By the numbers
1 art museum
3,457 steps
2.54kms
The morning was starting to look a little iffy with the cloud cover and I wasn’t sure if we would get wet during the drive around the area. Looking in one direction it looked towards the north that it was raining and I hoped that it would hold off while we were out. The report did say that there would be wet weather mid week so that would be interesting to see if that was the case. One of our plans was to see the Waro limestone scenic reserve in Hikurangi, but it looked to be a little too wet.
For a wet day there was other plans that we did have and there was one new art gallery that was pretty controversial for Whangarei and that was the Hundertwasser Art Centre. I knew it was being built, but nothing more than that. I was wondering why it had been built when the guy was obviously European, but I only knew of the name due to the Kawakawa toilets. Before we entered the art gallery, we visited the information centre and found that it was no longer the information centre as that was elsewhere now, but we did bring masks with us this time. The ground outside of the building was lumpy and not flat with no real corners anywhere as we walked around to the entrance. The gallery itself was actually interesting as there was a video about Hundertwasser himself that was made during the 1970s of him painting and a little about himself. He wanted to be different to the established artists, and apparently was an outsider basically. He had a thing for water as it was peaceful and had something to do his art form. It became pretty clear that he was living in New Zealand and had been pretty much into environmentalism within the country. He lived somewhere within the Bay of Islands and from the records on the wall he had written many letters and even was a naturalised kiwi. There were other buildings across the world that had been designed by him, so it was not just several things in New Zealand, but many others. In 2000 he was on his way back to Europe, where he passed away on the QE2 from a heart attack, around or near Cairns at the time. I could almost call the man a Hobbit by the way he incorporated nature around his house, but that would bring the copyright wrath down on me. We didn’t eat at the restaurant as we were moving on. I should recommend the rooftop view from the top of the art gallery especially on a nice day.
It was drizzling a little bit, so we had a look through some shops and one glass ware shop had someone out the back doing some glass blowing, although I had to walk out and pay for the extra hour of parking or else we might get into trouble or not. Some of the shops in the Whangarei Basin were interesting and the best one to always stop in was the fudge shop as it had coffee and I ended up with fudge in my pocket that went pretty quickly. Pocket fudge is a great idea until the packet becomes empty for unknown reasons. Behind the Clock museum was something new, the Whangarei Rolling Ball Clock. You could see the balls rolling to tell the time by the second and after a minute went, the ball would roll down to the next level marking minutes and then hour. When 1pm rolled around all the balls in the display rolled off so it could refresh itself. A little something that was different that I am pretty sure it wasn’t there when I was in the area around 2019.
On our way back home, mum showed me a place she used to live as a child and it was actually pretty funny as I had walked the next street away after walking into town along the bush tracks. The old house was still there and there was a great view of Whangarei township as well parts of the river. Along the way there were other locations like the High school she went to. By the time we made it back to the house, another visitor turned up and that was a local cousin who I hadn’t seen since the last time I was leaving NZ for the lockdowns. It was a great catch up especially as we wont see them over the weekend for a catch up with other people, so it was all good. The day was a pretty easy one as the weather was crappy anyway, and kind of getting cold too.
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