First thing this morning I went for a walk and found myself at a local dog park which consisted of a grassy hilltop with stunning views. Later I picked up meat pies for dinner, pepper steak & cheese and steak & blue cheese, along with a sausage roll. I cannot wait to try them later tonight with Annemarie. Mary and I sat out on her upper deck that has expensive views of the harbor. Because of the hilly terrain many houses in Wellington have wonderful views, though the residents pay for it as they usually having quite a few steps or a long path to walk to get to their houses. I’m lucky that there are only 25 steps and a short path up to the cabin I’m staying in at Mary’s.
It’s sunny today, sitting on the bus I can see that most people have laundry strung up either outside their houses or inside by sunny windows. A lot of New Zealanders don’t own clothes dryers, they hang dry all of their clothes. At one place I worked often the subject of conversation during morning and afternoon tea breaks was whether one had hung their clothes on the line that morning. The weather is extremely variable in Wellington so people were often analyzing whether it was a good or a bad day to hang clothes outside. For example last night it was predicted that today would be sunny most of the day, but by 9 AM the forecast changed to a 50% chance of rain from 2 to 4 PM. The rain never eventuated, it turned out to be a lovely afternoon.
Took the bus to Island Bay, a suburb that I worked in when I was at the Wellington Women’s Refuge, a local battered women shelter. Island Bay looks very much the same, though the shops are fancier now. The bus was a double decker and it went up and down steep, windy streets, even through road construction where half the street was blocked off- I still can’t believe the driver got through! I’ve been on buses a few times now and the drivers are always so friendly and welcoming, Annemarie takes me that is typical. I noticed that most of the passengers always yelled out a big thank you to the driver when they got off as well.
In Island Bay I stopped at a local café and ordered a Mochaccino, which is a New Zealand’s version of a mocha, and a date scone, both of which were delicious. There were birds flitting around inside and a kids play area in the back so it’s obviously a hang out for parents with young children. Island Bay is one of the flatter places to live in Wellington and is close to the water so it’s very popular with families, though it seems most women in Wellington have no problem pushing prams (strollers) up hills and navigating steep stairs with little kids. It’s also expected that kids will either walk or take a public bus everywhere, Mary mentioned that her kids always walked to high school even in the rain (and there’s plenty of that at Wellington).
Later I went to the National Library to see three of New Zealand’s founding documents – the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi and the Women’s Suffrage Petition. I had heard a lot about the Treaty of Waitangi when I lived in New Zealand before, and I knew that New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote, but had not seen either of these documents before and had never heard of the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand. The Treaty consisted of several pages that had been signed by the chiefs of various tribes around New Zealand – it took many months in 1840 to get all the signatures needed. The women’s suffrage petition was an scroll enormous scroll that had almost 32,000 names on it. The room these documents is kept in is dark and you have to push a button to light up the document briefly under a special kind of lighting that won’t deteriorate the paper or ink. The women’s suffrage scroll shows only two pages at a time and is rotated every three months. There are some great interactive exhibits giving more of the history of all of these documents. I learned that in 1893 when the women’s suffrage petition was approved by parliament there were approximately 140,000 women age 21 and over in New Zealand (the voting age at that time), and that over 109,000 women registered to vote in the election that year. Very impressive! There was also a really cool sculpture of Kate Sheppard, the woman who led the New Zealand suffragist movement, made out of layers of acrylic with many of the signers names and passages from the women’s suffrage petition engraved on the acrylic layers.
I headed over to meet Annemarie at her work, walking past the parliament buildings including the ‘Beehive’. It’s not the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen, but it is definitely unique architecture! The most direct route to Annemarie‘s work was through the cemetery, part of which had to be dug up when the expanded motorway was put in many years ago. The grave stones that are left are all quite old and it’s a beautiful place to walk through or sit and rest. When I worked nearby and was going through a challenging time, I often came to the cemetery on my lunch break to rest and gather my thoughts.
The child care center where Annemarie works serves the students and faculty at Victoria University. It reminds me of the preschool my kids went to, very happy, open and sunny. We walked down through Aro Valley looking at the cute little shops and adorable houses then caught the bus to Brooklyn where I’m staying. At the bus stop we saw a lady feeding pigeons out her 5th story apartment window.
We stopped in at a holiday craft fair at the local op shop (2nd hand store), there were lots of wonderful items and we bought some custom made Christmas crackers to open on Christmas (if you don’t know what Christmas crackers are ask somebody who is English!). We then headed back to my place for dinner, and Alby the cat joined us as we finished doing some planning for our trip to the South Island over the holidays, including booking our swimming with dolphins encounter!
