We are taking the opportunity to widen our horizons a bit and rediscover Auckland. Unfortunately the weather is rather bleak for doing so as there are many walking tours of the suburbs. Yesterday we went on one to Grafton, much of which has disappeared with the motorway. In fact I flatted there as a student in the early 1960s in a big old villa. The bathroom had a fearsome caliphont and the kitchen was built into the back verandah. I lasted a few months then went back home, before venturing overseas. Anyway we started at the Grafton Cemetery where a lot of the early settlers were buried. Over 1000 graves were removed when they built the motorway in the late 1960s Newton, not a very salubrious area, then or now.
Then over Grafton Bridge which is closed to private vehicles between 7am and 7pm and used only by buses for a quick connector ride from the city to Newmarket. If you think you sneak across in your car you will have somebody with a big candid camera photographing your number plate so you can be sent a $180 fine for doing so. It does seem a bit mean but it does make it a bit more congenial walk over without an excess of car fumes, and it speeds up bus journeys for those who use the busses a lot like me. This is the third bridge on the site - the first was a pedestrian bridge only, then Sir Arthur Myer had the other erected in 1910 at a cost of $140 000which sent the Australian contractors bankrupt as they didnt get paid until the end of the job. Last year the bridge was earthquake-proofed which we are all very pleased about after recent events in Christchurch.
Then on we went to Auckland Hospital with unremarkable architecture. No traces whatsoever of the old buildings some of which I have in memory, However it is good to have a new big hospital within a couple of kms from home should we ever need it.
On to the Domain entrance with its fancy gates - one large with a nude statue of an actual athlete from the 1930s, which caused a huge uproar when it was erected, without figleaf. I must say being so high up therfe is not much to see anyway but we were told they had train trips from Hamilton in the early days for people to some and see for themselves. The second gate post is much smaller and just has a swan on it! Once bitten twice shy.
From there to Outhwaite Park, where the Outhwaite family lived in a very grand house. He was English, she was French and was friend and benefactor of Suzanne Aubert and her work as I read in her letters and biography.
The last section of the tour took us to some of the residential streets tucked away behind busy thoroughfares, not in such a good state of repair as in Ponsonby.
