2004 11-12 New Zealand

New Zealand, Part 7

8 Dec 2004

On the 8th we flew from Auckland to Sydney.  This is about 3 hours, and was a pretty boring flight.  Which is what you want in flying.  On the morning of the 8th I boxed up all the film I shot and mailed it to the lab in NY that I use for processing.  I had no idea how long this would take, but I did not want to be carrying a large pile of film.  (As it turned out, I got the film about two weeks later, so the entire cycle did not take that much longer than it does in the states.)

Sydney is a beautiful city, the biggest city in Australia.  We only had three nights there, and spent all of that time in a relatively small area near downtown.  We stayed at a hotel in an area called The Rocks, and from there we were able to walk to essentially everything we wanted to see.  One of the goals we had was to just walk.  After 3 weeks of driving every day this was a nice break.

The day we arrived in Sydney was rather gray:

We did not do much this day except walk around Circular Quay ("key") and have dinner.

9 Dec 2004

The next day was much warmer, and very sunny.  We walked around the Opera House and visited the Sydney Botanical Garden. The Opera House is a beautiful structure, and far bigger than it appears in photos.  We were not able to do the gardens justice in only an afternoon, but what we saw was very nice.  A real oasis in the city center.

The tree in the above snap is a ficus, which are native to Australia.  Unlike the rather puny potted specimens you see here, these are enormous.

Looking west towards downtown from the west edge of the garden.

In the center of the gardens is a visitor center and bookstore, and around it are a lot of tall trees full of Grey-headed Flying Fox Pteropus poliocephalus  These are really cool and big! 

I did not have the right lens to get any closer to these guys.. see that link for some better photos.

After this Sharon went to check out the mosaic tile floors in St. Mary's Cathedral.  (At the bottom of that article you will find more snaps.)

And after that we went into the Australian Museum.  This is a natural history museum, and one of the very cool exhibits is skeletons.  There is an exhibit of a human skeleton on an exercise bike, which is connected to an exercise bike you can ride.  You ride, the skeleton moves.  Cool!  Poke the "Bones at Work" link towards the bottom of the page here.

Note that he (she?) is reading about bandages.  It appears to be too late for him - it must be a matter of intellectual curiosity only.. you can also see the tail of his cat in the previous photo.  There was a mouse in the exhibit too, but I could not get him .. There was also a

The mineral collection here is wonderful, especially the Chapman collection.  There was no way to photograph it.

Here is a snap of the Opera House from the hotel roof.

10 Dec 2004

Today was very gray and rainy.  Not too many snaps.  We did more walking around Circular Quay, took a very cool tour of the Opera House, and attended a performance of Handel's Messiah in the spectacular main hall there.  The photo in that page does not do this concert hall justice at all.  The organ at the back is immense, and the ceilings soar far overhead. It's really a beautiful building, inside and out.

11 Dec 2004

Well, today was our travel day.  But before we left for our 3PM flight to SFO we had some time to go back to the botanical garden and get some better photos.. the rain had passed and it was a sunny hot day.  I think it went into the low 90s.

So, after a very nice walk around the park one last time we headed off to the airport and our flight to SFO.  It's 14 hours (+/-) from SFO to Sydney, 13 (+/-) back.  Leaving at 3PM got us into SFO early AM and then we had a full day of flying back to Richmond.

It was a great trip and I would definitely go to New Zealand again.  And I'd want to do it the same way, renting a camper and driving.  If we ever do the trip again I would want to stay at least twice as long, 6 to 8 weeks, maybe longer.  I'd also want to shoot a lot more film.  With that much time it would be possible to be very flexible, and to accommodate the changing weather.  NZ is full of places that have been well documented in photographs, but it is also full of lesser known places as well as interesting places that are not beautiful in the traditional calendar-y sense.  Craig Potton is probably the best known NZ landscape photographer, but another whose work I like very much is Scott Freeman.

In many ways New Zealand is quite different from the states, although the geography and climate remind me of the west coast.  The entire west coast, from British Columbia to Santa Barbara.  It's as if that entire coastline has been mashed into a couple of islands that together are only 2/3 the size of California.   Imagine driving from the snow and cold wet rain forests of British Columbia to Santa Barbara in a long day.  You can do that in NZ.

Driving in NZ was very nice.  There are very few 4 lane "motorways", and all of them are around the few large cities.  I don't remember if there are any in Christchurch, but there are probably are a few.  There definitely are many miles of motorway around Auckland on the north island.  But essentially all of the intercity driving on both islands is done on two lane highways that are like the lesser state roads in the states.  In the south island many of these roads wind through very steep mountains and have sharp switchbacks, steep grades and virtually no shoulders.  The maximum speed limit everywhere seemed to be 100 km/h, about 65 MPH.  There are not many places you would want to drive faster than that anyway.  Roundabouts are common, and I like them.  I wish they were common in the states.  Once you are used to flowing through intersections it seems silly and pointless to stop for signs.

One of the interesting things about Auckland was the downtown traffic stops for pedestrians.  Built in to the traffic light cycle is an "all stop" that allows pedestrians to cross all 6 ways in an intersection.  This is cool, and is actually very safe.  There's no way a pedestrian can get hit while having to watch for cars turning into a crosswalk.

The Kiwi accent is interesting.  It's really nothing like the Aussie accent.  The latter is very guttural by comparison, very low in the throat.  The Kiwi accent can seem very nasal, and all the vowels are just "different".  It's difficult to describe.  The boat we took from Picton to Wellington was a "fyeeree" (really nasal), not a "ferry" (with a flat "a" sound for the "e") .. I had to ask the woman that rented us the camper to repeat the word 3 times before I understood that she had confirmed our "fyeeree" reservation.  I felt pretty foolish when I got it .. By comparison Australians seem to be talking while trying to swallow a golf ball.  Try here and here.

I have commented on this before, but I enjoyed seeing how all of NZ exists in the "pre-WalMart" era.  This is not a specific comment about WalMart, but is a comment about the vitality of all of the city and town centers.  NZ is still the land of small shops, and they are all downtown.  No matter where you are, if you want to do something, you go into town.  And it is not hard.  In the states we put up with a tremendous amount of sprawl, almost all of which exists because city planners have given first priority to "volume of car traffic" and not quality of life.  I'm not anti-car, and it is possible to design communities so that volume of car traffic is not the only design criteria.  It's just refreshing to see this someplace.  I hope the NZ city and town planning authorities do not lose respect for their very vital town centers.

We did not see any jet aircraft condensation trails anyplace in NZ, once we were away from Auckland.  There's simply nowhere in the country that is on a flight path to anywhere. From a photographic standpoint this is wonderful.  Almost everywhere in the US you have to worry about streaks in the sky when photographing.

There is very little road advertising anywhere in NZ, outside the cities.  Once you notice this while driving it's rather amazing to think about how odd this is compared to the states, where we are continually assaulted by billboards and signs and neon and flashing lights.  It makes the countryside much more serene.

There is also a very high level of environmental sensitivity in NZ.  Even in the smallest little out of the way communities there are recycling programs.  I think Kiwis in general are aware that they live in a very beautiful and very small place, and they do not want to wreck it.

The people are all very friendly and outgoing.  Everyone was approachable, friendly, and helpful if we had questions.  It didn't matter where we were or how inane our questions might have seemed.

So that's about it.  We had a great time.