Maritime Museum - our Last Day

Sunday September 29th, 2013

Weather: Low 20's, overcast & sunny!

All good things must come to an end, and as our flight was not leaving until early in the evening, we had plenty of time to visit the Maritime Museum in Auckland.  I really enjoy visiting museums - not just because of the interesting artifacts that are on display, but learning about the history related to a specific location.  Coming from the UK - our history is well known to me - Kings & Queens, castles, industrial revolution etc.  Now living in Canada, our museums have lots of great information about the First Nations and then the European settlers.  Sydney's Maritime Museum taught us about the Aboriginal people, and then the settlers, so we were interested to lean more about the Maori People and New Zealand - the Auckland Maritime Museum did not fail to produce.  The surprising thing to learn is that New Zealand was settled relatively recently by the Maoris, and they are of Polynesian descent.  I would imagine that this is something that school children learn at an early age, but for us visitors - it was interesting.

So here are a few pics from the museum:

Did you notice the name in the background of the last photo?  It is the Northern Steamship Company - the same name as the pub that we had lunch at the day before (with the lamps hanging from the ceiling!)  It turns out that the pub is actually in the HQ of the Northern Steamship Company - what a connection!

As New Zealand just lost the Americas Cup (not named after the US as I had always thought, but after the name of boat that first won the race.  Learning.  Always learning!!) to the USA, I really enjoyed the Sir Peter Blake exhibition at the Museum.  He led the team that won the Americas cup in 1992 and his boat was there - it is HUGE!  I passed on buying his last book that was actually a collection of his log book entries right up until the day he was tragically killed.  I then spent the rest of the day trying to buy it at a book shop (without success) so I feel an order to Amazon coming on!!

Here are a few pics from that exhibition - including the 'shirt off his back'!

And that was the end of the trip.  Phew, what a trip it has been.  Just one more wrap up post - and a few more pics that didn't fit into the other posts, as well as final thoughts on a fabulous journey!