Leaving Coromandel, Visiting Hamilton

The people who mend NZ roads are wonderful.  We came into Coromandel along its west coast.  Storms had just washed away bits of road for a 25 mile stretch.  One way systems and traffic lights had been set up.  Thousands of traffic cones had been planted in neat rows.  Everything worked smoothly.  Eleanor was driving so I could just enjoy the view of the beach - about six inches from the wheels horizontally and a yard vertically.  The SatNav showed the road against a background of water (must be next year's model).  The gap between road and beach had once been wider:  telephone poles now ran across the the beach, at one point into the sea, later looping out again and ultimately back to the side of the road - victims of earlier storms.

I didn't take any pictures, just clung, white knuckled, to my seat.  Eleanor drove on unperturbed.

Leaving Coromandel Town several days later we took the mountain road after a couple of days of tropical downpour.  There were rock falls on the road, new streams sprang from cliff faces, sticky mud slides glooped onto the road.  Hundreds more cones had been deployed around the piles of rock and mud and the new water courses had been diverted back into culverts.  And it was still beautiful.

On the other side, after a short band of farm land we reached Whitianga, Coromandel's new gold coast (for those selling real estate at least).  Big modern houses sit back from the highway on the other side of which a landscaped buffer between road and sea has curving paths for walkers, cyclists and skate boarders.  There is a large marina and newer ones are being built with luxury homes attached.  Whitianga is the new New Zealand.

We weren't sure we'd be able to afford a coffee at any of the elegantly laid back bars so drove on into more farming country, eventually reaching Hamilton which is NZ's most boring city or its most vibrant depending on your point of view.  The city regions give a hint of what is coming: St Andrews (with golf course), Chartwell, Hillcrest, Silverdale, Chedworth Park, Glenview, Fairview Downs and Forest Lake sound like Edwardian suburban villas.  (There are of course Maaori names but I don't know what they mean) 

On the first day we walked though tidy suburbs with wide quiet roads to visit the museum which is wonderful.  One large display of art works titled "Modern[isms]"  looked at sources, blending Western, Maaori and Oceanic responses to European Modernism. Is the incorporation of Maaori motifs and styles  "cultural appropriation"?  I don't know but liked the pictures.  

A big gallery upstairs showed the work of NZ artists influenced by cubism. The work of Louise Henderson effortlessly dominates the show.  Her subjects include portraits, studies of people, views from an attic studio in Dieppe, N African views (suggestive in colouring of Klee's pictures of the same region), still lifes and abstracts.  An attendant told us (slightly exasperatedly) that Henderson had turned one of her pictures upside down before signing it.  An awful lot of visitors had helpfully pointed out that one picture had been hung upside down.  The joke was wearing a bit thin.  The picture is called "Houses in Dieppe".  We thought of two possible points to the joke.  What do you think?

(from Auckland Art Gallery) 

On our second day we visited Hamilton Gardens.  We spent the whole day there, it's very different from Singapore's Garden by the Bay but equally impressive.  Substituting plants as necessary they've recreated gardens from Renaissance Italy, Tudor England (also an Arts and Crafts example), Moghal India, China, Japan, 1960s California, a Maaori kumara patch, a sustainable  garden, .... I've missed some and lots more are planned.  The layout is almost a maze (think Ikea) where, somehow each garden is complete and doesn't overlook its neighbours.

Japanese Scroll Garden
(raked gavel and rocks out back) 

English country garden

California poolside

There was a rabbit nibbling the grass in the Arts and Craft.  I congratulated a gardener on this charming bit of verisimilitude: " .... aaaargh a rabbit!  Must contact the head gardener!  Quick!"  A bit like velociraptors getting loose in Jurassic Park.  I was told that if they didn't act vigilantes might. 

Anti-rabbit guard  

In an earlier blog I mentioned how noisy the countryside is.  Here is one culprit.

And here are several of them in a bamboo thicket (Chinese "cosmos" garden).

We only had two days but you've probably guessed where we stand in the "Is Hamilton Boring?" debate.