It is the 19th February today and I can hardly believe that the end of my sea faring days is in sight. Five more days and I will arrive in Sydney and see my darling Kathryn. I can hardly wait to give her a hug. She has been in Australia eight years now, has just got her permanent residency, and it is her home. When she set off back in 2010 she assured me she would only be there for her three year contract, but I made sure that I told myself that she would not and accepted it from the start. Having lived in Oz myself and loved it, I knew that she would not be back. It has been, and still is, so hard having a child so far away and as I get older I will find it more and more difficult to make the journey. As many of you may know I received a legacy a few years ago which has made it possible for me to visit Oz whenever I want to and in comfort too. If that had not come my way I would now be unable to visit so am doing it as long as my resources and my health are in place. You get used to a child being so far away but I will never stop missing her. It is like an ache in my heart and it is there all the time. I then remind myself that my other lovely daughter, Helen, is in the UK with my grandchildren and count my blessings. Not sure what I would do if it was the other way round and I could not see Florence and Beatrice and be part of their lives.
This morning as I write this I can see through my window (the days of portholes long gone) that we are arriving in the Bay of Islands, the third stop in New Zealand. It really is a beautiful country and I feel I would like to come back, perhaps on my next trip this way and kathryn and I can book a trip there. I last visited NZ many moons ago and though I found Auckland rather uninspiring then, and do now, the countryside is wonderful.
I visited Devonport on our first outing, a seaside resort on the North Shore of Auckland and it brought back the feeling I had on my last visit, that I was back in the fifties or sixties, the whole place just had that feel about it. Even has an Esplanade Hotel which is copied from an old hotel in Brighton of all places. It is a charming place.
We had been to the top of Victoria Mount, named after Her Maj of course, and the view was stunning. Scattered about the mount were cannon and redouts It seems that Tsar Alexander 3, the one who was in charge when Napoleon was rampaging through Europe if my history is correct, was not happy with the English at this time and was threatening her colonies so steps were taken to keep an eye out for any intruders approaching Auckland. Odd to think that NZ and Napoleon are linked, albeit in a vague way, European history seems so far away in this part of the world.
The tour ended in the town and we were given a ticket to take us back to the City by ferry. I love going by ferry and the fifteen minute journey back just rounded the day off nicely. One of the things I want to do in Sydney when I get there is take the Manley ferry across the harbour. Do it every time and it never palls.
Next stop, Taurangua and here we went on what was billed as a Maori Cultural Experience. Firstly, I have to say that the influence of the Maori and the culture seem to be very strong in NZ unlike Australia where the lack of interest in the Aborigines is much less. I could be very wrong in this respect as I am merely going on my feeling over my visits in the last eight years.
We were taken to a Maori meeting place where we were greeted by an Elder tribesman who welcomes us in Maori. We then had to reply, we then sang and these ceremonies went on for a little while. The usual embarrassed Brit singing made it a somewhat dispiriting experience. We were taken to a meeting house and the ceremonies which took place there were also explained and after that we went into a nearby hall to have tea and coffee and be entertained by some local Maori school children who sang and danced and did a great Haka. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Much though I found all the background and talk interesting I did find the entire visit was somewhat lacking in atmosphere. The place where all this took place was slap bang in the middle of a residential area, apart from the Meeting Place which was in traditional style, the rest of the surrounding buildings were obviously built in the sixties or seventies and were bland and uninteresting. I found this a real let down. Also, the elder tribesman greeted us in a polo shirt, grey trousers and his belly hanging over the top of this belt. I freely admit to feeling a tad let down….
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