Day 15 – April 14, 2025 – Museum Day

Leave a Comment / New Zealand / By Howard Lasser

After breakfast in the hotel lobby, we returned to our room for a facetime call with the kids and grandchildren. They were all at Ben & Chloe’s in Brooklyn, so we got to see them all. While we travel and keep pretty busy, we still miss everyone back home!

We left the hotel for Queen’s Warf where there is a Maritime Museum recounting the history of Wellington focusing on the history of the harbor. There was an interesting exhibit by a local artist of Chinese heritage. Her grandparents came to New Zealand during the gold rush days of the 1860’s. But at that time, Chinese migrants were required to pay a large “poll tax” to enter and faced discrimination.

Other exhibits highlighted the challenges of ships entering the harbor and recounted the stories of the many wrecks of ships that didn’t make it either because of storms or winds.

After a couple of hours here, we set out for Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand. It was a 15 minute walk on a sunny day. We met our guide, a Mauri woman, who took us through focusing on the history and culture of her people.

We then sat down to a snack of food with a Mauri influence, including a tea made from the leaves of the Kawakawa. This is supposed to be medicinal and used to cure headaches and various other ailments. Though she warned that it is also diuretic so don’t drink too much.

After the snack our guide left us to explore on our own. There was an exhibition of the New Zealand and Australian experience at Gallipoli during world war I. There were lifelike and larger than life models of soldiers, fabricated by the Weta workshop. Along with photos, videos and recordings retelling the story of this ill-fated expedition. This was the first campaign that led to major casualties for the combined Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. The landing took place on April 25^th 1915 and that day continues to be a national holiday in both Australia and New Zealand, commemorated as ANZAC day. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

After spending more than 3 hours at Te Papa, we headed back to our hotel for rest and getting ready for dinner.

The next couple of days are unplanned, though we intend to walk around the city on our own and explore some of what we have already seen in greater depth.

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