Cable Car Wellington

It was a cold (-2°C) and frosty morning and I shivered on the platform waiting for the train to Wellington. However it was a  beautiful sunny day to take a train ride down the coast and a cable car ride up to Kelburn. It was also a work day so the cable car ride had a purpose - to help plan the Beyond the Page event for the July school holidays. It was great to do something different today, to meet some librarians from Wellington City Libraries and Wellington was looking its best. 

Weta Workshop

Our school staff visited Weta Workshop this afternoon to meet with Richard Taylor (I mean Sir Richard Taylor).  He began by talking about the development of Weta and the movies Weta have been involved in making.  But most interesting was a discussion about creativity, how to encourage and develop creativity in children, and the creative people who work at Weta. The emphasis was on artistic creativity (not something I possess) but the ideas could apply to other types of creativity such as writing or scientific inventions. When he employs kids (his words not mine) he looks for four things, the top three being passion, enthusiasm and tenacity, followed by talent. Many young people have talent but he believes they need the other three characteristics to succeed.

School groups and others sometimes do a tour of the workshop but they are finishing a highly confidential project - The Hobbit? - so we had to stick to the conference room off the entrance foyer.  Not many conference rooms are as interesting as that one however.  A glass cabinet stretches the length of one wall and it is chock full of collectibles such as Lord of the Rings miniatures. There is also an impressive collection of industry awards including the Oscars and BAFTAs shown in the photo below.

Museum Visit

Today I was a tourist in my own city. Actually it stills feels strange to think that Wellington is my home now and although the Northern suburbs are very familiar I still feel like a tourist when I go into the central city. Today my mother and I were tourists as we visited the Museum of Wellington City & Sea. It's a collection of some important, quirky, tragic and interesting items and records of Wellington's history. Mum was particularly interested to see the Wahine disaster display and documentary.

Something that I found funny was the account of the first car journey in NZ and how it ended:

Cars first arrived in New Zealand in 1898. They were imported by William McLean, a Wellington businessman and politician, who bought two of them in Paris. One he named Lightning, the other Petrolette. On his inaugural drive he set off along Kent Terrace, one of Wellington's widest and straightest streets. McClean failed to take the first bend and crashed into the Basin Reserve fence.

The most fascinating display was probably the holographic telling of a Maori legend. The holographic characters looked so real - like miniature people performing on stage. The little boy beside me was genuinely perplexed about where the narrator had gone when she appeared to disappear into thin air on the stage. The video below is from YouTube. It flickers a bit and you don't really get a feel of how real the 3D images looked but it gives you an idea of what it was like.

Arcane

One of the reasons I was looking forward to living in Wellington was to enjoy events and experiences in the 'coolest little capital in the world' (as Lonely Planet recently described Wellington). Today was a gorgeous summer day and my sister, nephew and I spent the afternoon at the waterfront in the heart of Wellington. The harbour itself was busy with watercraft from yachts to pedal boats, and even dragon boat racing. We bought lunch at Pandoro Panetteria (a bakery that I now highly recommend) and then watched a fascinating and unusual performance in Waitangi Park. The New Zealand Festival of the Arts is on at present and the performance by Arcane is best described by the Festival website as follows:

With two wheels that look like they’ve been pinched off a giant’s bicycle and two fearless French performers, this is the jaw-dropping acrobatics of Arcane.

Performing perfect flips, spins and somersaults on a nice steady platform would be difficult enough for most of us. Make that platform a moving, rolling structure and you add an entirely new level of complexity and skill.

Invented by trapeze artists Maxim Bourdon and Sebastien Bruas, Arcane’s wheel is much more than a mere prop. Like two spiders on a huge web, the daring duo clamber over the structure, expertly propelling it around the stage. As the performance progresses, the tricks get riskier as the wheel becomes the inspiration for excitingly dangerous and original feats that will transfix the crowds in Waitangi Park.

After Maxim and Sebastian finished their performance two more bare chested young males climbed on stage to emulate the acrobatics - see photo below!