I am heading on the train to Auckland tomorrow, so spent a good part of the day doing laundry and pulling together what I needed for the next week and putting everything else in bags to go to Annemarie’s while I’m gone.
I did manage to get out for a little bit as I wanted to spend a little bit more time at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. On my way there I passed a barbershop that also was a bar! The barbershop opens at nine and the bar opens at 11 AM. I also went past a café on the waterfront that was closed, but had a cup return container attached to the door. This café does not do take away (to go) coffee cups, but if you don’t have your own cup, you can borrow one and return it when you’re done. I love this idea!
I ended up spending the entire hour and a half that I was at Te Papa in the Gallipoli exhibit. I almost considered skipping it, as I didn’t think it would be very interesting, but I recently read a book where the main character visited the exhibit, and it sounded very compelling. I also learned that all of the figures were made by Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop, so I knew it would be incredibly well done. I was blown away by the exhibit as a whole. The larger than life size figures were incredibly detailed, if it wasn’t for the fact that they weren’t moving or breathing, I would’ve sworn they were real.
I didn’t know much about Gallipoli, probably because it was part of World War I that the US wasn’t involved in, but this exhibit taught me about the horrendous casualties on both sides that happened there. New Zealand because it is a small country, sent a larger percentage of their military age population than any other country, and many lost their lives in Gallipoli. On April 25, 1915, the day the 3,100 New Zealanders landed at Gallipoli, 650 lost their lives. In one failed attack on May 3rd, over half the Otago Infantry battalion were casualties. And it wasn’t just the Anzac forces losses that were discussed – in one battle 42,000 Turks fought, and 10,000 died. Whew. There were pictures of the conditions they lived in for months, and even a video, apparently the only video taken at Gallipoli. We heard and read the words of several people of all different professions and military ranks who fought in Gallipoli, some who survived, and some who didn’t. It was an extremely powerful exhibit, and so well done with many different ways to learn about this very sad campaign. The final part of the exhibit covered the journey of the survivors back home, some who didn’t make it because of German U-boats, bombing their ships, and others who arrived back home, only to be shipped out again three weeks later to go to the Western front. I just can’t imagine. At the end of the exhibit was a basin with water that ran over a stone, available if anyone wanted to sprinkle it on their body. It is a Maori custom to do this after being in the presence of the deceased.
Peter Jackson has his imprint all over Wellington. Besides the impressive Gallipoli exhibit at Te Papa, there are statues and props from his movies at the airport, the top of the cable car, the visitor info center and I’m sure there’s many more places too.
After Te Papa, I spent some time with Annemarie, then went to an exhibit of photos of urban areas in New Zealand, some taken in the 90s and some taken in the last couple of years, I was pretty interesting because the older photos were taken in the neighborhood I used to live in.
The bus that took me went the long way from Annemarie‘s place in Newtown to where I am staying in Brooklyn, but the route goes up and over some of the bays so I got some beautiful dusk views, including one where there are dolphins playing in the water near some paddle boarders!
I got to enjoy one last wonderful evening with Mary’s ukulele group, the Flukes. Since it’s their last practice before Christmas, they did a few Christmas songs, one by the Pogues I had never heard before, and a New Zealand favorite, Snoopy‘s Christmas. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that this is an extremely popular Christmas song here, though it is very rarely heard in the US. My favorite song they did was by the Topp Twins, called Untouchable Girls. It has such fantastic lyrics! Mary and I discovered that one of the ukulele group members was also a volunteer with the women’s refuge at the same time we were there in the 90s, but none of us remember each other! We all remembered other people, so I’m sure we spent time together and just didn’t realize it. Such a small world!
New Zealand’s health minister announced yesterday that they will be effectively banning smoking starting next year. This new initiative raises the age where you can buy cigarettes by one year every year starting in 2023, so after a certain amount of time, no one will be old enough to purchase cigarettes. It would be fantastic if this initiative works and cuts down on the number of people who smoke. It’s estimated that 11% of adult New Zealanders smoke! That seems like a huge percentage to me.
