High Gear

We had a great day today.  Our lecturer Gordon McLauchlan who talked about the history of settlement in NZ was wonderful.  He gave such an entertaining and elegant summary. NZ was the last place on earth to be settled.The Maori came from the Marquesas about 800 years ago. I could write more but maybe in another blog.  The day was full of highlights starting with him.  We then walked down to the warf and went sailing.  It  was a perfect day for it, 35 km winds exciting and fun.  We were in two boats and people could take the wheel if they wanted to. 

A bus picked us up and took us to Eden Garden, which was just what it felt like.  We had lunch then had some time on our own to explore.  It started to rain in earnest just as it was time to leave. The garden was so lush it was hard for me to get good photo's.

From there we went to the Museum of War, which is a misnomer as it is really the museum of history, geology and biology with the top floor devoted to the wars NZ has participated in.  There were wonderful displays of Maori artifacts and also the birds that have become extinct. We had a really knowledgable tour guide and the most interesting part for me was how the Maori knew land would be 3000 km south west of where they were in the Marquesas (the flocks of birds migrating south) and how to navigated by reading and feeling the waves, wind, cloud patterns, following the birds, turtles, stars).  The navigators had to memorize everything and had complex, symbolic maps made from sticks. It was a beautiful museum. 

This is a small sailing boat. The ones they made for migration were double hulled and had a shelter in the middle. They each held 30-40 people

This isn't a very good image but it is an sample of the symbolic maps that navigators taught each other from

Flocks of these little birds were what the Maori saw migrating and followed to NZ.  They are now extinct along with the Kiwi

The museum is restoring a meeting house and people are dying flax and weaving inserts between the carvings on the walls.

The Maori only had stone tools but were able to carve these from turtle shells. They were about 10 cm in diameter

There was also a section on asian influence and after all my time in Japan looking for old netske's I find these here in NZ

When we went up for dinner there had been a mix up in scheduling and the hotel wasn't expecting us. While they prepared a dinner for us everyone got free drinks for almost 2 hours. Needless to say it was a very sociable evening.