in Queenstown).  You can actually take a helicopter up onto the glacier and walk around, but that cost something insane like $370 per person, so we opted for the glacial valley walk, which gives good views of the rapidly retreating glacier without actually going up on it.  It is also not a particularly challenging walk, which suited me fine.

  

One of my favourite spur-of-the-moment stops was this former mining town called Ross, which we encountered when driving from Franz Josef to Greymouth.  To be honest, we only stopped because I needed to pee (a common theme on road trips), but when I realised it was a mining town, with old miners’ cottages, I insisted we have a look around.  This ended up turning into a full-on rainforest walk that somehow managed to be almost entirely uphill, because we went the wrong way round, but I was determined to see the old cemetery, so we pressed on.

  

The walk was strenuous, but very scenic, and there were still bits and pieces of the old mining equipment scattered about.  And the cemetery (on a hill of course) offered excellent views of the surrounding area, and lots of neat 19th century tombstones with interesting inscriptions.  Recommended.  They also have a small museum there, but it just looked like loads of laminated information sheets that I couldn’t be bothered to read, so we skipped it.

  

My boyfriend being a geologist and all, we also saw a lot of rocks on this trip.  More than I would find ideal, to be honest.  There were some “pancake rocks” north of Greymouth in Punakaiki that I was disappointed to find did not actually look like pancakes, they were just layered.  And there were a lot of blowholes, if that kind of thing interests you.  We also saw some round boulders in Moeraki, on the Otago Coast, but that visit was mercifully cut short by the tide coming in literally all the way up the beach, forcing us to hightail it out of there in a hurry.

  

Not really nature related, but there was a town called Springfield on the way back to Christchurch that had a giant pink iconic Homer Simpson doughnut right in the middle of it.  I had to wait irritatingly long for some stupid 20-something girls to finish taking five million selfies (we literally were waiting for twenty minutes, and I finally had to ask if they could step aside for a minute so I could grab a quick photo, whereupon they acted as if I was greatly inconveniencing them.  I should have just forcibly pushed them off through the doughnut hole), but it was still pretty cool for someone who loves classic Simpsons as much as I do (nothing beyond Season 9 please, and even that’s pushing it), though I wish they had actually had pink frosted doughnuts for sale.

I realise this post is much whinier than the North Island one, which is more a reflection on me and my dislike of being away from the amenities of a city or at least a large town than the South Island itself, which was, for the most part, full of friendly people and attractive terrain.  Anyway, this pretty much wraps up our time in New Zealand, but I’ve got more Antipodean adventures in Australia to report on next!

I wasn’t joking about all the rainbows.

 

 

Christchurch, New Zealand: The Canterbury Museum

Having now visited both the International Antarctic Centre, and the Canterbury Museum, I can safely say that if you only have time to visit one museum in Christchurch, make it the Canterbury Museum.  Not only will it free up a whole lotta money that you could be spending on vegetarian dumplings from Dumplings Paradise inside Re:Start (the best dumplings by far of the many, many veggie dumplings I sampled on this trip) or real fruit ice cream, but it is also one of the most delightfully old-fashioned museums I have ever had the pleasure of visiting.

 

Canterbury Museum is free, and like most attractions in New Zealand, staffed by very friendly people who were only too happy to present us with a map of the museum and tell us their favourite exhibits (even as we tried to slink by unnoticed; living in London makes us awkwardly unaccustomed to talking to strangers).  On the whole, the museum seems to have escaped the 2011 earthquake relatively unscathed (apparently there was minor damage to the front of the building, but it remains structurally sound), save for a dollhouse that had some furniture knocked over which they have purposely left in a state of disarray in earthquake remembrance, because many of the exhibits in here looked like they were about fifty years old (which is no bad thing, except perhaps their unfortunate use of some once ok, but now outdated terminology on a couple of the signs).  Case in point: the Maori and native New Zealand fauna tableaux near the museum’s entrance.  They put me in mind of similar (but probably slightly more offensive) displays at the Natural History Museum in Cleveland, which I adored as a child (except the shrunken heads, they freaked me out).

  

There were also some displays on what I suppose you’d call the anthropology of the Pacific Islands, and on early New Zealand settlers.  I was rather intrigued by the reconstruction of a cabin that a family with something like eight children (or was it thirteen?) lived in, along with two servants and their child.  I don’t know if this cabin was supposed to be actual size, because while they mentioned how cramped it was, the one on display only had one tiny bed in it, and the rest of the living space was completely full of furniture.  Like, I literally don’t understand how that many people would have even fitted in there, let alone how children were conceived and birthed in there (there was also a story about how the wife gave birth once outside during a rainstorm, under an umbrella.  Poor woman.)

  

In keeping with the old-timey theme, the museum had a rather extensive hall of yesteryear, which was where the dollhouse I spoke about was kept (you can see me studying it in the above photo), in addition to a penny farthing and a fake horse you could pose for photos atop of (in theory; I couldn’t because about fifty million children beat me to it).  There was also a costume gallery with the most superlative mustachioed mannequins inside, as you can plainly see.

  

Not everything in the museum dates from 1950-something, or earlier, however.  My absolute favourite thing in the museum, Fred and Myrtle’s Paua Shell House (that link is to a brief video about them), was only added in 2008 after the couple passed away and their grandson donated the shells and their interior furnishings to the museum (ok, so the decorations are probably from the 1950s, but the exhibit itself is new!).  Fred and Myrtle were basically the cutest couple ever – they lived in a bungalow in Bluff, a seaside town known for its oysters, but chose to decorate the interior of their home with paua shells (paua being a type of sea snail with a particularly lovely iridescent bluey-green shell. I’m told they make good eatin’ if cooked properly, but I wouldn’t know), lovingly collected and polished by Fred, and a selection of other various knickknacks, including a few bits of taxidermy. After their entire lounge was covered in the shells, they invited tourists into their home, which became a national attraction.  Fred and Myrtle were even featured in TV commercials!  They lived into their 100s, but passed away in the early 2000s, after which their lounge was taken apart and eventually moved to the museum, which includes an exact replica of their lounge and part of the bungalow’s exterior, right down to the cheerful organ music that Fred loved, and a short film about their life, which had me tearing up because they were so damn adorable. I wouldn’t mind living somewhere decorated like this when I’m old, though I am certainly not nice or extroverted enough to invite tourists into my home like they did!

  

The museum also had a temporary exhibit on about a local alternative radio station, which I didn’t really take the time to browse because we had to catch a flight to Sydney that afternoon, and I needed to see their Antarctic gallery before we left.  I’m so glad I did, because it was fantastic!

 

Not only did they have extremely detailed busts of each of the major Antarctic Expedition leaders (Amundson was uglier than I thought, and I think they made Byrd more attractive than he was in real life), they also had a selection of artefacts from most of those expeditions (save for Mawson’s; maybe there was some animosity towards him because he was Australian?).

  

These included things like leftover food supplies and cooking pots used to make hoosh (a rather horrible sounding stew consisting of pemmican, biscuits, and melted snow), boots, tents, sledges, and a glove actually worn by Scott, amongst many other excellent things.  I spent ages in here, and could easily have spent even longer if I had time.  Everything the International Antarctic Centre was missing in terms of actual history was in here.  If only they’d had a Hagglund ride, I could have skipped the Antarctic Centre altogether!

  

The rest of the upstairs was fairly standard local museum stuff – a hall of ceramics and sculpture and things from around the world, and a natural history section full of taxidermied things that was fairly bird heavy (perhaps because New Zealand only has one native mammal, which is a bat), but was still pretty delightful, again, because of the old-schoolness.

  

We concluded with a trip back to the hall of yesteryear to see if I could grab a picture on that penny farthing yet (nope, even busier than before) and found a room we’d missed before, which was evidently the re-creation of the study of some eccentric collector; lots more delightful taxidermy and skeletons.  Of course, we swung by the gift shop too to collect a few postcards.  They actually sell paua shells in there, so you can re-create Fred and Myrtle’s decor in your own home if you’re so inclined (at something like $12 a pop, it’s not too likely you’ll be able to acquire 1000+ of them, though we did buy one.  Then again, it took Fred and Myrtle 40 years to collect all their shells, so I’ve got time).  I really really loved this museum, especially the Antarctic section, and Fred and Myrtle (obviously). Even the parking ticket that awaited us upon leaving the museum (for apparently parking with our car facing in the wrong direction; we didn’t even know this was a thing you could be ticketed for) didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. 4/5.

 

 

Arrowtown, New Zealand: Lakes District Museum and Chinese Settlement

I’m fascinated by the Wild West (nothing to do with the disturbing crush I have on Val Kilmer as an extremely consumptive Doc Holliday in Tombstone, ok, well, maybe a little to do with that), so I thought it was pretty cool that New Zealand had its own version of the Gold Rush, and there are still old mining towns around that you can go and visit.  Really, I wanted to visit one of the ghost towns, like Macetown or St. Bathans, but unfortunately those are only accessible by a road where a bunch of people got trapped in the snow the day before I was there, so I had to settle for Arrowtown, which is a cutesy, touristy former mining town only about a twenty minute drive from Queenstown, and is home to the Lakes District Museum and a partially re-created Chinese Settlement.

   

Arrowtown is indeed pretty cute (though it does feel like the town is trying just a bit too hard to be all quaint and old-timey), and I suspect it’s downright gorgeous at the height of autumn, judging by the leaves that were still clinging to a few of the trees when I visited.  The building the museum is housed in is also aiming for adorable (and mostly succeeds), but it is obviously new-ish, being built on the site of the old bank (you can view the ruins inside).  Entrance is 10 NZD, which is fairly standard for small museums in New Zealand (doesn’t mean I was thrilled to pay it, but I was used to it).  The museum basically aims to cover the history of Arrowtown, and, more generally, of the Gold Rush in New Zealand; we entered through a hallway covered with posters telling us about the discovery of gold in Arrowtown in 1862 by a fellow called “Maori Jack” (because he was Maori, of course), which was followed shortly by an influx of settlers and various mining and sluicing operations.  However, the first actual room of the museum (or maybe the last, if I went through backwards somehow) was somewhat disappointing as it just had a random collection of generic pioneer-life bits and bobs (look kids, a butter churn!), without much explanation provided.

   

The basement was more my style than the first upstairs room, being a re-creation of Old Arrowtown, complete with mannequins.  The nicest surprise came when I opened the outhouse door and was met with a recorded voice telling me to go away (complete with buzzing fly sound effects), and an old miner availing himself of the facilities (I’ve encountered this gimmick at a good few museums now, but it never fails to delight).

   

But yeah, the mannequins ran the whole gamut, from Poops Magee up there, to a drunk in the saloon, and an industrious baker and printer in their respective shops (Arrowtown had its own newspaper, and there were historic reprints available for a small donation).  There were some random boards about Chinese settlers set up in the schoolhouse, which were interesting to read, though they would have been easier to peruse if they were actually up on the walls, instead of sitting on the floor.

   

As I mentioned earlier, there was also the vault from the old bank down here, though alas, it had been stripped of gold nuggets before the bank closed, as a sign soberly informed me.  The museum had made the dubious artistic decision to put a banker dummy inside the vault, lurking creepily in the dark, which gave me a bit of a shock when I first looked over.

   

The other upstairs room was much better than the first, and focused on the stories of the immigrants who came to Arrowtown to participate in the Gold Rush; not only Chinese people, but also Brits, Germans, Australians, and many others.  This collection included some of the culturally-specific objects they would have brought with them (rather than the generic crap in t’other room); I was particularly intrigued by the collection of opium smoking paraphernalia and the sauerkraut making machine (though I wouldn’t particularly want to use it; I hate sauerkraut!).

   

The museum also had an offer where for $3 (plus a $10 deposit, which we got back when we returned our pan), they would loan us a pan and spade for as long as we wanted, and we could pan for gold in the Arrow River behind the museum (where mining started in Arrowtown in the mid-1800s).  Even though it was near freezing when we visited (there were actually patches of ice on the riverbank), we couldn’t resist taking them up on it, and crouched near the river for almost an hour, though we didn’t find anything in the end.  Not even a gold flake or two.

   

After our gold panning adventure, we trudged to the other side of town to look at the old gaol.  Much to my dismay, I found a sign on the fence informing us that if we wanted to go inside the gaol, we could ask for the key at the museum!  I really wish they had a sign at the museum mentioning this, because I didn’t even realise you could go inside the gaol, and even though I would very much have liked to explore it, there was no way I was walking back to the museum and then uphill to the gaol again, especially after all that gold panning (I did bravely ford the river in search of more fruitful gravel, after all, just like a grizzled prospector!).  So if you do find yourself in Arrowtown, remember to acquire a key before heading for the gaol!

   

We crossed town yet again to go to the Chinese Settlement (Arrowtown wasn’t really that big, but being outside in the cold for so long was getting old), which is now operated by the Department of Conservation, and is free to visit. They suggested the settlement would take 40 minutes to walk around, but if you’re a fast reader and walk quickly (because you’re freezing your ass off and want to get back to a warm car), you can easily see it in half that time.  Ah Lum’s store is the only building that has been restored to any significant extent (Ah Lum was apparently the unofficial head of the Chinese Settlement, and was well-respected by even the white settlers, especially after he saved the life of a white miner), but there are a few other shacks lining the cliff face that you can poke your head into.  It was frankly kind of depressing; the shacks were dark, dingy, tiny, and not particularly well sheltered from the elements.

   

Thanks to the accompanying signs, we learned more about life would have been like for the Chinese men who settled here (lonely, most likely, since most of the miners left their families behind, and never saw them again.  Though apparently there wasn’t much open hostility towards the Chinese from the white settlers until they started to open businesses of their own in competition with the white merchants, and even then, Arrowtown was spared the violence rife in other mining towns). The huts were a bit grim (albeit in a historically accurate way), but the rest of the park was rather pretty, and had a real autumnal feel (I love that whole wood-smoke, leafy vibe.  Autumn is my favourite season by far, so I’m pretty happy that I get to experience it twice this year!).

   

As we headed back to our car, we came across the “X” marking the spot where the first piece of gold was found (by the aforementioned “Maori Jack” aka Jack Tewa), which was a nice surprise. Despite the cold, I really enjoyed our day in Arrowtown (actually, the cold probably helped with that, by keeping other tourists away.  We were the only ones bold/stupid enough to pan for gold), though I still would like to see some of the ghost towns someday – I think I’d prefer them to a town full of souvenir shops trying to get me to buy big tacky pieces of jade or kiwi statues made from every conceivable material (probably even gold). (Though the ghost towns aren’t likely to have millionaire’s shortbread for sale…  It’s always a struggle between my hatred of people and my love of creature comforts.  Cookies usually win.)  3.5/5 for our Arrowtown experience as a whole; even though the museum and the leaves weren’t all they could have been, I still had a good time.

Invercargill, New Zealand: Demolition World

If you like chickens AND feeling like you’re on the set of a real-life horror movie, then Demolition World is most definitely the place for you.  If however, like many normal people, you are creeped out by mannequins under the best of circumstances, then you should avoid this place like the plague. Being the former sort of person, I had an amazing time.

   

I found about Demolition World by sheer chance; we were planning a stop in Invercargill anyway to break up the long drive from Dunedin to Te Anau (and because the World’s Fastest Indian is there, see bottom of post), and I happened to pick up a tourist brochure on the town the day before that mentioned it (seriously, don’t neglect tourist literature!  Sometimes really bizarre places advertise in them that don’t have much of an internet presence); from the scanty description provided, I was most definitely intrigued.

   

As far as I can tell, a couple who run an actual demolition business used the scrap to build this extraordinarily weird village outside of Invercargill, and you can just show up and walk through it whenever their business is open (they ask for a gold coin donation, meaning $1 or $2, but it’s just a donation box, not someone standing there or something, so no pressure.  Though I suppose the mannequins see all.  And it’s definitely worth it!).  So that’s what we did, despite it being a cold, wet, and windy day, as perhaps to be expected on the south coast of the South Island at the end of autumn (watch yourself though, some of the wooden steps outside the buildings were very muddy and thus slippery, and I almost fell over a couple times).

   

I’m not really sure what the best way to describe this “attraction” is.  My boyfriend kept comparing it to House of Wax, which I have never seen, which is perhaps why I was not freaked out.  It is a series of old dilapidated buildings (and one rather nice solarium-type one in the middle, for some reason), arranged in a labyrinthine way, and crammed with mouldy furniture with the stuffing coming out, other random dusty decorations, and the creepiest dead-eyed mannequins you have ever seen in your life, many of them missing heads and limbs (some arranged in tableaux, but many just randomly shoved in wherever there was room).  It is most definitely not for the faint-hearted (I say that a lot, don’t I? I don’t know, I’m the kind of weirdo that leaves Halloween decorations up year-round, so I’m not really sure what normies can tolerate.  It seems like goths do wedding photo-shoots here though, if that helps to give you some idea what it’s like).

  

Oh, and there were like 30 chickens (all different breeds, some fancy!) wandering around the place, along with some ducks and one turkey.  I like chickens a lot, so I was thrilled (Sainsbury’s is currently selling paper towels with chickens on them, and my boyfriend went out and bought me three packs so I can have the joy of using chicken towels for months!).  Scary mannequins AND chickens?!  The best!

   

Really, this is the kind of thing you need to see for yourself.  I think I’ve expressed my enthusiasm enough (and I hope the people who are frightened by mannequins stopped reading some time ago). For me, this was by far the best part of Invercargill, and I loved that it was so casual, in that you could just rock up and see it without anyone bothering you (the fact that no one else was around at first definitely added to the unsettling atmosphere). 4/5 for being so damn delightfully weird.

   

Oh, and about the World’s Fastest Indian I mentioned earlier.  In actual downtown Invercargill, there is a department store called E Hayes and Sons that is home to the motorcycle featured in the movie The World’s Fastest Indian (which is completely charming, by the way, if you haven’t seen it.  It’s the only time I’ve found Anthony Hopkins adorable instead of creepy).  I don’t really care about motorcycles, but I do love that movie (and Burt Munro, as portrayed by Anthony Hopkins), so I wanted to see Burt’s bike whilst we were in town.  The shop actually has a fairly extensive collection of vintage motorcycles and cars (for a shop that I don’t think actually sells motorcycles or cars.  Unless maybe they do.  There was a lot of crap in there), but the only one I really cared about was Burt’s.  They have both his actual bike, and one of the replicas built for the film.  I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way for it (though I might for Demolition World, because it was my kind of bizarre.  The kind where everything in it looked like it might come to life and kill you and/or give you tetanus.  For real, there was a bed in one of the houses with a lump underneath the covers, and even I was not bold enough to lift the covers and discover what it was), but it was neat to see since we were already there.

   

Invercargill also has a nice Victorian water tower on the other end of town (and I do mean the other end.  We ended up having to drive there as our parking meter would have expired if we’d walked), and is known for a type of sandwich called a cheese roll, which I never ended up trying.  Partly because I didn’t see anyone selling them (though apparently chippies have them) and partly because my love of bread and cheese doesn’t quite extend to cheap white bread filled with onion soup mix, evaporated milk, and low-grade “cheddar” (scarcely deserving of the name), but since I’m talking about local curiosities, just letting you know that they exist. And that, finally, is all I have to say about Invercargill.

   

 

Oamaru, New Zealand: Steampunk HQ

What Oamaru is known for, insofar as it’s known for anything at all (I’d certainly never heard of it before planning this trip, but then, I’d never really researched tourist destinations in New Zealand before I knew I was going there), is its cute Victorian town centre, and its colony of little blue penguins (it’s on the coast, so they come ashore here to make their nests). The penguins don’t come out until evening, so we missed seeing them, but thanks to Steampunk HQ, “New Zealand’s Premiere [only?] Steampunk Attraction,” we did get to spend some time appreciating Victoriana (well, neo-Victoriana, anyway).

  

In the past, I’ve admitted that I don’t quite “get” the whole steampunk subculture (I understand being fascinated by the Victorians, but the gears’n’goggles thing seems a bit unnecessary), but that doesn’t stop me from visiting steampunk museum exhibits and the like from time to time.  And Oamaruans are clearly very keen (in addition to this attraction, the town hosts a steampunk festival every year!), so I decided Steampunk HQ was definitely worth seeing.  It is an art installation type dealy right near the centre of town (it’s not that big of a town) that is hard to miss on account of the huge steampunky airship (I feel like steampunks would say airship rather than blimp) sticking out of the side of the building.  Admission is 10 NZD, which I guess is not too bad in the grand scheme of things.  I mean, I’d probably part with a fiver to see something this intriguing in the UK.

   

When we got there, we were greeted by a couple of guys sitting outside at a picnic table, one of whom turned out to be one of the artists featured in the museum, and also the person working the admissions desk whenever a visitor showed up.  We parted with our money, were given a brief introduction to the interactive bits, and somewhat apprehensively entered a dark, industrial-looking room, to be met with a slightly sinister, delightfully bonkers mechanised world.  This strain of steampunks are clearly fans of the skulls-and-black-clothing aesthetic that I embraced in my youth (I guess that’s where the “punk” part comes in), as the HQ was full of monsters, skeletons, and weird Minotaur looking figures.  A female robotic voice welcomed us when we entered, and various things made noises as we made our way through the dimly-lit space (we were also the only people wandering through for most of our visit, which definitely enhanced the creepy atmosphere).

  

The first interactive we encountered was the organ, pictured above, which played a variety of random sounds when you pressed the keys.  Sounds like that Close Encounters of the Third Kind noise they beamed into space, drumbeats, or random dialogue that I guess was supposed to blend together into a sort of song, but in practice you couldn’t really play chords because one noise stopped when you pressed down a second key.  It was still cool though.  There was also a mechanical elephant you could ride for $2, but it specifically said for under 10s only, so I didn’t risk my adult-sized ass on it, though I dearly wanted to.

   

The back room of the installation/museum was similarly full of splendidly random and disquieting sculptures, including a ship used in some Russell Crowe film (I think) made by the Weta Workshop (Peter Jackson’s company; same guys who did the Gallipoli exhibit in the Te Papa post) and re-purposed to be more steampunk.

   

The other main interactive thing, and in my opinion, the best part of the whole experience, was also back here: The Portal.  Upon pushing a big red button (because who doesn’t love to do that?!) and closing the door behind you, you were transported into a mirrored sound and light show that was really, really cool looking.  I enjoyed it so much I wanted to go back in, but more people showed up by the time we finished with the courtyard, so I didn’t get the chance.

  

The courtyard was also pretty cool; it was full of random broken-down looking junk (including a big vat thing with a hole in the middle amusingly labelled as “toilet,” though by the looks of the floor, someone may well have used it for that purpose).  I wasn’t too sure if you were actually supposed to climb on the “art,” as everything looked rusty and unsafe, but my tetanus shots are up to date, so I took a chance, and didn’t injure myself on anything!  It was fun climbing up and into stuff; kind of like an semi-dangerous playground for adults.

 

There was also a small gift shop attached to the front, selling postcards, pins, and black t-shirts and things, and a few more pieces of steampunk animal sculpture, along with a story about their creator, who sadly died from cancer when he was only 37 (and only 10 days after the birth of his daughter, it really was a sad story).  Although it didn’t take us more than half an hour to see the entire attraction, it was definitely a really unusual stop, and I don’t regret going (in fact, I think I would have actually regretted it if I missed it, if I had somehow seen how neat it was inside).  Plus it was a great way to break up the long drive from Christchurch to Dunedin.  4/5.

   

 

 

Christchurch, New Zealand: International Antarctic Centre

This place is totally a tourist trap, but nonetheless, as you can tell from my grin, it’s pretty damn fun. The International Antarctic Centre was one of the first places I added to my list of “must-sees” when we decided to take this trip, and I spent the week before we left reading about Mawson’s Antarctic expedition to put myself in the mood for it (not that I really needed to.  I LOVE the “heroic age” of polar exploration.  It was so brutal).  The reason the Antarctic Centre is in Christchurch is because this city is the departure point for many modern Antarctic expeditions; being the closest large city to McMurdo Station, many countries, including the US and of course New Zealand, have special training facilities here.  The Antarctic Centre aims to give you a taste of these facilities (in a less extreme way), albeit for a premium price.

   

Yes, it costs 59 NZD for the full package, or $39 for the “express package.”  And this is one case where I don’t recommend cheaping out, because the $59 package includes unlimited Hagglund rides, and that was the best part of the whole experience.  Actually, I found a $10 off voucher that was good for up to 4 people in one of the Christchurch tourist brochures from the car rental kiosk in the airport, so there are ways to avoid paying full price (though $49 is admittedly still expensive). Because many of the activities in the museum are only offered once or twice an hour, the woman at the admissions desk made us a schedule when we arrived, which was actually quite helpful.  They feed the penguins twice a day, at 10:30 and 3:30 (so it might be good to visit around one of those times), and we arrived right before the earlier feeding (we came straight from the airport; it’s literally a five minute walk away), so we headed there first.

   

The Antarctic Centre has eighteen little blue penguins, which are the penguins you’ll see down the southern coast of New Zealand (in theory; I never ran into any in the wild).  These particular penguins are rescue penguins with various disabilities that wouldn’t allow them to survive in the wild, which is why they’re in here.  As you can probably guess from the “little” and “blue” in their name, these are very cute penguins.  There’s an underwater viewing area where we watched a few of them swim around and do their thing before feeding time, when a woman came out with a bucket of sprats (imported from the North Sea, as apparently these penguins are too spoiled to eat local fish) and fed them all whilst telling us about each penguin.  One of them apparently has a paralysed tongue, so has to have the fish physically placed in the back of its throat to be able to eat (that’s why she’s holding it in the picture above).  I mean, the penguin feeding is nothing you probably haven’t already seen at a zoo or evil old Sea World or something, but penguins are cute regardless.

   

After penguin feeding, we had to rush outside for our first Hagglund ride of the day.  These are offered every half an hour, and while they are in theory “unlimited,” there’s a catch: you have to have a timed ticket to get on one, so unless you want to hang around all day, there will probably be a limit to how many you can do, especially if the museum’s busy.  It was not busy on the day of our visit, so we got the entire back car to ourselves.  And take it from me, the back is where you want to be!  You get bounced around a lot more, so it is obviously more fun.  Hagglunds are these vehicles that were first invented in Sweden (hence the Nordic sounding name), but are also used in Antarctica because they’re well-suited to the environment there.  They run on four treads, and can do all kinds of crazy manoeuvres like crossing a crevasse up to 1.8 metres in length, running up an extremely steep gradient, and floating for up to three hours, all of which you’ll get a taste of on the obstacle course they take you around.  It was so much fun that we did it again, though we had to wait an hour and a half to get another time slot, which gave us plenty of time to see the rest of the centre in the meantime.

   

The other attraction included in the full $59 package, but not the $39 one, is the 4D movie experience.  It was basically like every other 4D movie I’ve ever seen, where there’s an occasional smell piped in, but mostly you just get squirted with water.  This one was an Antarctic exploration (of course) by boat, so the seats shifted around a bit to simulate seasickness (I was still feeling a bit queasy from the Hagglund, so I’m glad this didn’t have the intended effect), and we kept getting squirted in the neck (if you’re in the front, cover your neck!) with water meant to represent everything from sea water to bird poop.  And some bubbles came down at the end.  If this was all you were getting for the full package, I’d say skip it, but the Hagglund makes it worth your while, even if the movie is just ok.  They also had a 4D screening of Happy Feet, but we didn’t go to that one, so I can’t say how it is.

   

The other attraction I was excited for was the storm chamber, where you got to experience an Antarctic storm (this was kind of shaping up to be like my dream destination of the Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre, what with the chance to experience seasickness and changes in temperature.  I still haven’t made it up to Grimsby though, so I can’t say how it compares).  This, again, only runs once or twice an hour, so we had to time everything carefully, but we rocked up a few minutes beforehand to put on our rubber overshoes and special parkas.  (I was wearing leggings with sockless Converse, because it was pretty warm outside, which meant my ankles were exposed; even with the overshoes, this proved to be something of a mistake.)  You enter the chamber, which already has fake snow on the ground, and is pretty damn cold to start with, but then the winds pick up, and it gets WAYYY colder.  I was legitimately worried I might get frostbite if I stayed in there much longer (there’s an igloo you can shelter under when you’re in there, and the whole thing only lasts six minutes anyway) but I stuck it out so I could get a very teeny taste of what Mawson, Scott, Shackleton, et al went through.  Utter misery, I’m guessing.

   

The last main section of the centre consisted of a museum room about life in the Antarctic, and geology and all that.  One corner held a mock-up of a polar tent, along with jackets, snow pants, and mittens you could put on to pose for pictures in, which is where the opening photo comes from.  I love to dress up in stuff, which is probably one reason why I had such a good time here!  There was also a small replica of Scott’s hut (though they didn’t seem overly concerned with authenticity), an “ice cave” which took about ten seconds to walk through, and some kind of flight thing where you could watch pilots preparing for a flight to the South Pole.

   

I have to say that the museum section was rather lame, but that’s not really what people are here for.  The penguins, storm room, and most of all the Hagglund rides did not disappoint.  I’m not convinced that it was worth $49 (with the discount), but didn’t feel quite as swindled as I do at most tourist traps (disregarding the photo package they tried to sell us at the end, including postcards of ourselves already printed out.  Why would they print them out already?  What a waste of paper!  Do most people really buy them?!) simply because some of the things here were genuinely really fun, and all of the staff seemed very concerned about us having a good time (as in, they kept asking us if we’d done certain activities yet, and then checked to see if we enjoyed said activities.  They were extremely enthusiastic).  If you’re not that interested in polar exploration, you could safely skip this (unless you really want to ride in a Hagglund), and even if you are, there are definitely museums that offer a more comprehensive history of Antarctic exploration and more accurately portray the misery associated with it (look out for my Canterbury Museum post in a few weeks); the whole aim of this attraction is entertainment, so you really only get to experience the fun bits of the South Pole.   So although I enjoyed my time here, I could see how others wouldn’t, and the admission price still chafes a bit.  3/5.