Tuesday, 20 April 2010 Leavenworth, KS
I'm writing this about a month after the events of Christchurch, NZ, from Leavenworth , Kansas, where we are visiting my 88-year-old dad. Working backwards, we have been back in the US since March 31. We spent March 22-31 in Australia working our way from Melbourne (to which we had flown from Christchurch, NZ) to Sydney (from which we flew to LA and on to Midland, MI). We were in Midland from April 1 to 17 to regroup, resupply, and repack for the next phase of our adventure. This blog post will cover our final days in New Zealand, based in Christchurch, from Thursday, March 11 through Sunday, March 21.
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island, and the second-largest city in NZ after Auckland. It is said to be a very English town. We were able to take in the Ellerslie Flower Show, which they claim is the largest flower show in the southern hemisphere. Predictably, Paula took most of the pictures at the show, while I concentrated on eating corn on the cob from one of the vendors. One of the highlights for me was hearing the Woolston Brass Band play in the park where the flower show was held.
We attended two great concerts in the Town Hall Auditorium on successive Saturday evenings.
The first was the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra with the winners of the national young musicians concerto competition. Cellist Edward King won first prize with the Shostakovich Cello Concerto - - quite a performance! The second concert featured the Christchurch Town Hall Auditorium Organ with Thomas Trotter, the City Organist of the city of Birmingham, England. We had a cool "small-world" experience on the day of the organ concert. It was Saturday, March 20, and we had spent the day on a field trip inland to the upper valley of the Rangitata River - - more on that later. While we were driving back toward Christchurch about 3:30 pm, trying to get back in time to have dinner and make the organ concert at 7:00 pm, suddenly my cell phone rings. Like a good citizen, I pulled over to the side of the road and answered the call. To my surprise it was Eileen, the sister of my brother Kerry's wife Marlene. (Does that make her my sister-in-law-in-law or what?) She was calling from Christchurch where she had just arrived with a tour group. Now, we knew from Kerry that Eileen was planning to take a tour of New Zealand and might be in the country some time during our stay, and Kerry had passed on our NZ phone number to Eileen. But this still came as a great surprise. We talked for a few minutes and concluded that there was just no way we could get together. Eileen's arrangements were totally made and dominated by the tour group schedule, and of course we had our tickets to the organ concert that night. So we said goodbye, thanks for calling, and thought that was that. Later we pulled in to downtown Christchurch, parked the car within walking distance of the concert hall, and walked around looking for a place to eat dinner. We found a nice place just off of Victoria Park and got a window seat. We were reading the menu when Paula looked out the window and pointed to a small Chinese woman posing for a picture alongside a row of tour buses. Paula said, "Is that Eileen?" I looked up, jumped up, and ran outside. By this time said small Chinese woman was crossing the street with her friends coming right toward me. She looked up to wonder why I was staring at her, and then I said "Eileen?" Sure enough! So we took her into the restaurant and visited for about ten minutes before her tour group demanded to have her back.
One Sunday we attended the main Anglican church, Christchurch Cathedral, right in the center of Cathedral Square downtown. It was Commonwealth Sunday, and they put on quite a pageant. The precession featured some 45 young people each carrying the flag of one of the Commonwealth member states. The service was very well attended, and in the fine traditional Anglican style - except that I didn't really notice anyone genuflecting. The choir was professional quality - all male, including a boys choir - and was a real thrill especially for me. Music has always been a very important component of my worship experience, and I have long held the opinion that the best Christian music is classical: Bach, Brahms, Tomas de Victoria, the Requiems by Verdi, Berlioz, Mozart, just to name a few of my favorites.
The Canterbury Museum at one end of the Christchurch Botanical Garden, part of the University of Canterbury, was a fun place to visit. Here are a couple of amusing exhibits. The mama kiwi lays an egg that is almost as big as she is.
The weta is an endemic cricket-like insect. Which gives me the opportunity to explain the difference between "indigenous" and "endemic". But I will refrain - - go look it up!
One day we made a field trip inland up the Rakaia River valley to the Rakaia gorge. Here is the bridge:
From there we drove part way up Mt Hutt, but it was cloudy and raining the whole way up. Nevertheless we got several moody pictures of the valley below.
I already mentioned the other field trip up the Rangitata River valley. The destination was Mt Pott Station and the view of Mt Sunday, used as the site of the village of Edoras in The Lord of the Rings.
Paula is working on her own blog posts, and I'm sure she will have plenty to say and show about the Ellerslie Flower Show. My next post will cover our 9 days in Australia, and that will be the final post concerning our southern hemisphere adventure.
