Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest town in the South Island with a population of 350,000! It's located on the East of the Canterbury Plains which is New Zealands largest lowland. We spent 3 nights here which gaves us a good insight into the Kiwi's laidback, extremely helpful and friendly persona. The first night we spent near New Brighton Beach and the next two were spent in the city. We were going to go for a walk along the beach on the first night, but it was far too cold compared to the heat in Sydney, so we settled for a chippy and an early night instead.

Christchurch city centre is small and compact, and unlike the rest of the country is incredibly flat. The central focus is Cathedral Square which is where all types of people gather to listen to the local loon ramble about god, play an intense life size game of chess, play football or browse at the local market. We enjoyed watching this circus while planning the rest of our day and were amazed to see the interest in chess and couldn't imagine this working in George Square.

While wandering around the city we stumbled across a Scottish Shop and went in for a goosey gander. We were overwhelmed to see cans of Bru but were even more overwhelmed by the $3 per can price so we stuck to our typical Scottish stingy reputation and refused to buy them, although instead we broke the bank by buying two expensive, but warm Scottish jumpers.

One of the interesting features in the city center is the firefighter memorial created by local artists Graham Bennett. This sculpture is created from crooked girders from the World Trade Center in New York. It is dedicated to the firefighters who died in New York on September 11th, 2001 and also the many other firefighters who have died in the course of duty.

















Botanic Gardens:

Our first place of interest was the botanic gardens which was even more enjoyable as the sun had came out. We had a walk around and a good laugh at some ducks, one in particular looked half duck, half seagull!

















Canterbury Museum:

From here we went next door to the Canterbury Museum. This was very informative as we learned about the history of the Maori people and the European settlers. We also learned about New Zealand wildlife, in particular the Moa bird. This now extinct species of bird came in 6 various forms all of which were flightless. The largest Moa species was related to the Australian Emu and Africian Ostrich and was twice their size reaching 12ft in height. Sadly they were hunted to extinction by the Maoris within 500 years of their arrival (at least the Europeans weren't responsible this time!). All of New Zealands native animals were flightless birds. This was due to the fact that New Zealand drifted away from the mainland continent of Gondwana about 80 million years ago. No animals were able to reach this land except birds. Due to lack of predators these birds didn't have to fly and so evolved into the flightless ancestors that exist today. The Moa and New Zealand national emblem the Kiwi are the two best known examples. The Europeans introduced cats, dogs, rats, stoats, ferrets all of which pray on these flightless birds eggs and have led to the extinction of the Huia bird and all the other species of flightless birds are on the brink of extinction too. To help stave off this extinction many off shore islands are wildlife reserves and free of all introduced species.

Also in this museum was a trip to the past where we got to ride a penny farthing and sample one of the first horse driven carts which could apparently seat 16 people (well seeing there was no McDonalds back in the day as there was only room for me and Colin and our bags). We also got to walk through what one of the streets in Christchurch looked like back in the day with all the old fashioned shops and clothes peope wore.























Port Hills:

On our 4th day we picked up our rental car, a Nissan Pulsar. We went up to the Port Hills that provides fantastic views from either side of the hill. From one side you can look down onto Christchurch city and out to the sea, and from the other side you can see Lyttleton town and Harbour. The scenery was spectacular and was just a taster of what was to come as we started on our journey around the country.