Friday, February 24th, 2023 Queen Victoria, Auckland, New Zealand
Updated: Jul 1, 2023
During the last two days we’ve steamed south from Fiji on quite calm seas, the weather has become a little cooler – it’s strange to be going south and the temperature to be falling. This morning we arrived in Auckland, in the north island, under cloudy skies with the threat of some rain; we are undaunted as this is our first trip to New Zealand and it will take more than a bit of rain to quell our excitement. In the past week the north island of New Zealand was hit with a quite devastating cyclone and a state of emergency was declared with very high winds and lots of flooding. The worst impacted area was a bit further north than Auckland, so we are hoping that the impact here has been minimal. An electronic travel authorization (ETA) is required to visit New Zealand; we obtained our ETAs a few months ago through an online process – however the immigration documentation process for entry into New Zealand was quite minimal. Passports were not required to go ashore, there was no immigration checks, and no one checked that we had in fact obtained an ETA; all that was required for leaving the ship was a cruise card and a photo ID. On the dockside I ordered an Uber and it arrived with two minutes, off we went for a 30-minute ride to the New Zealand Society of Genealogy Family Research Center. Sandra has been doing genealogy for many years and discovered a strong link to New Zealand; one of her ancestors had here back in the 1840s and she was keen to find out more about her. The volunteers at the Family Research Center could not have been more helpful; a very experienced researcher sat with Sandra, and they went through the various records trying to find out more about Douglas Mary McKain (yes, her name was Douglas) – specifically how she died. While they were not able to find out exactly the details that Sandra was looking for, the researcher was able to provide Sandra with some great leads to continue the investigation. Another 20-minute Uber ride, back towards the center of the city, brought us to the Auckland Museum – also called the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The Auckland War Memorial Museum is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its collections concentrate on New Zealand History (and especially the history of the Auckland Region), natural history, and military history. The present museum building was constructed in the 1920s in the neo-classical style, and sits on a grassed plinth (the remains of a dormant volcano) in the Auckland Domain, a large public park close to the Auckland Central Business District. Entering the museum through the immense, curved back side of the building we were immediately impressed with the large open atrium, complete with two t-rex skeletons. Over to the right side we noticed a coffee shop and café, it was already lunch time, so we decided to eat before proceeding into the museum. The café was busy, and clearly under-staffed, but after a short wait we were seated and ordered the high tea for two – it was very good and hit the spot! The museum collection is housed on three floors and is quite extensive; clearly it would take several days to see everything – given our limited time, we decided to focus on the Māori heritage collection located on the ground floor. We paid our 28NZD (~$19) ticket price and wandered into the “Māori Court” section of the museum; highlights included the gigantic war canoe, the Hotunui or ancestral meeting house and the Pataka or raised store house. The exhibits were nicely displayed with clear explanations – very impressive and well worth a visit. As we were getting ready to leave, we noticed a few people enter the area dressed in traditional Māori clothing and holding spears and other weapons. The crew formed up at the top of a small stairway, a sizable crowd gathered, and the crew proceeded to announce a traditional Māori performance later in the afternoon – finishing with a “follow us to the ticket counter”; the vast majority of the crowd obeyed and there was instant congestion as they all tried to exit through the same door. This particular event could have been handled better, but we did get some photos of traditional Māori clothing. Originally, we had planned to visit the Auckland Tower, but the weather was very overcast and starting to drizzle, so the visibility would have been very poor; we decided to give it a miss. Queen Street is the main shopping are in Auckland and leads up from the Queens Wharf where the Queen Victoria was docked (that’s a lot of Queens). Our Uber dropped us near the Aotea Square, the end of Queen Street furthest from the wharf. All of the major brand stores can be found on Queen Street, along with other uniquely New Zealand brands and a small number of tourist shops. The street had a bit of a UK feel to it and this was enhanced by the rain, which was now increasing in intensity. Fortunately, almost all of the shops had large permanent awnings – making it possible to walk almost the entire length of Queen Street without getting too wet. Smith + Caugheys is an old-fashioned department store on Queen Street, the kind of place where you might expect a floor walker like Captain Peacock to pop up and ask, “are you being served?”. We found our way to the coffee shop for a surprisingly excellent latte, it really hit the spot on a cool wet afternoon. The wind was really blowing, and the rain was now very heavy as we made our way down Queen Street, on to the wharf and back to the ship. As an introduction to New Zealand, Auckland was an excellent visit; it was tidy, easy to get around, the people were very friendly and there was lots to do and see – we barely scraped the surface.
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