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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
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Art Gallery |
that exhibited as much art in its construction
as within it’s displays.
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Sandra playing the bull piano |
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Sumo Wrestling Demo |
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Korean Dancing in 29C heat |
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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”.
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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.
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