Kiwi Ingenuity - Getting There from Here...

Problem:

1. If your home stadium is off-limits for the whole season because of earthquakes so you have to play all your home games somewhere else; and,

2. A cloud of Chilean volcanic dust crosses the Pacific and closes air space to jet travel in your country,

How the heck do you get to your next away game as the competition heads to the finals? Throw in the towel, start a riot like those Canuck fans???

Answer:

Pull an airworthy DC 3 prop aircraft out of the air museum and load the team aboard. Takes a bit longer, a bit noisier but... link

Now, that is Kiwi ingenuity...

Go Crusaders!

Christchurch City Council Belt-Tightening?

With the economy in recession now for over a year and the prospect of the increased expense of moving into a renovated postal warehouse as its new Christchurch Civic Centre at an annual rent of $8.2 million, the Christchurch City Council is rumoured to be considering its options to restore fiscal balance.

To that end, we wonder if there might be any advantage to the CCC ordering up from storage its electric truck fleet from the early 1920s which would have the added advantage of enabling the Council to meet its greenhouse gas emissions reductions...

photographer, Samuel Heath Head. Alexander Turnbull Library.
click on photo for larger image

... otherwise it's shank's pony for council employees and ratepayers.

New Zealand Road Safety 1950s Style - Don't Monkey Around...

From a much different time when children actually rode bicycles to school rather than be chauffeured by parents and when bike safety inspections were the order of the day in schools, comes a Monkey Tale (1952) filmed by the National Film Unit for the Ministry of Transport, starring Show Off Charlie.

View here. Courtesy of NZ On Screen.

What an utter Charlie.

Today, with the road safety problem long since resolved, Charlie would be.... well, a boy racer.

A Busman's Holiday

Bedford camper bus

With New Zealand's summer holidays in full swing, the old converted buses, now serving as family campers, are out in force on the roads.

This nicely maintained one was spotted in a quiet suburb in Christchurch. It probably saw service as a country school bus in an earlier career.

The satellite dish is on the house, not the bus's roof.

Travel in the Amuri District, North Canterbury, early 1900s

The Hanmer coach leaving Culverden, early 1900s. The sender writes that motorcars have replaced the coach, postmarked 1913.

Before the railway line was extended all the way to Waiau in 1918 - and to Parnassus in 1917 - the Amuri and Hurunui districts relied on stagecoaches to deliver the mails and passengers to points north of Culverden. The various accommodation houses, later improved to hotel status, provided more than a watering hole for the weary traveler.

Waiau Hotel, Hanmer early 1900s

By the early 1910s, service cars were beginning to replace the coaches but bridging remained a problem in such sparsely populated rural districts.

Departure of Service Cars from Hanmer Springs, circa 1910.

Drowning was a leading cause of accidental death in nineteenth century New Zealand for humans, frequently along with the loss of bullock and horse teams as coaches and wagons got washed away.

Till the arrival of the railway and better roading, bulk commodities such as the wool of the "Amuri Wool Kings" had to be moved by bullock wagons down to the shore to be lightered out to coastal steamers.

Wool wagon - 1880s view - Ready Money Robinson's Cheviot Estate.

Kaikoura, New Zealand - Early Views #2

Stagecoach outside the Hapuku general store, just north of Kaikoura on the Seddon to Kaikoura Coach Road, circa 1905.

Land travel in North Canterbury has been difficult since the early days of European settlement. In the mid nineteenth century to the early 1900s, road travel by coach was long and arduous.

The steep, hilly terrain - most vividly impressed upon the mind of even today's road traveler by a drive through the Hundalees - and the rocky, narrow coastline made putting both road and rail links in place difficult.

Wagon passing through one of the many road tunnels on the coastal road south of Kaikoura, circa 1905.

To this day, the geography & climate combine in severe weather to challenge mere humans to keep the transport links free of slips and open. The railway line running through Kaikoura was not completed until 1945.

I Ain't Sniffing, I Ain't Tripping...

KELLY HODEL/Waikato Times

A semi & trailer carrying a load of Bostick adhesive glue between Auckland and Wellington rolled on State Highway 39 near Ngahinapouri about 5.30am Friday morning (NZT). The highway was closed for 8 hours while mopping up operations were undertaken.

The driver escaped serious injury. No word yet whether s/he passed the drug test...