Wanganui to Wellington

Thursday 5th April is our last full day in Wanganui so we've decided to do some sightseeing around the town.  We've really enjoyed our few days here - there's so much to see and do.  Our first stop is the Information Centre to catch up on emails.  
Then it's off to the Wanganui Museum.  As with most of the provincial museums, this one is a very high standard.  There's a good display of local Maori artefacts and stories.  This museum is the custodian of 8 Maori canoes.  There were a number of paintings of Maori chiefs and women that were painted in the 1800s.  A  special exhibition titled "Snapshot" had photos of Wanganui taken in 1937 and 2011.  It was amazing how little most places have changed.  The biggest change we notices is that there are more street trees now than there were 75 years ago.  Local high school students have also contributed with scrapbooabout their families.  They were asked to select a family photo and write about the person in the photo.  Some were from the early 1900s and some were from the 1990s so there was great variety.



After our trip to the museum we walked up some steps to the Colonial War Memorial which commemorates those who lost their lives in conflicts in the 1800s.

Then it was up the hill to the Sergeant Gallery.  The highlight here was a retrospective of Lynley Dodd, the creator of Hairy McClarey (from Donaldson's Dairy...).  These books about a scruffy dog and his friends (other dogs) and enemies (especially Scarface Claw - a cat) are books the grandchildren have grown up with.  We saw many of her original illustrations and some of her original text.  There were also some exhibitions of sculptures and mixed media art from local New Zealand and visiting artists.





After our Art Fix, we called into the Chronicle Glassworks, an art glass studio, to watch the glassblowers at work and look at some art glass.  A pity we don't have anywhere to store it, or maybe a good thing, as there were some beautiful pieces of glass for sale.


Friday 6th, Good Friday, and we say goodbye to Wanganui and head towards Wellington.  We've really enjoyed our few days here and there's still plenty to see if we come back again.

We stopped off at Paraparamu on the Kapiti Coast for a walk along the beach.  The beaches on this south west coast of New Zealand are black sand, which seems a bit strange to us as we are used to white sandy beaches (or occasionally golden sands).  On our walk we could see nearby Kapiti Island, which is a national park.  We also saw a bird we think was an albatross on the water near the water's edge.








Then it was on to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand where we'll stay for a few days.