Ron & Julie’s trip to New Zealand (North Island) – Part 2

Monday 14 May 2007

8.30am rise, breakfast, take a few photos, bade our farewells and we were on our way. Wanganui to Bulls, 44 kilometres, fuel $1.58 a litre for unleaded, ouch! So, don’t think you are hard done by in Aust. In NZ you don’t have to travel far between places, so it’s not as bad, but in Australia it would kill you at those prices, considering the distances we have to travel. Also, a lot of the cars have smaller capacity engines, and there are a lot of diesels as well. Japanese imports. I had to ask for directions because we were taking some back roads to make the trip quicker. We had lunch at Feilding. Another country town, well spread out.

The town centre has a monument in the middle of it. I reckon the square would have to be 300 metres a side. Did a walk after lunch, and then off to Ashhurst, start of the Manawatu Gorge. Along the way we saw wind farms on the Ruahine Ranges. Some of the turbines were like the ones we have here, some had two blades, and some had structures like power pylons which looked unusual. Stopped at a place called Norsewood where they make work and extreme weather clothing. From here we go to Takapau where we stayed with an aunt of mine.

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Takapau to Napier is 120 kilometres. Leave just after 10am. Waipukurau was only 15 kilometres away, a nice little country town where you don’t have to travel far between places. Live in one place and travel to the other. We arrived in Hastings around lunchtime, 85 kilometres from Takapau. This is quite a large place, reasonably spread out. We drove around, checking it out; lots of car sales everywhere selling Japanese imports. We stopped outside a café where an elderly lady was seated with her scooter parked next to her and her little Jack Russell sitting quietly on the floor of the scooter. Ordered a couple of coffees and a biscuit and sat outside. Julie spoke to the lady with the dog.

After we finished we went for a walk, did a bit of op shopping and took some photos of a Ford Taurus station wagon. I had never seen one before. We have a few sedans over here.

On to Napier 20 kilometres away. This place is on the sea, east coast. Found the Information Centre to check out what to do, and see about accommodation. They gave us a large folder to look through, but in the end we asked if they could recommend something in the $90 to $100 mark. They rang up a place that had a unit left in that range, so they gave our name and we went straight there. It was only two blocks away. Had a look at the unit and took it. Unloaded the car and went for a walk. Ten minutes gets you into town centre.

Napier is the Art Deco Centre of New Zealand. For those that follow architecture, this has to be the place. That afternoon I reckon we walked our feet off, up and down, round and round, in and out of shops, taking lots of photos. We went to the Art Deco Shop and enquired about the Art Deco Walk. There were three you could do: a half hour one in the morning, or 1.5 hour one in the afternoon, and an evening one in the summer, which had finished. We decided the afternoon one was the one for us on Wednesday. Back to the motel, have tea, watch the idiot box and have a rest.

A little bit of history about Napier. Settled in the early 1880’s, it was only half the size it is now, and is at sea level, so there was a fair bit of water around the place. Forward to 1931, February 3^rd at 10.47am, an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter Scale devastated central Napier as well as causing widespread damage in Hastings and affecting all urban centres between Gisborne and Dannervirke. In Napier, the fires which broke out soon afterwards destroyed most of those buildings which had survived the tremors.

By the following day all but a few of the buildings between Herschell Street and Clive Square East, and between Dickens Street and the Hill had been destroyed. 162 Napier people died. But by early 1933, in the remarkably short time of two years, the town had been rebuilt, making it the world’s newest and most modern city at that time. Most of the new buildings in the central business area which were built then and later in the decade are still with us today; a townscape in the styles of the 1930s. At that time, to build a permanent town centre in just two years was probably without precedent.

But what makes Napier unique was that this happened at the lowest point of the Great Depression, when the building industry had virtually closed down world-wide. Nowhere else in the world is there a town or city built entirely in the styles of the early thirties unless it is nearby Hastings, which suffered almost as badly in the earthquake. Also, the earthquake moved the earth’s plates under Napier, and lifted it over two metres more above sea level, which gave it more useable land, after they set about draining the swamps surrounding some of the original town.

Another innovative idea in 1933 was to put all power and telephone lines underground, so when you are there, there is an absence of lamp-posts and street verandahs, making the place look uncluttered. Street names were Baked Enamel signs set into the sides of buildings, but have since been replaced with normal street signs. When we first arrived we went for a walk to the beach (Pacific Ocean). The path to get to the waters edge drops down at least three metres. If you turned and looked back from where you came, you would only see the tops of the trees. Julie was sitting on a park bench and I couldn’t see her, so it was a fair drop. The beach had stones, not sand. On the beach if you looked right you would see Cape Kidnappers in the distance and the other way you would see the Port of Napier.

Wednesday 16 May 2007

We walked into town and went to the Napier library. Julie was impressed. She reckons it was quite big for the size of the place. Time flies when you are having fun; we could have stayed for hours, catching up on a bit of history and checking out a few books. We hit the streets again and looked for somewhere to have lunch. There was no shortage of eating houses, just about every second place. Settled on one shop where the food was excellent.

After lunch we went for another walk, checking out more shops. What else is a person supposed to do? Eventually it was time to head to the Art Deco Shop for the afternoon tour. As it turned out, Julie and I were the only ones to go, so the chap was quite pleased about that. First, there was a short film about the history of Napier, and then it was off on a 1.5 kilometre walk taking 60–100 minutes for the full route, depending on your pace. From memory, it was cold and windy, but otherwise okay.

There was so much to see, and if I were to write about it all, I would be here for weeks. Some of the interiors of the buildings were fabulous. You had to see them to believe. I especially liked the foyer in the Picture Theatre, Streamline Moderne style – chrome speed lines, nautical light fittings, and neon and tubular lamps.

A striking feature is the pair of leaping nude wall panels. After we got back to the shop you could have tea or coffee and biscuits and a chat about what we had seen. Back to the motel and we got into the car and went for a drive to Bluff Hill lookout with its spectacular views across the harbour and wharves below. I reckon the lookout was 300 hundred metres above sea level, almost a vertical cliff face on the waterfront side. Spectacular it was, but bloody cold ’cos there was a howling wind blowing. I even had to wear a jacket. Julie even coaxed herself out of the warmth of the car to have a look. We took lots of photos and then drove back down.

The streets were very narrow and if your house overlooked the bay they were Million Dollar Views. Near the bottom I stopped at a reserve with a couple of water falls and ponds. It was nice. Carried on around to the harbour and found the Tobacco Company Building. I didn’t take any photos because it was getting on dusk and they wouldn’t have been any good, so back to the motel to have some tea and pack up ready to leave tomorrow morning.

To be continued…