A Droll Day: Cemetaries and Museums

On Friday, we spent the day surrounded by death... but in a good way.

In the morning we toured the Symonds Street Cemetary, approximately two blocks from our hostel. The Symonds Street Cemetary was used primarily between 1860-1890, with scattered burials into the 1930s. The cemetary is located on a hillside, some of which is so steep that the stones are barely accessible. It is a gorgeous location; one can really understand why the early settlers chose to bury their loved ones there.






Some of the headstones are completely unreadable; those that are legible seem to fall into three categories -- childhood death (a seven year old brother and his four year old sister death within a week of each other, four daughters lost in early childhood, etc), accidental death (a seventeen year old daughter "shot on the way to Methodist Bible class"), and death from old age ("beloved wife and mother of the above"). I could have spent multiple days sussing out the relationships between the people buried in this Auckland cememtary from such a brief part of the cities history.

After Joey dragged me away from the cemetary, we went to the Auckland Domain. There we toured the Wintergardens and the national Museum. The wintergardens were quite lovely. The hothouse contained some vegetation that I have never seen, including a plant called Hanging Lobster Claws (see picture). The orchids and lotuses were just gorgeous. The cool-house had flowers much like what we grow in Seattle. It felt very homey in there.

We spent four hours at the Auckland Museum and still missed stuff. The highpoints were the Pacific Islander exhibit and the volcano section. In the volcano area, they had a replica of a house from a particular Auckland address. From inside the living room, you can experience a volcano errupting in the bay like Rangitoto did about 600 years ago. It was quite cool... but I wouldn't want to see the same thing set-up in Seattle for a Mount Rainier eruption. There are just some things I am better off not knowing about.



We finished our museum trip with a tour of the war museum on the top floor. This was a sobering experience. New Zealand has sent its sons and daughters to fight in all of the major wars; the names of their dead are chiseled into the marble walls. One wall has been kept bare; written on it is the prayer that that wall never be filled with names.

Although it was a day spent surrounded by memories of the dead, it was a great day. It was our first day as full on tourists and we enjoyed it immensely.