Christchurch
18th March 2009
After the last couple of days of sunshine, the weather was back to low overcast cloud for the drive to Christchurch. As we said goodbye to both the sun and the mountains, we drove along what could have been English country , past English looking farms and a couple of nearly English looking towns before arriving into Christchurch.
Everyone said that Christchurch was the most English city in New Zealand, but you still don't realise what that means until you are there. It does have differences, the main ones being the modern nature of the bulk of the town and the American 'grid and block' style layout, but as we drove in along Gloucester Street and passed Worcester Street and Hereford Street, we started to see it. The similarity continued to the Victorian style buildings in the city centre, the old style electric city loop tram and the opportunity to go punting on the Avon River running right through the middle of town.
Our first priority was to find somewhere to stop. We had got used to being a few kilometres out of town when getting to any town over about 40,000 people, so when we read about a place called Stonehurst where you could park a camper within 600m walk of the city centre we were intrigued and decided to try there first. The place was massive and covered at least half a city block, with a mixture of Backpacker dorms all the way up to quite posh hotel style rooms. Luckily for us this did indeed include campervan parking, kitchen and bathroom facilities etc. All that and still not too overpriced, although the extra $1 for the shower was a bit of a pain, and we were pretty tightly packed in.
We had also arranged to meet Jim Bowskill, a family friend of mine, who just happened to be in Christchurch for a few days at the same time as us before doing his own travelling for a few months. Within an hour or so of setting up and relaxing Jim had made his way over to us and we spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other. That may sound a bit strange as I have known him for years but only ever in the context of somebody's son, so it was nice for both me and Jemma to get to know him in his own right. The evening included a few drinks in the Crumpet Club (a live music, open mike night) where Jim (aka Jum, think Kiwi) sang a couple of songs; and progressed towards a Karaoke bar (thankfully, for the population of Christchurch, shut) and after a wander around town, another random bar before we all realised we were tired and called it a night. I must point out at here that the younger, and definitely more rock and roll, Mr Bowskill called time before us relative oldies.
The next couple of days were taken up with shopping and spending time with Jim. Shopping was generally centred on buying a few replacements for the items that had finally given up the ghost since being worn most days through the trip. The time with Jim generally consisted of eating, drinking and chatting. The drinking part was similar to the first night, with three English tourists wandering around the city centre looking for decent places and ending up first in the English themed pub (it even had a picture of Charles and Di behind the bar), and finished watching a bad demonstration of Kiwi men on the pull at a trendy establishment with flames coming out of the tables.
On Friday we said goodbye to Jim and wished him well for the WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) work he was about to start. We still had a few things we needed to sort out in Christchurch, and wanted to do the tourist things at some point, so booked a couple more nights. The only thing of note, unless you want to hear about getting trousers shortened by an ex New Zealand women's cricket player and Jemma knowing who Rachel Heyhoe-Flint was (an alumni of both Jem's primary and secondary school), was our appointment with the travel doctor. Don't get alarmed by this - we were trying to get some vaccination boosters and malaria tablets for South America, and were not ill. What we did end up with was nothing and had to pay $90 for the privilege. We booked an appointment a couple of days before after explaining to the receptionist what we wanted. When the day came we went into the consultation room to be asked what the problem was. We explained again there was no problem and we just wanted information about vaccines and the doctor asked where we were going. After we told her, she got as far searching Google for websites on vaccinations before we lost all confidence. The next 10 minutes or so we got no useful information and even had to prompt her on some of the Malaria tablet side effects before leaving feeling completely ripped off. We understand that the internet is a great source of current up to date information and there is no way doctors can know everything, but this was a specialist travel doctor set up for this kind of thing, or so we had been led to believe by the advertising. After leaving and calming down for a few minutes we decided to re-look at this one in Auckland before we leave New Zealand, and put the $90 cost down to experience.
Our last day in Christchurch was led by Jemma and involved following the trusty Lonely Planet Walking tour. After a 30 minute ride around the centre on the restored tram we past all of the major city centre landmarks such as: Cathedral square, including a trip up the spire for views across the city and surrounding hills; Victoria Square complete with a statue of Queen Victoria, The Arts Centre and Art Gallery, stopping off at a Rita Angus exhibition; the stripy Antigua Boat Sheds where punting had been suspended due to the rain (see... it's really like England!), and a final tram ride back through the glass atrium of Cathedral Junction and the pastel shades of the New Regent Street buildings. It was a good day and everything was really nice but the city was certainly more a functional stop for us and not a stop for the scenery or architecture.
We were also very shocked by one thing we encountered while on the tour: just by the banks of the River Avon there are a number of large Horse Chestnut trees. It is the beginning of autumn now in New Zealand, and we found hundreds of conkers on the floor scattered below these trees. Yes, I know in theory this is not that unusual conkers being the natural result of Horse Chestnut trees and all that, but we both remembered hours, days or even weeks in our childhoods scouring the floor and the trees for any conkers that hadn't been found or knocked off the tree already. In my day conkers the size of the ones we found were worth more than gold (to a 10 year old anyway) and we were staggered by the sheer volume and quality of the conkers discarded by the good folks of Christchurch. A bit of research later down the line led us to believe that maybe the game of conkers was purely an English thing, or maybe even just a midlands thing. Either way, in my younger years, I would have spent a good few weeks' pocket money getting these beauties shipped back to Alfreton!