Thursday 5th April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

Christchurch was established as a model Anglican settlement from the top-down with all classes represented from the outset and a rigid social structure...a Victorian utopia as opposed to the ramshackle developments often brought by colonisation.

The Chalice sculpture that stands in the centre of Cathedral Square commemorates both the new millennium and the 150th anniversary of Canterbury's establishment...Where better to explore that other Victorian invention, Christmas

Today I am moving out of my hotel and into a house share in Papanui.
It is yet another beautiful dawn as I begin my day as a culture vulture.

I begin my day with breakfast at Le Cafe at the Arts Centre before heading over to Canterbury Museum where my first stop will be the Hallett Station, Antarctica.

Haere Mai...Welcome to Canterbury Museum.

Cape Hallett Station was a joint United States and New Zealand base built in 1956 for the International Geophysical Year (an 18 month scientific investigation carried out by 67 countries). The station was an important base for weather reports supporting communications systems and an emergency landing site on the flight path between New Zealand and the McMurdo Station/Scott Base.

Originally just four main prefabricated buildings were set up amongst an existing Adelie Penguin Colony to contain sleeping quarters, sick bay, mess hall, communications and meteorological equipment, science spaces and a garage with diesel generators. There were smaller huts with a refrigerator, spare power plant, radio monitoring equipment, laboratory and dark room. Held away from the main areas was a building used for inflating meteorological balloons, seismometer hut, two huts for geomagnetic measurements and an aurora observation tower.

Planning...The geomagnetic dome was made of fibreglass with a tongue and groove wooden floor and walls fastened together by brass bolts (non-magnetic) to avoid affecting the scientific instruments. Used for weather recording and observation it contained a variograph to record tiny changes in the earth's magnetic field. Positioned on the roof of the laboratory (which had stabilised foundations to reduce weather or vehicle interference) it was kept free of magnetic contamination by ensuring it contained no metal furniture or other items.

All food and supplies needed to be purchased a year in advance (as the station was supplied principally by ship) and these were not replenished for a year. Spare parts and additional supplies were kept separate from base buildings in case of fire. There was even a need to haul fire fighting equipment out on to the ice every time a plane was scheduled in case of an emergency landing.

There were two major fires in the early 1960's and after the winter of 1964 the base converted to summer-only operations. With the increased sophistication of long-range aircraft the need for the base declined and the site was abandoned in 1973; although equipment, stores and buildings remained for anticipated future use.

Never re-occupied except as an emergency shelter the base was removed as part of a clean-up in 2000-2006.

The Adelie Penguin Colony on Seabee Hook is one of the largest in the Ross Sea region. Fossilised and frozen evidence suggests the penguins have lived continuously in the area for between 1200 and 2000 years.

Construction of the base had a significant impact on the colony as penguins occupied all suitable building sites. For the initial building works of only 0.83 hectares, 7580 penguins were evicted from their nesting sites with the area fenced off. The population of breeding pairs fell from 62,900 in 1959 to 37,000 in 1968, a 59% drop.

To be fair...in 1966 12 hectares of Cape Hallett were designated a specially protected area under the Antarctic Treaty in recognition of its outstanding biological diversity; in particular its birdlife. The area was enlarged to 32 hectares in 1985 to include extensive vegetation and in 2002 after a review the Antarctic Specially Protected Area was extended to 74 hectares including the penguin colony and station site.

There have been scientific benefits. The colony has been the subject of many studies since 1956 looking at population size, colony history, physiology, behaviour, genetic evolution, winter foraging journeys and response to human and skua disturbances.

The history of human impact and the subsequent closure of the station together with the availability of reliable and repetitive data make this area unique for scientific study on the impacts on, and recovery of, the colony following substantial ecosystem disturbance.

There can be no doubt that human impacts on the local environment were significant though. By the 1970's with the addition of buildings, antennae and roads the site had grown to 4.4 hectares. The poor human waste disposal practices of the day along with the debris from dumps on the sea ice aggravated the effects on local wildlife. In some places accumulated trash covered nesting sites and other wildlife such as the Skuas suffered high mortality through wing injuries, intestinal damage through ingestion of waste and poisoning through ingesting lead battery parts.

Even today stumps, anchors and foundations still indicate the stations existence and beneath the ground lie buried dumps, timber, guy anchors and rubbish dumps. Under the water is a layer of accumulated rubbish.

Clean-up of the site is not a new phenomena designed for this environmentally conscious age. In 1971/72 3000 fuel drums and 50 tons of scrap metal were removed before the base was abandoned. There was a further clean-up in 1984-86 with three huts re-established for use as a field study centre.

Mobile huts, fuel stores, a bulk fuel tank and other debris were removed and some penguin nesting sites restored. However, waste and building materials were burnt, while scrap metal, old vehicles and equipment was blown apart with explosives and left on the sea ice to fall to the sea bed.

Fuel stores left on the site began to fail during the following decade polluting ponds and soil. Between 1993 and 1996 the United States Antarctic Program removed 82,010 litres of liquid (of which most was fuel). The dismantling since 2001 saw the bulk fuel tank drained and in January 2005 the Italian Antarctic Programme vessel Italica returned 28 metric tons of material to New Zealand.

We must remember that we do not own the earth, the earth owns us.

And now that Victorian invention...the Christmas Card. The custom of exchanging greetings cards was a serious business in the Victorian era with cards being either handmade or at least chosen with great care.

Published cards first appeared in 1843 in England, but it was between the 1850's and the 1870's that the custom of exchanging cards became common with the commercial production of cards beginning in London in 1862 and mass production beginning five years later. Cards and fancy paper envelopes were often re-used to make new cards with mid-Victorian cards often composed of multiple layers of embossed and perforated paper trimmed with lace, ribbons, beads, shells or silk flowers.

I came to the museum today with the aim of seeing certain things and my other planned visit was to the late nineteenth century replica Christchurch street which I must say was exceptionally well done.

A special thanks must go to Lee Harris of communications at the museum for the time she gave over to the project.

After a very profitable morning I am off to explore the art world. I find a major difference between the museum staff and the very unhelpful duty manager at the Court Theatre.

My next stop is the Christchurch Art Gallery Toi Maori:The Eternal Thread exhibition.

The Christchurch Art Gallery was opened in May 2003 and it is the largest art museum to have been built in New Zealand for the past fifty years. Te Puna o Waiwhetu honours an artesian well spring on this site.

Designed by David Cole the galleries curving sculpture wall is made from 2,184 panes of glass and was inspired by the city's River Avon. The swish glass and metal exterior supports s three level complex inside which there is a sculpture garden and more then 5,500 items ranging from paintings and ceramics to textiles and glass.

A Maori Prayer

Kawea te Muka Whenua ki te Rangi;
Tuia ki te Ngira wairua.
He Aho Tapu, he Aho Mutunga kore.
Kokoia! E ara ee!

Cast the early fibre toward the heavens,
Let it pass through the eye of the spiritual neddle.
A sacred thread,
An eternal thread,
And with prayer for its protection,
May it continue to excel.

"Maori art is inseparable from Maori culture. It is like a living organism that exists in the spirit of our people and drives them toward wider horizons and greater achievement.
As Maori we call ourselves Tangatawhenua, literally People of the Whenua (placenta). The land is referred to as whenua as it is a living substance from which we evolved or were born. We are fortunate in being Maori, because it enables us to understand our relationship with the elders who held us as children, and told us stories that link us with the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, rivers, trees and the living creatures and plants that help us to sustain life.
Our oral history says that we were born out of our land, Aotearoa, and have lived here since the beginning of time. Today, we are known as New Zealand. It is a beautiful modern country full of mountains, rivers, green pastures, forests and friendly people. This exhibition reflects the history and the evolution of the Maori people from the first ray of light that separates the earth and the sky to the strands that weave us into the lives and cultures of the world. As Maori, we are caught in an ancestral thread that leads us into a world of creativity that has no end".

The Kakahu (cloaks) are part of us and we of them. Together we can enter new and exciting spaces. Our ancestors walk with us as we travel with them...the ancestors gaze out across time to this moment where the eternal thread of the weaver's work links the earliest time of creation with the present and future and connects the Maori with the rest of the world.

Maori weaving is full of symbolism and hidden meanings embodying Maori spiritual values and beliefs. The cloaks are more than works of art, they are powerful symbols of spiritual leadership. They encircle the wearer in honour and are worn at important public and private occasions. Today, cloaks continue to be woven by hand using a traditional technique called Whatu, a method of finger weaving using neither neddle or loom.

Also on display are kete or baskets, which are woven through a traditional technique called raranga which is widespread across the Pacific Islands. Generally made of flax these are either one colour or patterned and decorated with feathers, shellfish or dyed strips of fibre . The patterns used are often associated with particular tribes and often represent natural elements such as creatures, plants, sea or forest.

As traditional techniques are handed down from generation to generation, so young Maori weavers and artists are applying traditional techniques to contemporary materials such as copper wire, fishing line, acrylic and even UV lighting and fluorescent paint.

Today I lunch at Le Bon Bolli sitting on the terrace in glorious sunshine. Local boy Phillip Kraal was the chef tournant at the Ritz in London and the personal chef to King Hussein I of Jordan before returning home to acclaim in his home town with Christchurch's premier restaurant. The food was lovely but the service was appalling.

My next stop is the original site of the Canterbury Museum. The Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings housed the museum from its opening on December 3rd 1867 for almost three years.

With the Avon flowing gently by, this building is designed like an Oxbridge college in miniature (even down to the bicycle at the bottom of the steps). In its gothic revival style it was certainly designed to give the city a strength of character that pre-dates its existence.

I find the buildings very English. A cloister complex with a small quad, pleasant stained glass and a council chamber that could be the Assembly Hall of a prep school.

My initial reactions to the buildings are confirmed by my research...The only purpose-built provincial government buildings still in existence anywhere in New Zealand, the Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings (1858 -1865) were designed by Benjamin Mountfort, New Zealand's leading gothic revival architect. Whilst the style of the buildings looks back to Europe, pride was taken in the use of local timbers and stone.

The Victorians were very keen on the architecture of the Middle Ages. The Houses of Parliament in London had revived that style and gothic revival had become England's national architecture. It is no surprise then that Mountfort was influenced in his choice of style for the Provincial Buildings. Built in three stages one can observe how Mountfort became increasingly skilled at adapting this European style to the colonial conditions.

The earliest timber buildings were relatively plain. The Council Chamber, where the councillors actually met, was at the heart of the building and was most impressive with its arched ceiling of native timber and the galleries for the press and public at either end along with the fine tracery on the bay window on the south side.

In 1859 work was begun on the second group of buildings. The province was better off financially and could afford something more elaborate and spacious. The result was a building even more strongly gothic revival in style.

The two timber buildings were connected by a long, low-ceilinged corridor paved with flagstones which even today has the atmosphere of the hushed cloisters of medieval monks.

The third phase of the building plan was Mountfort's masterpiece. By 1861 the numbers on the Provincial Council had increased to 35 making it a tight squeeze in the small timber chamber. Mountfort drew up plans for a new chamber accompanied with social and dining facilities (giving them the same name - Bellamy's- as those in Westminster) and accommodation for a housekeeper. With these buildings Mountfort used variety of local stone as the main building material.

The stone chamber is in the high Victorian gothic style with magnificently elaborate stonework. 'No other nineteenth century New Zealand building equalled the inventiveness, scholarship and attention to detail found in the stone council chamber'. There is a double-faced clock, believed to be one of only five in the world, stained glass windows and carvings (done in Christchurch by William Brassington). The timbers used in the interior of the stone chamber include native kauri and rimu.

The windows in the stone chamber were made by the English firm Lavers & Barraud to Mountforts designs and they are considered the finest set of secular Victorian stained glass in New Zealand. The texts present an example of Victorian popular wisdom and were presumably intended to exert a beneficial influence on the councillors using the chamber.

While one of the texts is attributed to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver's Travels and another to Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the bulk of the texts are to be found in the Book of Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha (the biblical books received by the early Church as part of the Greek version of the Old Testament but not included in the Hebrew Bible).

The buildings sit beside the River Avon as a part of the story of early European settlement in this area. The early Maori had also recognised this area as a prime site and according to oral tradition, Waitaha and Ngati Mamoe established a settlement in this are known as Puari. It was on the high ground above the Otakaro (River Avon) and it was a mahinga kai area for later Ngai Tahu who used the area for seasonal gathering of food.

So what exactly is a Provincial Council?

It is basically a miniature parliament.

British colonisation of much of New Zealand occurred as a series of planned settlements. The Canterbury Association, a group with strong connections to the Anglican Church, brought its first group of migrants out in 1850. There were already five settler communities in other parts of the country, but they were very scattered and, of course, the means of communication and transport at that time were very slow. It was decided that each district, or province, would be largely self-governing. In effect, six miniature Parliaments were to be set up to govern a country of fewer than 50,000 settlers.

The Provincial Councils took themselves very seriously, modelling themselves on the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster.

Three years after it was established Christchurch was still a struggling village but in 1853 elections were held for the office of Superintendent and later, for a twelve-seat Council. The only people who could vote were men over the age of 21 who owned property. (It was 40 years before New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote). There were no secret ballots and no restrictions on treating the voters, so elections were very festive occasions!

The Provincial Council first met in temporary accommodation but plans for a permanent building were begun almost immediately. On January 6th 1858 the foundation stone was laid and the day declared a public holiday with a procession through the town, a nine-gun salute and the band playing Rule Britannia. The buildings were first used by the council in September of 1859.

The provincial system continued until 1876 when New Zealand government was centralised. The buildings passed into the ownership of central government and continued to be used by various government departments. The stone chamber was used for special occasions such as luncheons and balls, as well as serving as a meeting place for bodies such as the Anglican Synod, the Arbitration Court and the Maori Land Court.

Christchurch people though were not happy with this arrangement and they wanted their buildings back under local control. Success came in 1928 with the passing of the Canterbury Provincial Buildings Vesting Act which stated that the buildings were to be 'preserved and maintained as a memorial to the foundations of the province of Canterbury'...and today the buildings are administered by Christchurch City Council.

For Maundy Thursday I had hoped to attend evensong in the cathedral but the time had been changed and I had already bought my theatre tickets for tonight.

Pre-theatre drinks are at Barcelona on Oxford Terrace and as I look out over the manicured lawns and flowerbeds this so reminds me of that lovely little park ?? (in the real Canterbury near my friend Aidan's old house). Bathed in glorious sunlight these beds could almost compete with Eastbourne's carpet gardens.

Tonight I am off to see Joyful & Triumphant by Robert Lord focused around that great kiwi cultural institution...the family Christmas.

The play follows the Bishop family over forty years and it is much more than just a skilfully crafted expression of the subtle dynamics of family; it is a study of social history. Trust me nostalgia can be great when it is well performed and this was.

Well having moved out to the suburbs I am back trying to catch night buses and in a city where public transport doesn't run very late.

On the bus and whilst writing my notes our bus comes under attack with stones and eggs...guess Christchurch has its problems too. We have to stop and as our Muslim driver puts it "I f***** hate alcohol. It happens all the time with these kids and the booze"...and he has a point...and I must admit to getting quite a fright tonight.

Note to my fellow traveller's...I have now bought a 'mini-coffin' to hold all my extra luggage...oh, and its lime green!