The sheep simulator

There’s a few weeks to catch up on so I’m starting a while back with Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand. Ash and I have been there before for a special exhibit but we didn’t get a chance to look at the permanent ones. So here you see the sheep simulator in all its glory.

This is what it says on the tin really - you push a button on the display and get a sheep's eye view of various environments. I'm pretty sure this was meant to be a joke, but maybe they do take sheep that seriously here. I haven't got to the bottom of that one yet. 

Then there was also this art installation that I thought Looked cool.

I found another one of those poems that are hidden around the city. Putting it under water seemed like a nice idea.

The weekend after that, we went to our first gig in New Zealand. We went to see a New Zealand band called Shihad (I hadn’t heard of them before I came here, but apparently they got quite big in Europe). This was a pretty fun gig, even though I didn’t know the words.

Next, I went for a bike ride with Ash’s friend Mark, out to Pencarrow Head. This is on the other side of the harbour from the city, but you feel like you’re out in the wilderness. Mark took his drone along with us and got some pretty sweet footage.

Next up, some exciting news – we have bought a car! This means we can do a lot more with our spare time, as you really are a bit limited here if you have to rely on public transport. We bought the car from a seller in Christchurch as that was the best deal we could find. Because Christchurch is on the South Island, we had to fly down to pick up the car. 

I enjoyed these bollards at the airport that were painted to look like like rugby players.

We had a quick look around the centre of town, where we saw some cool street art, the city’s original trams and the cardboard cathedral, which was built after the original one partially collapsed in the 2011 earthquake.

Some cats, some giant jandals and a gin tasting session

A couple of weekends ago Ash had to take some street photos for her course, so we went over to the other side of town to see what we could find. We took a look at Old St Paul's cathedral, which is made out of native timber.

We stopped off at the parliament building, more popularly known as the ‘beehive’.

We booked in for a gin tasting session, where we received 8 half-shot samples of gin. Some of them were better than others, but the hosts were very informative.

Last weekend we checked out the Great War exhibit, which was split into two parts. The first was a sort of chronological tour of World War 1, taking you through various set pieces including this Belgian village and a cavalry charge.

There were also some excellent model dioramas.

The second part was all about the experience of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli in Turkey. This included some really interesting colourised photos and an ‘immersive trench experience’. I usually think these kinds of things can be a bit cheesy but this one was really interesting – we couldn’t take pictures in there though!

A collection of random things:

There seems to be a lot of stray cats around where we live.



Here’s a nice view of the sea from a little park near our house.



And finally, a pair of giant jandals [that’s what they call flip flops here].