Going on from Christchurch

My last day in Christchurch was mostly occupied with picking up and being shown around my home for the next 12 days:

It seems that all every Kiwi wants to do is jump in a campervan and head out on to the road, so I thought I better try it. It also has the advantage of not having to unpack and repack every night which is quite wearing.

The disadvantage is that I can't be looking at the scenery as much as I'd like and that wherever I arrive, I've got a vehicle to park. Realistically, though, the bus services in New Zealand wouldn't allow me to see as much of the country as I'd like if I didn't have my own transport.

It's amazingly well equipped – on the picture, looking from left to right is the shower/toilet which doubles as a drying room because there's a heater outlet in there. Behind that is a clothes locker then the microwave with fridge below it. Behind that is a TV/DVD player.

The sofa area converts to a double bed when required, and there's a table that can be set up in the middle of it if I want to.

On the right, there's the cooker and then the sink. There's crockery and cutlery for 4 and every kitchen utensil you could hope for.

Everything except the microwave works anywhere. The microwave only works if the van's plugged into the mains somewhere.

As you can see, it also has tea mugs (essential) and on-board “mains” power which I can use to charge my mobile phone or camera battery or run the computer.

With what was left of the day, I drove down to the Christchurch Gondola:

This takes you to the top of Mount Cavendish from where you can look back down over the City of Christchurch and the Canterbury plain around it, or you can look over the other side of the mountain and down into Lyttelton Harbour. Lyttleton is where the first settlers came ashore. They walked over the dividing headland, now you can drive through it in a road tunnel.

The views from the gondola were quite spectacular. It's hard to do them justice in a picture, but here are some attempts. Firstly, Lyttelton Harbour.

This is looking a little further west – away from the sea, though between the mountains in the middle of the horizon is the Pacific Ocean again – Lyttelton sits at the neck of Banks Peninsula.

The whole Peninsula is volcanic – the results of three different volcanoes erupting. This is part of the crater rim. You can also see the old, pre-tunnel road here:

There was a bit of haze down on the plain, but you can just make out the towers of the Central Business District just to the left of the centre of the picture. You can also see the mountains that ring the Canterbury Plain:

The top station has a short “theme” ride that explains some of the geological history of New Zealand and then a little about the Maori and European settlers. Visitors sit in a sort of sleigh-like thing and it drives through the exhibition. It was quite well done, really, but not that conducive to photography. Life was hard, it seems on the original settlers' boats:

A number of walking trails lead away from the top station – around the rim of the old volcano, or just to better vantage points. Looking back, the gondola support seems to be at a rather crazy angle:

I took a short walk to the so called Banks Bluff Lookout. Joseph Banks was the naturalist who sailed with Captain Cook on his voyages of discovery. He was there when they landed at Botany Bay and he was here when they sailed past what they then thought was Banks Island. From the lookout, you get a great view of the summit road and the inner sound of Lyttelton Harbour:

From the gondola, it was time to venture out on to the Peninsula itself. Because of the geography of the place, getting anywhere takes a long time, even if you're not going that far as the crow flies. I ended up stopping at a little lay-by for the night – the joys of freedom camping being apparent. This is the view the following morning when I opened the door:

Christchurch in more detail

The morning started with the morning service at Durham Street Methodist Church:


which is a typical Methodist preaching box. You can generally rely on Methodists for a good sing and a good cup of tea and this church failed on neither. In addition, the sermon was good too – a study of the story of Mary and Martha and the pitfalls that await those who try to divide people too strictly and create hierarchies.

After the service, I decided to take advantage of the good weather and follow some heritage walks from a booklet I picked up at the i-Site. But first I walked back along to the Arts Centre for some lunch:

This guy:

caught my attention (well, wouldn't he catch yours too?). I'm not sure why he was wearing a kilt as he was 100% Kiwi, but he was very entertaining.

The craft market:

was in full swing again (actually, slightly fuller swing than yesterday) but I resisted the urge to buy even more stuff I haven't room in my bag for.

The walk began At Victoria Square, so I took advantage of my two-day tram ticket to be lazy! Christchurch was planned by the Canterbury Association – a group based in England who envisaged an Anglican community which would essentially reflect British (English, actually) society. The first four Association ships arrived in December 1850. It's hardly surprising, then, to find a statue of Queen Victoria in the main square in front of the new Town Hall:

Neither is it all that surprising to find another statue, this one of Captain Cook:

He did, after all, plant the British flag and claim New Zealand for the British Empire. He wasn't the first European to find the place though – that honour goes to the Dutch (Abel Tasman in 1642) who actually gave the country its name, Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland.

The English feel of the city is only enhanced when you look over a bridge and see someone in a straw boater punting along the river:

A little further along the walk I came across what must be one of the most substantial phone boxes in the world:

Across the river again, this:

is a tribute to fire-fighters around the world. The sculpture is made from steel salvaged from the World Trade Center in New York which was gifted to Christchurch for this purpose. The suspended piece in the middle fell, red hot, from the 102^nd floor of Tower 2, piercing the underlying subway tunnel.

Towards the end of the walk, just behind the Cathedral, are the old Government Buildings – now swanky serviced apartments:

I made a short diversion from the printed route to have a look at New Regent Street. The street is named after the one in London, but it's hard to see why:

What might be interesting is that the two sides of the street are mirror images of each other in terms of architecture and colour. Hey, I only said it might be interesting!

New Regent Street is near the end of the tram's current circular route. I know, circles don't have an end, but the route definitely has a beginning – handily about 20 yards from the side door of my hotel. The line runs through the covered atrium and the terminus is just at the right hand side of the picture:

Back in Cathedral Square, this is called the Chalice and was commissioned to mark the millenium:

Another statue:

This one is of Robert Falcon Scott – the British Explorer who just failed to be the first person to reach the South Pole in 1912. The British love this sort of heroic failure – the carving underneath reads, I do not regret this journey which shows that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in the past, a quote from Scott's diary which was recovered the summer after the exploration party died. The statue was sculpted by Scott's widow Kathleen.

The River Avon seems to be there every time you turn a corner in Christchurch. This bridge, though, is rather different:

It's a monument to New Zealanders who have died in the service of their country in the wars of the twentieth century.

The Antigua Boat Sheds have been here since 1882 and, as well as hiring boats, they house a café which does a nice line in coffee and cats:

The green structure is, unsurprisingly, a heater. The only time this cat moved while I was here was to turn over to toast the other side.

My walk then took me through a corner of the Botanic Garden and I popped back into the Museum to have another look around.

I came across this:

Not very impressed? Well how about a bit closer:

Still not getting it? How about if I tell you that the orange ball is part of a scale model, and that that model is in Kent, England? Well, I thought it was interesting. The model is one of the solar system and was built in the village of Otford to mark the millennium. In the model, Pluto is about 1 km away from the Sun, and the earth is 2.5mm across. Recently, four of the nearer stars have been added, keeping the same scale of 4,600,000,000:1. This star is Ross 154 – the other three are in Sydney, Los Angeles and the Falkland Islands. Which makes it more or less the biggest model possible, I'd have thought.

By now, the museum was closing, so I jumped back on the tram and rode it right round and back to the Cathedral. I was just in time for a service – Choral Evensong in the High Anglican tradition. The normal Cathedral Choir is on holiday, but their stand-ins, the Cathedral Singers, performed very well. This sort of elaborate ceremony is something I like from time to time and something I missed in Amsterdam. The service was part of a series that the Cathedral have been holding on the theme of Taking the Bible seriously, not literally. It was the title, that I noticed on an agenda yesterday, that attracted me in the first place.

The sermon this time was on Lectio Divina, the art of sacred reading. It was an excellent sermon and much longer than one usually gets at Evensong. The thrust of the series is to encourage people to actually think about the Bible, rather than just swallowing it. This evening, the preacher (the Dean of the Cathedral) suggested three stages to fully get the meaning of a passage of the Bible:

• Read it
• Pause to listen to the still small voice, that Elijah wrote of, the soft murmuring of God. What is he really trying to say to you?
• Contemplate the passage quietly. Ponder it in your heart, as Mary did.

The Dean included a good long period of silence to allow us to put line three into action. Again, this isn't common in any Anglican service, but it seemed to work very well in this evening setting.

The closing hymn was The Day Thou gavest, Lord, is ending. I know that the Greenwich meridian is a purely artificial construction, but it seemed more immediate, somehow to sing this hymn in what is basically the first time zone. The sun that bids us rest really was waking my friends in Amsterdam. The day begins here and rolls onward across the planet. Evening services were something else I missed in Amsterdam; there's a special quality to worshipping when it's dark outside, when it's time to contemplate the events of the day in the quiet of a church.

Well, it works for me anyway.

I'm not sure what internet access I'm going to have for the next couple of weeks so updates may be less frequent and shorter. Lucky you!

Aotearoa

Location: Christchurch
Distance travelled – 21.708 km/13,489 miles

Aotearoa (ah-oh-tee-ah-row-ah) - Land of the long white cloud.

On 31 July 1856, Queen Victoria conferred the title of “city” on Christchurch, making it the first in New Zealand. The town was in many ways an Anglican settlement, and grew up round its church. That same letter creating the city also conferred the title of Bishop on Henry Harper and thus created a Cathedral.

It's not the biggest cathedral in the Anglican Communion, but it's beautiful inside. There's a simplicity and openness about the interior that the great European cathedrals have sometimes lost.

The tower has 134 steps to the top of the square section where little balconies offer views of the surrounding buildings and mountains (on a clear day). This, for example, is the old Post Office in the square in front of the Cathedral:

It's now shared between the Tourist Information Office (i-site) and Starbucks.

Christchurch now has only one short tram route, but it's a good way to get a feel for the city centre. The tram runs past lots of the main tourist attractions in the city and a ticket is valid for two days, so it's quite handy. That said, not much in the centre is really beyond walking distance.

After touring the Cathedral, I took the tram to the Arts Centre where there was a market spread out over outdoor stalls and indoor rooms. Then it was on to the Museum which covers the early Maori Culture as well as European influence in the area. There's also an extensive exhibition of Antarctic Exhibition memorabilia. New Zealand has often been a base for exploring Antarctica.

It's easy to equate the Maori of New Zealand with the Aborigines in Australia but that is way off the mark. The Australian Aborigines have been there for 50,000 years and maybe longer. The Maori arrived in New Zealand only about 800 years ago.

One animal that wasn't pleased about that was the moa – a large flightless bird, which the Maori hunted to extinction. Part of me was slightly relieved that here, at last, was something that you can't blame on European colonisers!

In the Antarctic room are several artefacts from the voyages of discovery including sledges, food rations and even early cars. Captain Scott would no doubt have delighted to have the use of something like this Sno-Cat from 1957/58.

Just behind the museum is the Botanic Garden which is laid out round a loop in the Avon River (named after Avon Water, a tributary of the Clyde):

As well as large parkland areas the Garden has a lovely warm greenhouse full of tropical trees and other plants:


There's even a banana tree (though it's not really a tree, apparently):

In another room in the greenhouse is a beautiful display of flowering plants:

Another short tram ride took me back to the Art Gallery which seems to be concentrating on very modern pieces, which aren't really to my taste. This, for example:

apparently makes a humorous comparison between the much vaunted and celebrated rugby culture of New Zealand and it's less talked about gay culture. Well, quite.

That seemed like enough for one day, so I headed for a nice little bar on Oxford Terrace along the river and tucked into some delicious sausage and mash washed down with local beer.

Australia

Well, after 37 days and around 10.000 km, that was Australia.

And what a country. There were times when it was easy to forget that I was abroad – the shop names were familiar, the cars were on the proper side of the road, the signs were in English (and spelt correctly!), the weather could easily have been British, society was ordered in a familiar way, transport worked the way I'd expect, the television and radio sounded vaguely like they should, they even have the Queen on the coins and the Union Jack on their flag. So, yes, Australia is not an entirely new experience for a Brit.

A good (American) friend of mine suggested that Australia was just like America but upside down. Now, he was being flippant, but the idea that Australia is just a cross between the US and the UK is not uncommon, it seems to me. I really wasn't sure what to expect in Australia, but that hybrid US/UK model probably wasn't far from the truth. My American friend was very wrong. I was less wrong but still way off the mark.

Australia is Australian. If you're going to make comparisons, then I would say it's closer to the UK than the US, but it's very much its own country. Historically it's been tied to the UK much more recently than the US has so of course there's a lot of British influence. But the Australians have taken that common heritage and gone in their own direction with it.

The country straddles international boundaries. It's very much a western country, the news from the US and from Europe is reported here, but geographically it's in Asia. Whichever way you look at it, it's a long way from pretty much anywhere to the major population centres in the south-east. Australians have had to come up with their own approach to life for most of their history.

So the UK and Australia may have much in common historically, but the two countries travelled down different paths, influenced by different factors. The UK is a small, crowded country with a heavy industrial past. We have historically played a major rôle in the world (pretty large chunks of it were under our direct control after all) and it's sometimes hard for us to let go of that influence. Australia is a very spacious place and hasn't any of the historical baggage that the UK has. They were free to evolve along a new path.

Life in Australia is pretty good, from what I've seen. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. If they could learn to drive and buy a few road signs, it'd be a lot better, but it's not at all bad as it is. It would be an easy place to emigrate to with only an enormous time-difference getting in the way. There would be no (serious) language barrier and few cultural problems. But it's easy enough to gloss over that time difference in writing; in reality, it's a seriously long way home – at least 24 hours assuming you left right now, which you probably can't.

Would I move here? Well, I'd have to have a pretty good reason, and that reason would have to come with a visa. It doesn't seem very likely but it's certainly a country I wouldn't mind visiting again.

But now, it's time to head east again. So, thank you Australia, it was great.

Ballarat

I set off for the town of Ballarat not sure what to expect. It just beats Bendigo for the largest population centre in Victoria outside Melbourne, and it's also an old gold-mining town, so I was expecting something similar.

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The journey didn't get off to a good start – I had used Google Maps to print out route instructions, but hadn't realised that they would involve travelling on unsealed forest tracks. Not being in a car that was really equipped for those, the journey quickly departed from the instructions. The problem with a route described in this way is that once you've left it, you've virtually no chance of finding it again. I ended up wandering rather aimlessly along narrow lanes hoping that eventually I'd come across a sign indicating the direction to somewhere. Anywhere, really. Even something indicating where I actually was would have been some comfort.

Eventually I came to a proper highway but there was nothing to indicate which one it was or where it led. I turned right but it later transpired that turning left would have been better. Ah well, I did eventually find Ballarat, but that was just the beginning of a new set of navigational difficulties. For some reason, the location of the tourist information centre appears to be a closely guarded secret. There was, to be fair, a sign indicating that turning left would be a good idea, but left turns were prohibited because of road works. I thought I'd try turning left at the next junction and try to return to the original road, but the one-way system put paid to that idea.

In the end, I drove aimlessly around for about 45 minutes before spotting a (the?) sign for Melbourne and deciding that Ballarat had had long enough to prove itself and it was time to head back the way I'd come and visit one of the other towns along the way. Coincidentally, as I was leaving town, the tourist centre was suddenly there. Well, I expect it had been there all along, but it seemed rather out of place away out on the edge of the town but, no matter, there it was and Ballarat got a second chance.

It turns out that the reason why the tourist centre was so far from anything was that it was right on the site of the most famous historical event that happened in Ballarat – the Eureka uprising. As with most things in rural Victoria, the event had much to do with gold. Come to think of it, gold seems to have had much to do with urban Victoria as well.

As I've been told many, many times in the last three weeks, gold was found in Victoria in 1851. Within months, tens of thousands of people from all over Australia and all over the world had descended on the gold fields to try their luck at making their fortune. The Eureka lead was discovered in August 1852.

The colonial government issued licenses (sic) to prospective prospectors, which cost £2 for three months. It seems to me that that was a lot of money in those days. The licence only conferred the right to dig on a 12' x 12' plot (about 3m square) and made no guarantees at all about the possible mineral wealth on the plot.

The money raised was used by the authorities to create the infrastructure that was required in what had almost overnight become a sizeable town. Roads were created and police were recruited to control the populace. The miners, though, saw the licence fees as a tax imposed by a government in which they had no say – none of them had any right to vote.

Governor La Trobe had already recognised the problem and had written to the Colonial Office in London suggesting that the licence be replaced by a 12-month version which would also confer voting rights on the holder. Further, the idea of taxing the gold that was actually extracted rather than having the miners pay up front was included in his letter. In those days, though, mail was slow and very unreliable and before the answer arrived (approving the suggestion, incidentally), Governor La Trobe was replaced by Governor Hotham who was less sympathetic. He took one look at the accounts and realised that the colony was in deep and immediate financial crisis. He ordered the police to increase their scrutiny of the licence system – the so-called “licence hunts” which were detested by the miners. In fact, it's likely that at least half the miners hadn't bought a licence so, arguably, Hotham had a point. Nonetheless, the miners saw things differently and, on the night of 29 November 1854, 12,000 miners gathered on Bakery Hill and pledged allegiance to one another and to their fight for civil liberties. They gathered for the first time round the Southern Cross flag – a vertical white cross with a star at each point and in the middle on a blue background. The original flag is in the town's Art Gallery, but I found this picture of it on the internet:

By 3 December, the hill had been crudely fortified and a group of miners had gathered such arms as they could find. The force was nothing like the 12,000 that had gathered only a few days before – most likely there were less than a hundred in the stockade. A force of soldiers and police surrounded the stockade. Exactly what happened next is disputed, but the accepted order of events is that someone from inside the stockade fired the first shot. The result was short and bloody. Within an hour 30 men were dead (5 soldiers and 25 miners) and the rising was over.

13 miners were committed to trial in Melbourne, but the local press had covered the story and public opinion was on the miners' side. It was felt that the government's action had been heavy handed and that there were legitimate grievances. Nevertheless, the 13 were taken to court accused of high treason, which carried the death penalty.

The defence manoeuvred to have a Black American called John Joseph tried first. Their argument seems rather racist now (that the idea that this simple Negro might be making war on our Lady the Queen is absurd) but it was effective and Joseph was acquitted, setting a precedent. A second man was acquitted and the prosecution moved to postpone the remaining trials until a new jury (excluding miners and those “with Irish names”) could be sworn in. It didn't make any difference and, by 27 March 1855, all 13 had been found not guilty.

The aftermath of the riot saw many of the changes demanded by the miners implemented. The letter from London authorising the changes that La Trobe had requested finally arrived and the miners were given not just a vote, but also two representatives in parliament. The licence fee was replaced by a tax of 2/6 per ounce of gold.

The Eureka Rebellion has a special place in Australian history. The information panels at the centre drew parallels to Culloden for the Scots or Gettysburg for Americans. I'm not 100% convinced by the comparison to Culloden but I see what they're getting at. What Australians take from the incident is the birth of the idea of civil liberty, proper representation in government and the basic ideal of Australians – a fair go for everyone.

Feeling slightly more positive towards Ballarat (and fortified by an excellent scone with jam and cream) I set off back towards the town centre, having been assured by the man at the information centre that it was worth seeing. He was right.

The Botanic Gardens at the eastern end of the town were very peaceful and worth a stroll. They have an avenue lined with busts of every prime minister in Australian history. I can tell you (well, remind you – I'm sure you already knew) that the first one was Edmund Barton who was PM from 1901, when the separate colonies formed the new Commonwealth of Australia, until 1903.

The line of statues is out of date; the last one is this:

but the day I arrived in Melbourne, Mr Rudd was replaced, rather unceremoniously, by his deputy Julia Gillard (I think the timing was coincidental). No doubt a sculptor is, even now, busy chipping away at a bust of Australia's first female Prime Minister. I can only hope she turns out to be a better bet than the UK's first one...

One of the statues caught my eye:

This gentleman decided to go swimming one day and was never seen again. It seems to me a mite careless for a country to just lose a prime minister, but it's not hard to think of a few other candidates that might also be “lost”...

The town centre of Ballarat contains lots of lovely buildings reflecting the immense wealth generated from the gold mined from the area. Here are just a couple of examples:


Finally it was time to leave. Of course, it took the best part of an hour to find my way out of the city. I couldn't help wondering whether some of that gold revenue couldn't have been spent on a few road-direction or street-name signs. Just as I was contemplating living in Alec's car in Ballaret for the rest of my life, I suddenly found myself on the motorway and heading for Melbourne. Never has a motorway been more welcome!

Mount Macedon and Environs

Mount Macedon lies about 60 km north of Melbourne and rises, according to Wikipedia, to 1.001 metres (3,284'). At the top, there are numerous aerials and a weather radar, but there's also a giant memorial to those who died in World War I:

More importantly from my point of view, it's where I've been staying for the last three weeks:

The back garden goes on for ever and is home to an enormous vegetable patch, an orchard and soft fruit beds. I have eaten fresh produce most days since I got here, even in the middle of winter. Here are the intrepid gardeners inspecting the crop:

Of course, these two are just the caretakers of the property. The real boss here is this little ball of fur:

Just up the road from the house is Mount Macedon Uniting Church:

Most of the church dates from 1983 – the year of the Ash Wednesday fire, which destroyed all but the stone walls of this church, and completely burnt out the other churches in the area, the school and 400 homes. 7 people died in the fire.

All of which goes, I suppose, some way to explaining this notice in the display board outside:

The cross to the right of the path was made from the roof supports from the old building. The congregation wasn't huge, but they were very friendly and welcoming and cake was provided to go with the after-service tea, which is always a good thing!

A few kilometres to the south of Mount Macedon, I kept seeing signs on the highway directing traffic to “Organ Pipes National Park” and I decided one day that it was time to find out what it was all about. Well, this is what it's all about:

This area was once covered in lava flowing from ancient volcanoes. The lava filled in old river valleys and created a vast rocky plain. As the lava cooled, it created these hexagonal basalt columns which were later exposed when new rivers carved new valleys which cut across an old one. The columns were created by the same sort of process that created the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland or Fingal's Cave in Scotland, but the erosion there was by the sea. This area also has it's tessellated pavement which isn't quite in the Giant's Causeway league, but it's good in its own way.

Rather more impressive is the so-called “Rosette Rock”. I'm not sure what forces happened to bend the basalt columns like this, but the result is well worth a look:

On my way back to the car, I came across this little chap quietly minding his own business. The picture's not great but I didn't want to scare him by getting too close.

A little to the north of Mt. Macedon is the famous Hanging Rock. I was aware of the existence of the rock but had no idea I was staying about 40 minutes away from it. Despite the bright weather further south, by the time I got up to Hanging Rock, it was very foggy, but it lent the rocks a certain atmospheric quality:

This is the actual “hanging rock”:

I'm guessing the picnic took place a little further up the hill. Perhaps here:

Who knows? And who knows how much truth is in the story anyway?

Just after passing the hanging rock itself, I came across this plaque fixed to the rock. It's hard not to pause and think for a moment when you see this:

The rock is surrounded by forest which ought to be good for koalas, but wasn't. The tea room at the bottom did a lovely line in scones though, which was some consolation.