Day 7

Wellington, NZ

Wellington is the capital of NZ in case you wanted to know.  It is the first city we visit on the North Island of NZ.  Not far from our ship was Mt. Victoria.  It is perched above Wellington for views of the city.

The premium attraction to me in Wellington was a museum - the Te Papa.  We had heard much about it, and the buildup was well deserved.  

First we explored the Nature exhibit.  The fauna of New Zealand is unique to NZ and not like Australia.  The only marsupials in NZ were introduced by humans in the 1800s.

Several centuries ago birds called Moa lived in NZ.  They were big 500 pound dumb birds who had no predators.  When the Polynesians migrated here, the Moa provided plenty of food.  Within 200 years, they were hunted to extinction.

This is a Haast Eagle.  Until it went extinct, it hunted the Moa.  It also hunted small children.  Once the Moa went extinct, this species of eagle went extinct as well.

We actually saw a Royal Albatross in the wild!  It is HUGE!   I was too slow with my camera but saw this one in Te Papa.  The wingspan is up to 12 feet and this bird breeds only in NZ.

Still alive and not going extinct is the National Bird, the Kiwi.  There are five species of this flightless bird.

NZ is located within the Ring of Fire, a string of volcanoes and sites of seismic activity, or earthquakes, around the edges of the Pacific Ocean. Roughly 90 percent of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, and the ring is dotted with 75 percent of all active volcanoes on Earth.  

We tried the museums earthquake simulator and who should we see but Rima Te Wiata, the social worker/cop in the New Zealand movie called “The Hunt for the Wilder People”.  She was in the earthquake film strip where she tells her ‘movie’ son what to do while they were ‘experiencing’ the same earthquake Shari and I were experiencing.  I highly recommend the movie I mentioned above.  

Another exhibition highly recommended is the Gallopoli war exhibit.  Too often, war is glorified.  Not here.

Peter Jackson’s Hobbit company created parts of this exhibit that made you really understand all the sacrifices men and women go through in war.  Gallopoli was a major battle fought by Aussies, Kiwis, the French, and English in the country we now call Turkey.  It is rarely taught in High School, perhaps because our allies lost this battle during WWI.  The little red crosses on the timeline indicate deaths each day.

 It tells the story of the many months in 1915-1916 our allies fought a very bloody land war to control access to Istanbul and the Black Sea - through the eyes of the Kiwi soldiers.  250,000 - 275,000 were killed or wounded in this disastrous campaign led by Winston Churchill.

WWI involved trench warfare which to me is a brutal system leading to horrific casualties for minimal gains.

We often forget the others who sacrificed and lost their lives and their love ones.

Lord of the Rings 

As a teenager, I remember reading all of J.R, Tolkiens The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings book series.  In my 30’s and 40’s, I reread all of them.  I loved the term ‘Shire’ that comes from his books.  As it turns out, there are no shires in New Zealand.  J.R. Tolkien never visited New Zealand.  Peter Jackson, who made all the films based on Tolkiens works, is from New Zealand. Through him there is connection, since the filming sites are now exhibitions for visitors.