Auckland Maritime Museum – Day 325

Today it feels like an achievement we are on our way back to Auckland.

So we are driving to Auckland on the most beautiful day of the year.

Yep Laura pretty much hit the nail on the head right here, as we are driving from the town of Tauranga back to Auckland this morning it is absolutely pouring down with rain. It’s relentless all the way.

Well, 325 days ago or 326 days ago we were leaving in this line of traffic on the other side of the road totally stoaked that we were on the other side of the traffic like “woo, leaving Auckland!” And now, we are those people heading into Auckland. I feel like I don’t know what this means but we’re going back civilisation.

But the good news is with civilisation comes hot chocolate and yes, we are hitting the cafes of Auckland city centre almost right away as we arrive because it’s raining we need a hot coco.

Oh my God! Mm! It’s melting so quickly.

We find this awesome little coffee shop called The Shelf which is one High Street which just parallel to the main street of Auckland called Queen Street. But anyway our main activity of the day is New Zealand Maritime Museum.

It comes as no surprise that in the city which is nicknamed the City of Sails that the New Zealand Maritime Museum is based and you can find it just on the Viaduct Harbour. Plus, it’s the perfect rainy day activity to do on a day like today.

We choose to do one of the guided tors that’s included as an optional extra in your fee into the Maritime Museum and they run every day either at 10.30am or 1pm and we have an awesome guide with us who is called Don and he is super passionate about what he’s doing as he’s actually a volunteer guide here.

They catch sharks by hand. What they do they rattle these coconut shells in the water in front of the boat – sounds like a group of small fish – then the shark comes in to eat the small fish. Back of the boat, lassos and caught and says “what a brave man am I?”

The first exhibition that we’re checking out is the Landfall Exhibition which tells the story and techniques of the early Polynesians and Europeans and how they found New Zealand which it’s actually pretty hard thing to find. New Zealand is really isolated in the South Pacific Ocean and one of the newest countries to actually be colonised.

The New Zealand Maritime Museum has a massive collection. It literally boasts having ships, memorabilia, miniatures, replicas of every single era of the shipping history of the country. It’s quite amazing. And the next exhibition that we are heading to right now is called the immigrants actually the real name is New Beginnings. And it traces the story of the early migration toward New Zealand.

I am Wilhelmina Serif-Bain. I am John Denver I was born Glasgow Scotland in 1930. And when I was 10 years old my father took me over here.

As we are making our way inside an actual real rocking room mimicking what a boat journey would look like we are keeping preciously our cards because they were real immigrants to New Zealand.

That’s a double bed? That’s not a double bed.

It’s absolutely crazy how simple were the amenities in those boats and there were on those boats for many many months making their way all the way to New Zealand. But we quickly move on from the rocking room because honestly, it was gonna give us sea sickness. And we keep on following the story of the migrants that we kept the card of at the beginning of this exhibition.

And the real cool thing about this exhibition is that at then end we know the fate of our emigrants.

The fate: your family settles in Invercargill and you become a teacher and librarian. That sounds like Laura.

Hey Johnny. After working as a farmhand and storeman in Christchurch you enlist into the army at the outbreak of World War 2. Twice you escape from prisoner of war camps in Yugoslavia being decorating a war hero.

The next exhibition that we’re checking out is the whaling exhibition and this is kind of the dark side of the maritime history of New Zealand but New Zealand actually had a huge amount of whaling stations back in the day.

Boo, whaling boo!

So we’ve had a look at the New Zealand Maritime history through all these different amazing exhibitions but now we’re gonna move onto the more contemporary side of things and New Zealand culture’s connection to boating and the ocean. More specifically, we are looking at the America’s Cup which New Zealand is a huge contender in this massive sailing race around the world.

What’s really cool about this exhibition is there’s lots of interactive displays you can pretend to be sailing one of the America’s Cup boats. You can also make your own yacht but one of the best things of this exhibition is the huge America’s Cup racing boat right in the middle of the room.

Next up we also get to see the boat from the top which is really cool because it’s a huge boat and then we move onto the Edminston Gallery which has heaps of memorabilia from the very early sailors to New Zealand.

From the second level of the museum we get to see all the boats on the bottom from a whole new level. We get to see all the sails and the sailing deck. it’s really awesome and we even go to a room where we can see how early navigators used to actually find their bearings using the stars.

Speaking of stars, it’s now after dark and speaking of bearings we’re about to lose ours because we are heading to a pub crawl. Laura and I have to catch up with a ton of friends so we are heading from one pub to the other for thew whole night catching up with everybody there is heaps of beers to be had. there is heaps of late night cravings that we have and obviously Auckland Central being so busy and lively it is satisfied to its fullest. Yum, yum, yum.

You know how one drink leads to another and then you end up going out and then eating pizza and then waking up the next morning with a huge headache well that all happened because we’re back in Auckland.

Aw yeah!