Christchurch was set up as an Anglican town on the marshes of the Canterbury plains. For a long while it was considered one of the most stable places in this earthquake prone country. Yet in 2011 a series of devastating earthquakes hit, along with aftershocks. After all these years Christchurch has gone from having to demolish all of its old, damaged, buildings and is working towards rebuilding.
Distance: Bus, 224km, walking, ~20km
Total Distance: 6019km
Getting out of Tekapo was somewhat easier than getting there, although some how I got the seat next to a guy who smelt of rotting chicken manure and decaying chicken corpses. Don't ask how I know what that smells like. Atleast I have a cold so I could only smell him through one nostril.
Arriving at Christchurch our driver dropped me just outside my hostel. It has been rated for many years as the best in the city, but made by the driver, speaking to the whole bus, made it sound far more sinister.
"My father once took me into Christchurch Jail. He was a warden there. Really creepy place. Spooky. Strange people. I wouldn't want to go in again."
I'm staying in Christchurch Correctional Facility! AKA Jailhouse Accommodation. The inside is lovely, white, clean and plain. Everything from staff tshirts, signs, bedspreads, and mugs are in the there of prisons- staff and signs are in jumpsuit orange, the rest being black and white striped. Three cells are maintained. The ground floor cell is filled with items from a standard cell, as well as a mannequin dressed as a warden. The cell above it contains artwork (graffiti) produced by the prisoners. Finally, at the far end of the building Solitary Confinement is kept, now embellished with cobwebs.
My room for the night
If you want age and spooky go to the prison in Napier, one of the first prisons in NZ and used for around 100 years. This one is much younger, and far less spooky. I enjoyed visiting Napier Prison, but not sure I would have stayed there. Christchurch, on the other hand, is one of the best hostels I've ever stayed in. It's well run, clean, friendly, the beds are great with a little shelf for a book and phone and 2 power sockets (some hostels are a nightmare for recharging equipment) . The toilets and showers have thankfully been upgraded since prison days (don't drop the soap!), as has the kitchen.
Sorry, taken on phone when too dark...but look, prison mugs and table cloth!
Having performed an exorcism and the rites of Hades it was time to explore the city.
I quickly made for the train station. I'm leaving from here at 7:45am , so it's worth knowing where it is before a cold wet morning. From here I headed towards the museum, but wouldn't make it that day.
Firstly on my travels I hit the park and stumbled into the cricket oval, a site where they were clearing up from the weekend and where last year some of the Cricket World Cup was played.
From here I went further and decided to take a short cut through the Botanic Gardens.
Hands down best Botanic Garden in New Zealand.
I've been to a lot of them, nearly everywhere seems to have one. Dunedin's was lovely, but Christchurch was far better. The glass house is nearly the size to the one in Edinburgh, with smaller areas for rainforest, desert, marshland, and temperate displays. Outside is the large rose garden with each variety having its own bed, and surrounding borders including the large Dahlia border which was in full bloom.
Much of the garden is lawn and various trees, but also there are rockeries and native plant displays, a water garden, a long mixed border with plants from all over the world, a maple garden surrounded by Hydrangeas, and decorative plots by the road surrounding a painted fountain.
The visitor centre shows off how this is still a working botanical garden. Behind the cafe and shop stands a glass warehouse with rows upon rows of plants each in a pot ready for transport or to be transplanted. The area must be getting on for 200m by 50m, and that's just the nearly fully grown big stuff that they show off.
View from the balcony in glass house
By this point it was 5pm so I had a quick wander to get a rough idea of where to start tomorrow, then went back to find milk for tea and Dominoes next to the jail for dinner. $5 for a pizza! I can't make a hot meal for that little (well, I can, but I like to pay myself minimum wage).
Next morning my first job was to find a library with computers so I could transfer my Canyon Swing photos from the USB stick to the Internet, then post the USB stick home. I grew up in Britain, I don't trust the post not to lose the parcel.
The useful thing about this excursion into non-tourist areas was that I could walk through the back streets of Christchurch, seeing normal life and what remains after the quakes.
In some areas they're having a complete revamp. Having torn out everything they're well on their way to getting shopping malls, multi-storey car parks, and offices built up to quake proof code. Many stretches of the street and pavements are fenced of as busy crews of skilled workmen, both local and European, work away or have tea breaks.
On the other hand there are stretches where there's nothing but one wall and a stack of shipping containers. The area isn't very old, hence historical buildings might have stood for less than a century. Many of these buildings, if they didn't collapse, were condemned as unsafe. Yet the front face is a piece of local heritage. A dangerous piece.
Thus the buildings were demolished, but the front kept. Shipping containers (invented to enable the US military to transport supplies and vehicles during WWII, now used in their millions, celebrated for their simplicity and strength being entirely made of steel....I'll stop now)... Shipping containers are immensely strong, resilient, and relatively cheap so have been used extensively in the city. One use has been stacking them in front of old buildings. Stacks are about 6 high, with a stack of 3 on the roadside, held together with cables and attached to the building. Being so thick and strong this both protects the public in the event of a collapse, whilst maintaining the building.
Another use for shipping containers is the Re:Start Mall.
Before I left the UK there was (another) flood that destroyed a towns shops in Yorkshire. The town set up a shopping centre made out of shipping containers. A rectangular enclosure was made of them, each containing a shop, with a gap for an entrance, an arch made by spanning 2 containers across the entrance. It was basic but worked well and everyone was happy enough.
That's what I expected here. Something basic. Not what I found.
These are nolonger just shipping containers. They have glass fronts, proper doors, several containers joined together in a manner so you can't see the join. The interior looks like any other shop. There's even a container on the top of each with a sign for the shop it sits on. And everything's been painted in bright technicolour. Just looks like a create idea for a shopping mall, not an emergency measure to keep shops open. George Clarke would be proud.
(Check out George Clarke's Amazing Spaces, he sees as well as building some phenomenal things. He did a whole program on shipping containers, as well as people converting planes, boats, swimming pools, tree houses, trains, old buildings from the war.)
Most of your average shops are there, including the post shop, so there's now another wee parcel sent off to my parents.
Also, there were statues
Afterwards I visited the Cathedral. This was one of the oldest buildings in Christchurch, the city having been set up by staunch Anglicans, yet it was also one of the worst hit by the quakes, as were many of the city's churches. Stone edifices of 14th century design are not built to withstand an earthquake.
This isn't the first time the cathedral has been damaged by a quake. 100 years ago the tip of the spire was broken off. Back then it was an annoying novelty. This time the damage is virtually irreparable.
Talking to wardens the parish wants a simple rebuild- even that totals over 60 million NZD though (£30m). Better that then the proposed rebuild by 'others' though (I didn't ask who the 'others' were. Not local parishioners by the way she said it.) would cost well over 200 million NZD (£100m)
Either way the present site looks lamentable, waiting for a plan, whilst getting overgrown with weeds.
There is a shiny new cathedral though, and it's the largest building in the Southern Hemisphere made primarily out of cardboard! Had to go see it.
Imagine this. 12 shipping containers lined up in 2 rows, parallel, 12 yards apart. 6 tubes about half a yard in diameter and 4 yards in length, made out of a type of card board, are then placed into an arch, 3 forming each side. Repeat 98 times. Then put interlocking tough clear plastic over the outside. Add a wall at one end, doors at the other, and above the doors glass painted with images from the Windows of the old cathedral. And that's roughly what they built, helped by German engineering.
It's an impressive structure with lots of additional features they are very proud of. The containers are all used for offices. The doors at the back can be completely opened out, useful when the place is packed out. There's a side chapel with a cardboard tube screen that opens out for use, or is closed to conceal during larger services. The enormous English oak lectern, altar pieces and Cathedra (that's the Bishop's big chair) were all rescued from the cathedral by a quake rescue team (after they'd saved as many people as they ever could).
It's all very impressive. I'm always impressed by the older churches here, in Europe we spent generations getting them up. Here, on the South Island, they did their best to build replicas in a few years, and many have lasted. Buildings of such complexity, weight, and size are increasingly difficult to build for us today- even here, such as in Dunedin, a hundred years ago people ended up taking short cuts due to time and money.
The temporary cathedral was one of the first buildings erected after the initial quake- they were finishing as the second quake and aftershocks hit. Yet they had congregations packing the place after each event, giving the local people the support and community they needed.
Time to finally hit the museum- mostly just a quick run through though.
First to the cafe though as it was 2pm and I hadn't eaten since I'd found a place that did chips and gravy that morning. Nothing to remind me of trips to York livestock market with my parents as a child like chips and gravy.
At the museum I found the cafe.
"Good afternoon, Sir, how are you today?", asked a very cheerful waitress. I had to stifle a laugh as I thought of Homer Simpson: "For once someone will call me 'Sir', without adding 'you're making a scene'"
I got some tea and was given a decent sized slice of date and honey cake, warmed up, smothered in butter. Yum. I do deserve the calories, honest. A read, a wee nap, and back on it.
The museum is huge. They even have an Allosaurus, plus an Edmontosaurus skull, Triceratops skull, and sauropod forelimb!
Christchurch being the starting point for many Antarctic expeditions there's a big display showing their history, including much of the equipment they took, from clothes to exploring vehicles, such as the first tractor onto Antactica. A fine collection of stuffed animals too, both Antarctic and from New Zealand.
There's the usual displays about Moari and Pakeha settlement, history, and culture, though larger than many.
There was an art exhibit of Jeff Thomson, showcasing his work and his talent. He works with corrugated steel, building everything from life sized giraffes, pigs, hens, dogs, and even a car, to bouquets and miniature houses.
Finally, my favourite, but not a fixture, Leonardo Di Vinci! A special exhibition showing his notes including, importantly, working models of his drawings! Well, working as in many could move. The flying machines still weren't going to fly, not the "robot" walk, but the ideas were all there. Flying machines, pulley systems, gearing ratios, pumps, levers, war machines, bridges, robots, musical instruments, ball bearings, ways to measure time. There were also a few of his paintings and a video about his life.
Oh, and body bits. Well, very detailed models of bodies. Di Vinci, as an artist, and then as an engineer-scientist did a lot of research into anatomy. It was important as part of Renaissance art for students to understand the human form so as to draw and paint bodies appropriately. He went further however, looking beyond the superficial right down to the cranial nerves and the action of the heart. He did much that was against the doctrine of the church, which would eventually helped us all.
I left through the mock up of a Christchurch street from a hundred years ago...which was basically York as it is today, but with less neon.
