Touching the Sky - and Letting Go

Tempting though it was to wile away the entire day watching Auckland go by on the quayside, I'd spent at least some of my time perusing the guidebook and worked out that the main tourist trap, ahem, sight in Auckland is the Skytower. The Skytower is a sort of needle-with-a-pod-on-top type building, a little like those in Seattle or Toronto (I think) but (I also think) not as tall as either. It has divided the population of the city. Half seem to think it's a wonderful contemporary architectural achievement. It brings in tourists, shows off how modern the city is to its neighbours and generally looks kind of cool on the skyline. The other half think it's a hideous monstrosity that's fit only for the bulldozer.

If you've been in either of the competitors mentioned above, or indeed any of the USA's 'it's cool because it's big and that's about it' buildings, then you'll be in familiar territory here. There's an expensive café at the bottom and another at the top which, of course, charges way more for the same burger and chips than the lowly ground level one does. You have to pass through the gift shop, running the gauntlet of plastic models, silly T-shirts and assorted 'They climbed the <insert name of building> and all I got was this lousy <insert name of object>' tourist tack not once, but twice - the first time on the way to the elevators and the second time on the way back out. You'll also be prepared to pay for the privilege of being so high off the ground; in this case around NZ$15, or more if you want to go the extra few feet on the higher viewing platform. Most notably this hurts if you either live or work in a tall building on a regular basis anyway.

Slightly unusual, though, is the fact that the lift goes up in a transparent tube, meaning that you can actually see Auckland fall away beneath your feet as you go up at alarming speed. Even more unusual is the yellow streak that flies down past you half way, but more on that later.

Once on the viewing deck, the views are typically spectacular (there goes another yellow streak...) The entire city pans out in front of you and you see the true extent of Auckland. In places the floor is transparent too, so you can look down through it. It's amazing how much resistance your mind puts up to walking across the first clear section, but when you've done one, the rest are no problem. The city is on a part of the North Island that seems to be falling apart and is oddly reminiscent of New York in that it is spread across low lying islands littered with bays and bridges, although it is nowhere near as dense; the areas of industry and housing broken up by large green areas of mature trees and parks. The main bridge is, of course, the Auckland Harbour Bridge, being an almost perfect equivalent of the one in Sydney (and Newcastle!) with the exception of the 'wings' on either side.

You see they built this bridge when the northern suburbs were small and they needed some way of getting suburbanites to and from the city to work. Many bids were submitted and eventually the winning bridge was selected and built. It was a huge success. So much, in fact, that it reached capacity very quickly as the northern suburbs sprawled and soon it just became an expensive bottleneck to the city. Something needed to be done, so another competition was set - to somehow extend the capacity of the bridge without destroying its character and, critically, causing as little disruption as possible.

The winning entry came from Japan in the form of two almost replica bridges which were strapped on the sides of the original, instantly doubling its capacity. The new sections could be built elsewhere and shipped in intact. And so the bridge earned the nickname which it enjoys today: ladies and gentlemen, The Nippon Clip-on.

While we're on the subject of AHB trivia, it's interesting to note that there is no longer a toll on the bridge. This is because way back in the distant past (remember even a week is a long time in politics) an ailing minister thought that if he abolished the tolls on the bridge, all the people in the Northern suburbs would vote for him. He was right, they did, and apparently nobody in government's had the guts to reinstate the tolls since.

Bridge building aside, the Kiwis are wonderful, resourceful, intelligent people - it has been said (and will be said again) that while neighbouring Australia was, by and large, settled by convicts, modern New Zealand was settled by scholars and theologians. The people are smart, cultured and distinguished; they love the finer things in life - their food is haute cuisine of the finest order and they value art and music above all else. Why then are they apparently incapable of building anything without working out some way of either climbing up it or throwing yourself off the top?

The Skytower offers both options to the discerning thrill seeker. You can, should you so desire, haul yourself out of a hatch from the upper viewing deck and climb to the very top of the structure mountaineer-style - the only thing that would get you higher in Auckland is cocaine. Or alternatively you can just jump off.

They market it as a bungee jump, but it's actually not so much a bungee as a mega death slide. You get decked out in a bright yellow suit, fitted with a harness and thrown from the top to slide down one of the steel cables that run from the viewing deck to the ground. If they're feeling particularly sadistic they can actually stop you for a few seconds in front of the viewing gallery so that a hundred tourists can actually point and snigger as you shit your pants suspended in front of them, before dropping you the rest of the way to the pavement below. Other times they just let you go, and all the people on the viewing deck or in the transparent lift see is a yellow streak, the
accompanying brown one mercifully invisible.

And for the first (and not the last) time on this trip I ask: Why?

Kiwi Footprints

I left the sky tower jumping nutters behind in favour of lunch, a walk through the (now buzzing) city centre and a shower back at my (now prepared) hotel room, followed by a trip to the Auckland art gallery, about the most energetic thing I could contemplate.

The art gallery is small by European standards, but I was pleased to see that the emphasis was very much on New Zealand artists. There was a main body of work which is typical of these galleries, but more varied than most, with exhibits ranging from lesser known works by household names to obscure and confusing contemporary works. One was a full size grand piano, beautifully decorated in a Maori style art and covered in perfect black porcelain flowers which merged into the piano's surface. I have no idea what it was all about but it was stunningly beautiful. They also have many examples of art chronicling the Europeans initial encounters with, and subsequent integration of, the Maori peoples. Two main artists are featured: Goldie and Lindauer. While Lindauer's Maoris are beautifully executed and detailed portraits, Goldie's works reveal more of the way the Maori lived and show the feeling and emotion of what must have seemed to him to be a dying race. I much preferred Goldie's work, as it seemed to have more to say. It was as if he was trying to pass messages in the subtext of the painting, beyond the simple portrait.

The gallery also housed two temporary exhibitions - one was by the Kiwi artist Don Binney, whose works seemed mostly to be stylised landscapes accompanied by beautifully painted birds, mostly native species. His work was stunning, although the prints and books on sale failed monumentally to capture the power of the original canvases. The other exhibition was of watercolours and early photographs by the artist John Kinder. His photographs, in many cases, provide the first records of settlements in New Zealand and his watercolours recorded his close study of their growth in the first days of European settlement. The processes by which the photographs were created in the 1860s were arduous to say the least and as I read the description I was suddenly very aware of the compact and effortless digital camera in my bag.

This was technically speaking the only day I was to have in Auckland, so it would be a shame to end it without trying out some of the local hostelries. I had scoped a few out down at the harbourside in the morning, and returned to one, 'The Loaded Hog' for some food and a couple of beers in the evening. The Hog has its own beer but, in a story only too familiar from micro-brewery chains back home, it is no longer brewed on site. Instead it is brewed in a nearby industrial unit, ready for shipping to the other outlets across the country. Nonetheless, the Hog brews were tasty and satisfying and in no way resembled Steinlager, which was hitherto my only taste of kiwi beer. I chatted to some of the bar residents who were very friendly and impressed that I was still standing after having arrived only that morning. The beers, however, were finishing me off and at around 9pm I sloped back through town to the hotel.

On the way I stopped in another bar and sampled the North Island staple brew 'Lion Red'. It takes its place as only the third beer I've ever not been able to drink the whole pint of (the other two incidentally are San Miguel and Caledonian Golden Promise, both of which are beyond vile).

By 10pm I was asleep.

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