On 27th February we flew from Melbourne to Christchurch, New Zealand. Its only about a 3 hour flight but there was a further 2 hour time difference to add to that so it took most of the day to get to our hotel.
The hotel was called Chateau on the Park – alluding to a couple of turret style additions to a largely single storey building, but at least it was indeed next to a park – the largest in Christchurch. The hotel was very good with some beautiful gardens, although unfortunately it wasn’t really warm enough to sit in them.
The next day we went into the city and used the tram tour to get around – a bit like the city hop-on hop-off bus services you find everywhere but using a series of historical trams. Not much of Christchurch remains historic as about 80% of it was devastated by the 2011 earthquake. This followed one in 2010 which did less damage to the city, but the cumulative effect did not help. We found a tram stop in New Regents Street, part of the historic district, very pretty buildings here, and full of shops and cafes of course!
We visited a museum about the earthquake and its effects. There were personal stories there and a lot of photos plus some real time videos. It seems it struck without warning so sadly quite a few people died. The destruction was so bad that they are still rebuilding today as even most of the infrastructure had to be redone. As well as the immediate effect of the quake and aftershocks there was something called liquefaction which was a result of the fact that the city is built largely on marshland.
There was an interesting video where they explained liquefaction by using a wheelbarrow of mud, sand, gravel and larger rocks. As you wheel the barrow around over cobbles the mixing which occurs causes the water and smaller particles to rise to the surface, submerging the larger particles and creating a sea of mud – this happened for real in many areas of the city so otherwise undamaged houses were sinking into the mud.
Some older – mostly Victorian – buildings do remain and happily a politician who suggesting razing the entire city to the ground and starting again was overruled. The work on the cathedral is going to take a long time indeed looking at its state through all the scaffolding. As a result a temporary one has been constructed using cardboard tubes and metal sheets from containers – it has been given a life expectancy of 50 years despite all the cardboard!
And finally, as we walked around the city we saw some amazing murals – here are the two I liked best!
