Thursday, 10 November 2022

Day 14 & 15 - Transmission Gully and Wellington

The on board food supplies are starting to get low, meaning I need to find a supermarket that sells saveloys.

The road south was only familiar for the first few kilometres before I found myself on the new (to me) motorway into Wellington.  The winding scenic route has been replaced with a dual carriageway inland motorway named Transmission Gully.  A very easy and fast trip to Wellington.  However it did mean didn't pass Jan's old home and a few other 'old haunts'

No photos of the motorway as I was driving.  Throughout the trip I have been guided by my Android Tablet with the OSMAND navigation software and the free maps of New Zealand.  It has only let me down once when it directed me to make a left turn at a 'No Left Turn' intersection.

Before leaving Australia I had researched and added free campsite waypoints into the system.  In Wellington I planned to stay at a free site in the Evans Bay Marina.  It must be popular as on arrival I found only few free vacant spaces.

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Evans Bay Marina is the bottom red arrow.  Tomorrow I intend to walk the coastal road to Oriental Bay and then on to the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa).  However the current priority is to locate a nearby supermarket for saveloys and some ancillary supplies.

Google Maps showed two large supermarkets one kilometre away in Kilburnie.  A walk past the Poneke Rugby Club and sports fields brought me to a Countdown and Pak N Save.  The Whangarei branch of the latter didn't have saveloys and I therefore shopped in Countdown.  Another big bag of those divine saveloys.  I also bought six large and tasty plums. 

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I've never seen plums this large and tasty in Australia.

I managed to gorge myself on three saveloys for dinner followed by a good nights sleep.

After breakfast I set off to walk the coastal path to Wellington CBD.  I was reminded that the rather unique thing able Wellington is the way the weatherboard homes are perched on the side of the hills.  Wellington isn't flat!

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Free motorhome park at Evans Bay Marina

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Several of the homes had personal cable cars down to their garages 

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After rounding the headland the CBD appears. 

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Oriental Bay is one of Wellington's more prestigious suburbs

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Along a little further is the small marina where I used to go fishing as a schoolboy. 

Unlike Australia, entry into public museums in New Zealand is free.  I wandered around the national museum (Te Papa) visiting the Gallipoli and Maori Marae (meeting house) exhibitions.

Sir Peter Jackson's production house (WetaWorks) produced the figurines.  They are three times normal human scale and very realistic.  

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Right down the the flies on the soldiers food and fingers

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On my walk back to Evans Bay I noticed a couple of divers snorkelling along the shoreline collecting paua (abalone)

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More saveloys tonight

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