Christchurch

Christchurch Cathedral waiting for help 6 years later

 Our time in Christchurch is brief. From Geraldine we drive into the city Saturday morning. We’d been told that the city was still undergoing restoration from the great earthquake registering 6.3 of early 2011 that so devastated it and killed 185 people with over ½ coming from the Canterbury TV network bldg. collapse.

Shannon and Jim, who had been there before and after that earthquake, have remarked that it is taking a very long time to recover. We felt a spirit of hope and life will carry on attitude among the population we saw downtown on Saturday.

There is a walking tour of downtown Christchurch, a very small area considering the city itself is small too with only 367,000 population according to 2015 census.

We did take in the Museum, which is free to review the Maori display there, and then moved on to the Art Gallery

Art Gallery

that exhibited as much art in its construction as within it’s displays.

Sandra playing the bull piano

 

Sumo Wrestling Demo

Korean Dancing in 29C heat

Cheerleading the Sumo Wrestling

Then onto Cathedral square, the home of the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral. Seeing this building filled us both with emotion and yet right beside it was a Saturday fair featuring Korean and Asian culture dance and even Sumo wrestling.

While the Cathedral waits for re-construction to begin there is a temporary transitional cathedral built out of cardboard called fittingly “The Cardboard Cathedral”.

Cardboard Cathedral

The main structure has steel beams covered by cardboard Sonotubes used as forms for concrete pilings. Clear corrugated styrene panels provide the roof structure. It is a cheap and simple method of maintaining the presence of the church in downtown Christchurch.

Later, before catching our plane to Melbourne Australia we try to watch a Cricket game but are unable to make any sense of it. Then we get to the airport and while dropping off our baggage with China Air, we recognize that the same Asian tour group leader is on the same flight as us, and then I start to recognize all the business class passengers we saw when we flew into Auckland 14 days ago. What are the odds of that? And by the way China Air while being the lowest cost carrier to and from Australia and New Zealand just happens to offer excellent service and great food on board. They are an air carrier I would recommend.