#lyttleton port

[city-flag-tournament]

✯ Round 1 ✯ Match 32 ✯

The current flag of Iisalmi, North Savo, Finland

Propaganda:

None

vs

The current flag of Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand (Ōtautahi, Waitaha, Aotearoa)

Propaganda:

This flag manages to include a lot of obvious and subtle symbolism. The red triangle is a reference to the southern alps--a main feature of the South Island. The four Lymphads are in reference to the four ships that arrived in the port of Lyttleton to bring British colonials to Christchurch. The lamb and wheat are in reference to the industry around Christchurch--mainly farming. the Bishop's hat is in reference to like, *christ* *church*. Except the goddamn church had been under repairs for 13, 14 years.

Tournament Policies: ✯ Choose the flag that's more meaningful to you! ✯ Be respectful of place names and cultural symbols in your commentary! ✯ If you want to submit propaganda, you may do so at the submission form linked in the pinned post. It will only be included if it is submitted before the next post with that flag is drafted and will be included in all subsequent posts the flag is featured in.

[runnersnz]

"I started running at primary school, somewhat reluctantly, doing the required cross-country. And being at a small Fiordland school, if there was a sports team for anything, you sort of all have to play, just to make up the numbers!

Both my parents did the first Kepler Challenge and I remember “running” with Dad while he was training and trying to keep up with him... as much as an eight year old can. Around that time there was also a local run/bike event that went from Manapouri to Te Anau. You’d be in teams of two where you'd leap frog one another, leaving your bike on the side of the road and then start running. That would have been my first race but I didn't really run again after I left school. I did spend my youth volunteering for the Kepler Challenge though; amazed at how people could possibly run that far and never once believing that I could do it myself.

Years later I worked for DOC on the Milford Track, essentially chasing whio (blue duck) up and down a river. That kept me pretty fit as I was always on my feet a lot, hiking and climbing hills. So I decided to enter the Luxmore Grunt, essentially with no training, aside from chasing ducks. I did the Luxmore Grunt two years in a row and I did all right. And then I just stopped running again, for about fifteen years.

It was during the Covid lockdown that I took it up again properly. Mostly because there was nothing else to do, you couldn't go anywhere. I'd sort of tried to get back into running a few times, but I'd always injure myself early on because I’d go out too far, too fast, too soon. So lockdown was a good opportunity to do it right and I made a plan to take it slow. I even found a ‘couch to 5k’ plan and (mostly) stuck to it. But then they let us out of lockdown and I sort of just bolted! I found all the trails close to home on the Wild Things website and it ballooned out of control quite quickly. I was like “how many trails can I tick off?” I live in Christchurch with the Port Hills on my doorstep - so it turns out there’s a lot!

I found another training plan online and decided to train for the Motatapu Marathon. Unfortunately it was cancelled because of Covid, so I ran a 42km loop around Lyttleton Harbour. I just thought “I wonder if I can”. And I could, although it was a bit of a sufferfest. (I also had to because it was the only way to get back to the car!). 

Why did I run? I think I just really enjoyed the freedom of being out of the house and in nature. I don't know, it's quite relaxing... as much as it can hurt at times. And I think for me, those mental health benefits you get from being outside, moving and having time to think were really important. And I love a challenge - I'm very badge orientated. If there's a way of gamifying something, you've got me! And ticking off as many trails as I could had me hooked.

I’d listen to podcasts on my runs and there was an episode on Dirt Church Radio that stuck with me. Madeleine Collins from Auckland had done a challenge during lockdown where she ran an 8km loop in January... and then she ran it twice in February, three times in March, four times in April, continuing on like that for a whole year, finally running twelve loops in December. That challenge really appealed to me; that kind of incremental, increasing suffering, a ‘I don't know if this thing is possible’ kind of thing. I didn’t jump on it right away, but doing something similar was always in the back of my mind.

Then my Aunt Joan passed away from younger onset dementia a couple of years ago. Dementia Canterbury, a support network for patients and their families, had been a really useful resource for her and her family, and so I decided to try and raise some money for them in memory of my Aunt, to give back for all that they did. My Uncle Pete had ridden the length of New Zealand as a fundraiser and I still had this Madeleine Collins idea mulling around in my head. So I decided it was an opportunity to amalgamate these two ideas; raise some cash for Dementia Canterbury, and set myself a fun challenge... well, type two fun.

For my “Adventure for Dementia”, I settled on a 5km loop in the Port Hills, known as the “Pipeline of Pain”. It just sounds so appealing, doesn’t it. It has 490 metres of climbing over that 5km. The plan was I’d run one loop in January, two in February, three times in March, all the way through to December. The final run in December was 62 kilometres with 5,780 metres elevation. Okay it’s not really a run, it was basically straight up the gas pipeline, then it was too steep to run down the other side really, and then it was into another steep up and down. December's 12 loops took me 18 hours to complete. 

I was so fortunate to have a whole lot of community support around me for this. I did the single January lap by myself because I hadn't told anyone what or why I was doing it, and I didn't know yet if it was even possible. But people slowly found out and basically every lap thereafter people would join me. One guy Ken, who at the time I didn't really know, joined me in May and he did all five laps with me. Then he came back for June, July, August, right through to December. I did 78 laps in total and Ken did 68. We're quite good mates now, after spending a lot of time and suffering together. Heaps of other people that I'd never met before joined in for laps too. Some people got wind of it and drove from miles away to be a part of it. Some people just wanted to come and challenge themselves on the Pipeline track, and some came because they had a dementia connection.

I/We raised $13,000 for Dementia Canterbury - very stoked!! That was nine months ago now. I still like running, but I didn't run for some months afterwards. I was a tad broken, but I learnt that it's possible... that it's absolutely possible... you just have to be stubborn, keep moving.... and remember to eat!

I do want to know what more I am capable of. I don't feel like I’ve hit the limit yet, maybe because I haven't failed. I feel like there's more. I've got a miler on my list, another Backyard Ultra maybe. 

My advice, just go and do it I reckon. If you don't get out there and give it a go you'll never know what's possible!"Amy @amy_goes_adventuring (Christchurch) Photo taken in Te Anau– Portraits of Runners + their stories @RunnersNZ

[bedlessbug]

In 2013 Leach organised I was using six watts when you Received me, the first SCAPE Public Art project to go ahead post-quakes in Ōtautahi. For over a month’s time Leach and members of Christchurch’s Amateur Radio Club attempted to make contact with the International Space Station as it passed over the city. Drawing from the National Sound Archive, the artist composed a broadcast of tracks which were transmitted to the ISS. Comprised of both monumental (the Queens visit to the city in 1954) and mundane (the Lyttleton port, cathedral bells) moments, the audio broadcast acted as a historical recount of the city-now-in-ruins.

Leach describes the project as “an idea of imaginative transcendence[EF1] ”, a term which has since become central to my practice. If the imagination is our intuitive ability to form mental images of things not present, and transcendence is that which moves beyond the empirical, then imaginative transcendence is the act of imaging beyond; beyond ourselves, where we find ourselves, and what we find in front of us. Leach asked her audience: where is it, imaginatively, that you might transport yourself to? And in gathering to gaze upwards, in imagining beyond Christchurch’s broken landscape, somewhere as elusive as the ISS becomes a viable destination.

 [EF1]Add section on what imaginative transcendence is

[marklyttleton]

How Does the Stock Market Work?

Mark Lyttleton is an experienced angel investor and business mentor with a particular interest in working with early-stage companies launched with the mission of achieving a positive planetary impact. This article will look at stock markets, exploring how they work and their history.

As a financial instrument representing ownership in a corporation or company, a stock confers a proportionate claim on both earnings and assets. Also known as equity or shares, stocks entitle shareholders to a piece of the company that correlates with their shareholding as a proportion of the total outstanding shares of the company. For example, an individual who purchases 10,000 shares in a company with a total of 100,000 shares outstanding will acquire a 10% stake in the company. There are two main types of shares: preferred shares and common shares.

A stock market is a venue where companies can raise funding by selling equity, i.e. shares of stock, to investors. Stock provides shareholders with voting rights and a residual claim on the company’s profits in the form of dividends and capital gains.

Institution and individual investors alike use stock exchanges to buy and sell shares in public companies. When someone purchases shares of stock via the stock market, they are not buying it from the company they are investing in but rather purchasing that stock from an existing shareholder. Similarly, when a shareholder sells their stock, they are not usually selling those shares back to the company but are instead selling them on to another investor on the stock exchange.

A stock exchange is essentially a secondary market where shareholders can transact with potential buyers. Companies listed on stock exchanges typically do not buy and sell their own shares, although they may issue new shares in the company or engage in stock buybacks through transactions that occur outside the daily stock exchange operating structure.

‘Volatility’ is a term used to measure how much and how quickly stock prices rise or fall. A stock or index may be described as volatile if its price moves up or down significantly over a short space of time.

The world’s first stock markets appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries across Europe at important trading hubs and port cities such as London, Amsterdam and Antwerp. It was not until the late 18th century that stock markets started appearing in the United States, facilitating trading in equity shares across the country, notably via the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

[chrisframeofficial]

Cunard Celebrates 100 Years of World Cruising

This week Cunard launched a special photographic exhibition to celebrate a centenary of photography taken aboard their ships. The occasion acknowledges the introduction of onboard photographers, who have been sailing with Cunard’s ships since 1923. 

Throughout a century of shipboard photography, many unique moments have been captured aboard Cunard ships. 

From images of one of the modern Queens visiting a new port of call, to interior shots of the transatlantic liners, to dramatic photographs taken of troops during World War II, photography has captured both joy and danger from the decks of these ships. 

The launch of Cunard’s photographic exhibit coincides with the 100th anniversary of their first ever world cruise. Undertaken aboard the Laconia, the voyage departed in late 1922 and sailed through the early months of 1923. 

Run in partnership with American Express, the first Cunard world cruise sailed completely in the northern hemisphere – venturing only as far south as Panama and Singapore. However, it did encircle the world, and included transits of both the Panama Canal and Suez Canal. 

That first world cruise proved so popular that another Cunard world cruise aboard Samaria set sail in 1923. 

In the 1970s, Cunard’s world cruise presence was bolstered when their then-flagship QE2 commenced regular world cruises. She was joined on the world cruise circuit by other Cunarders including Sagafjord and later Royal Viking Sun. 

Today all three Cunard Queens undertake long duration global voyages. I was lucky enough to sail recently aboard all three Queens as a guest lecturer, speaking about Cunard’s long and illustrious history. Given the centenary of world cruising as well as the centenary of photography aboard Cunard ships, I thought it would be fun to share with you a few of my best snaps from the three Queens. 

Queen Elizabeth – we sailed from Sydney on a cruise around New Zealand in January. I particularly liked seeing the ship docked at Lyttleton, near Christchurch. I actually called in here on my first ever cruise aboard QE2 back in the 90s, so the visit was full of nostalgia for me. Queen Elizabeth also looked impressive in Tauranga. While we sailed back to Australia, we were followed by a water spout, which was pretty exciting! 

Queen Victoria – on this short cruise, we sailed from the Bay of Islands to Sydney. Queen Victoria looked particularly impressive at anchor in the Bay of Islands. When we arrived into Sydney, we witnessed a special drone light show before berthing at Circular Quay. It was great to see Queen Victoria near the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

Queen Mary 2 – one of my all time favourite ships, it was fantastic to be back aboard Queen Mary 2 after a three year hiatus. As many of you will know, I was aboard QM2 when the global cruise shutdown commenced, so it was great to be back and see things running so well aboard the ship. 

There are so many wonderful things to see aboard this ship, and I loved taking photos of QM2’s bridge and bow, as well as watching the remarkable sunset that I captured while we were at anchor off Busselton. 

If you want to check out the full Cunard anniversary photographic exhibition, I’ve linked it here: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/inspirat... It’s worth checking out. 

[lindsaystravelblogs1]

Almost the Last Post (for this time)

Day 58, Sunday, 12 February 2023

We arrived in Lyttleton, the port near Christchurch, in the early hours and although we could look around the port and nearby landscape from the deck, we were not allowed on shore until our selected tour became available.  For us, that meant 2 pm – or a little before so we could get up to the bus. We were tied up at the bunkering terminal and not allowed out there but were ferried to the marina in the lifeboats, with a long way to walk to the waiting bus.  The bus took us out of the dock area and up the hill to another bus that took us on our excursion.

I am guessing that we drove at least fifty kilometres, through old lava fields, pastoral and farming land, past Lake Ellesmere, and eventually to Manderley Farm.  It was an interesting drive that made me itch to return to NZ for a long, slow campervan adventure.  Of course, I was constantly scanning the area for birds and identified eleven species from the bus.

The road was pretty rough, very bouncy and at one point, there was a huge crash and jarring pain thumped through our backs – at least those passengers in the rear half of the bus. The back of the bus had bottomed out and hit the road very violently, obviously a common event because the driver never even blinked.

At the farm, we were treated to a sheepdog demonstration that was pretty amazing.  There were eight merinos half a kilometre or more up the hill from where we were standing, and the farmer released one of the farm dogs and controlled it with a small whistle.  It was very windy and I imagined that the dog would not be able to hear the whistle – it was quite faint to me and I was only ten metres away – but the farmer used long and short whistles in two pitches to tell the dog to go left or right, to approach the sheep, to stop and sit, etc., and within a few minutes, the whole little flock were down the hill and through the correct gate and to within a couple of metres of thirty humans.  Then the situation was reversed and all the humans were ushered back up the hill by a different dog – no, no!  Not the humans, it was the sheep!

We then went into the shearing shed and heard a bit more about the wool industry and the evil Chinese who manipulate prices to cheat honest Kiwi farmers out of a fair return – and in no time, the Chinese were being blamed for virtually everything that could possibly go wrong for the poor farmer.  I am sure there is some truth in his assertion but I think he overplayed his hand. The Chinese probably don’t control the local weather – just as a ‘for instance’.  Despite all of that, we still got to watch him shear a sheep – a young one, about 6 months old, getting its first haircut.

We then went through a really beautiful garden to where his wife had drinks for us to accompany the shortbreads and delicious sausage rolls.  It was all very nice and civilised, quite countrified,  and then it was back to the ship.  The bus took us back to the second bus that is apparently the only bus allowed to enter the port area (no idea why).  That bus delivered us to the lifeboat waiting at the end of the marina and that delivered us back to the ship.

We finalised the last of our packing and were ready to disembark.  During the bus trip, Heather had a series of emails with our wonderful travel agent (Thank you Bev!) who had been monitoring the cyclone (Gabrielle) threatening Auckland.  She is an absolute gem and arranged for us to stay at the Christchurch Airport hotel and fly with Qantas direct to Melbourne at the crack of dawn on Tuesday – instead of flying to Auckland and waiting nobody-knows-how-long to fly home with Air New Zealand.  That was really great – but I wonder if we will ever recover the extra cost from our parsimonious insurer, NIB.  Time will tell.

Day 59, Monday, 13 February 2023

We were up at 6 am and quickly dressed and ate breakfast for the last time this trip.  There were lots of goodbyes, most of which were repeated half an hour later as we gathered to collect our passports and pass NZ Immigration and Customs – a very quick and easy process.  Then it was on to the shuttle to take us to central Christchurch where we got a cab to the airport hotel – the Sudima.

When Bev managed to change our flight, we tried to change our booking for the shuttle from 7.30 to 8.30 but the ship said everything was locked in and they couldn’t change it.  As a result, we had an enjoyable ride into the city with the bus entirely to ourselves.  We had a driver and a guide who was very friendly and chatty, but it did seem a little excessive – surely a cab would have been cheaper or they could have made an exception and put us on the 8.30 shuttle, but not so.  We were quite happy and where we were dropped in the city, a second guide called a cab for us and we were on our way to the Sudima within five minutes maximum.

Of course, arriving at the hotel at 8 am meant they didn’t have a room available until noon at the earliest but we just sat in comfort in the foyer, logged on to their Wi-Fi and did a bit more writing.  Despite the noon deadline, we were in our room a tad after 10.30 with an upgrade to a very well-appointed suite.  So who’s complaining?  Not us!

We each went out for a short walk and found a shopping centre immediately adjacent to the hotel. It has a few restaurants, and we ate at a Chinese one – and found that the Chinese are not responsible for everything going bad.  It was an enjoyable meal at a reasonable price, within very easy walking distance from our hotel.

Day 60, Tuesday, 14 February 2023

We were up and dressed by 3 am and ready to go to the airport. Officially, we were supposed to be at the airport three hours before an international flight so we should have been there by 3 am for our 7 am flight - but the hotel staff told us that 3:45 would be fine (the terminal doesn’t open until 3 am anyway).

Of course, I had been awake for a couple of hours checking the clock every few minutes in case we were late, despite knowing that the alarm was set anyway.

We took the free shuttle and made it in plenty of time. We beat the crowds and were through the airport nightmare reasonably quickly - despite my carryon being examined in the finest detail by an overzealous officer. She did find a small jar of a special spread we had carried for at least 25,000 kilometres as a gift for our travel agent. She decided that it was a liquid and was just over 100 mls so I am sure she will enjoy it herself.

We had over an hour and a half to wait to board and then sat on the plane for another hour while they fixed some problem with the electronics. We left more than an hour late with a promise to make up the time during the flight.

Of course, as usual, I sat behind an ignorant ratbag who tilted his seat back as far as it would go and refused my polite request for him to be a bit more reasonable. I had maybe 15 centimetres from my nose to his seat. I simply don’t understand why they have reclining seats in planes. I paid for my standard 28 inches of space but he thought he was entitled to steal seven of them.

We arrived at Tullamarine only 40 minutes late and got through the crowd relatively quickly.  We had previously been told that our passports are not e-passports, but an attendant assured us that they were and that saved us at least an hour of two in the queue.  I wish we had known that before – it could have saved us days of queueing over the life of our passports.

There was a long wait for our baggage, but it all arrived safely and we eventually escaped the Hell that characterises every airport in the world.  Our Tony’s Taxi was waiting (Thanks again Bev) and we had a very comfortable trip home.

I collected our accumulated mail from the past two months or so (three mail items and two junk mails) and we spent the rest of the day unpacking and sorting all the clobber from the trip.

One really helpful factor was that we were able to repack a surprising amount of stuff straight back into our cases, in some cases, once the laundry was completed.  About four days later, we are about 90% packed for our next trip.  Watch this space!

Summary

How do I summarise such a diverse trip? I did a bit of a summary at the end of our first voyage so I will not rehash that, but our week or so in Ushuaia was an opportunity to catch our breath and explore a little of the tip of South America. It was a nice stopover but without any particular highlights.

The more recent voyage did include some highlights, not the least of which was reaching 78 degrees 44 minutes South latitude. And I have just stumbled on an online article that emphasises the significance of that. I recommend that you have a quick read at https://www.mycg.uscg.mil/News/Article/2969915/coast-guard-cutter-polar-star-sets-world-record-with-voyage-to-antarctica/. And note that the Spirit of Enderby is the ship that took us to Antarctica three years ago. By my calculations, the 1.32 seconds by which the US Coast Guard holds the record is equivalent to a bit under 41 metres that our ship could easily have beaten if we had just nudged up a bit closer to the ice. I doubt if we got within a hundred metres of it and I thought at the time that the Captain was being his usual conservative self, notwithstanding his expressed disappointment that we never set a new record.

Walking on the ice, particularly at Mt Siple, but also at Cape Hallett, gave me a big buzz - it was quite a unique experience.

Watching the ship crunch through the thick ice was also fascinating, even awe-inspiring, as we faced a solid wall of ice up to at least three metres thick - and simply smashed our way through. An amazing sight.

I loved the storms - Nature in the raw. They didn’t impact the ship to any great extent but watching the swell and huge clouds of spindrift was quite exciting. And seeing so much snow that decorated the external areas of the ship for several days was something quite new for me.

The wildlife is always a highlight although I never thought as much about it at the time this trip. But we saw five species of seals, millions (literally) of penguins, ninety-six species of birds and a few whales. We have probably seen more and more variety on other trips, but this was still impressive.

The Captain’s conservatism or risk-averseness meant we lost several opportunities to experience more but we had no control over that – unfortunately, he is God on board.

The food was fine, perhaps not quite what we expected from French chefs but perfectly adequate. The staff were brilliant and the lectures the best we have had on any previous trip. And ‘all you can drink’ for about 18 hours a day makes up for a lot.

All in all, it was a great trip with some once in a lifetime experiences that I will never forget. I just need time to cement the memories more securely before we embark on yet another extraordinary series of adventures.

[rentcampervan]

Top Day Trips Near Christchurch You Should Take

If you are planning a campervan rental Christchurch trip with your friends, you should plan everything from the places to the gear. You should finalize how long your trip might last. You can be on the road for weeks or a weekend. Either way, you need to choose the places wisely. There are several day trips that you can opt for while in Christchurch. Here, we will take you through the popular day trips for the city. you can always plan them all together. 1.    Timaru: Exploring this place is like getting your hands into some history. You will find a lot of things to walk through and learn while here. This is one of the most incredible places near the city. you might have to drive for two hours before you hit the place. Along with the most beautiful walkways and trails, you will find some nice tourist attractions. This includes South Canterbury Museum and Edwardian buildings. There are some volcanic bluestones in this place where you will find old lava. It is most definitely the place for your day trip. 2.    Takepo: This makes up for an excellent weekend trip in your motorhome hire Christchurch. You can pack up some gear and spend the most magical moments in here. The lake takepo is officially the place to setup romantic dates and enjoy some good picnic. You can enjoy a stargazing night or watch the southern lights here. 3.    Lyttleton: This town is located on the north eastern part of the banks of peninsula. You can access this town from Christchurch through a tunnel that passes through Port Hills. Apart from the views and hikes, you will find a lot of local markets here. You might also enjoy some of the good coffee shops while on a trip here. It is indeed a colourful town. 4.    Akaroa: You can pack your family or friends in campervan rental Christchurch to Akaroa. It is a historic establishment that is a combination of the British and French settlements. It is an hour away from Christchurch and is located on the banks of Peninsula. This is home to the biggest Penguin colony in New Zealand. You can take the cruise to go see dolphins and marine life in the waters here. Among the sea creatures, you are sure to find seals and whales 5.    Arthur’s Pass: This place houses a national park and is located 150 kms from mainland Christchurch. When you enter this town, you are welcomed by waterfalls, rocky mountains and a lot of green. You might be closer to nature than you know when you reach the Pass. It is also famous for the alpine setting. The long trails inside are known for good walks. If you are planning a trip during the winters, you will feel that the climate is pleasant and good 6.    Hanmer Springs: Take your motorhome hire Christchurch for a ride to the hanmer springs. This is where you will find some of the spectacular natural springs in the country. Apart from the springs, you will find some interesting outdoor activities such as jet boating and mountain biking.

[skateboaring]

Diamond Harbour - Lyttleton Port - Combined

[merrijfields]

#port #sunriseharbour #lyttleton https://www.instagram.com/p/B2dGY2ag5cIyjZJs104MDv9KYBkhzi6glGafMg0/?igshid=1osaywj1v8sm3

[containerization]

Lyttleton Port Company

Photo by Keith Mcmecking

[bluedesignwall]

Out cruising in the Cortina this afternoon. We headed south, out to Sumner and Redcliffs then through the Lyttleton road tunnel to the port. There is always something to see over there. Home via town which looked pretty busy. As we cruised a Mustang pulled in behind us and followed for a while peeling off with a wave. Good fun. We always get plenty of looks when we are out in the Cortina. You can see people saying we had one of those. One guy pulled up next to us at the lights for a good look. What’s he staring at? Oh yeah we are in the Cortina.

[gerry-walden]

Viewing the ships by Gerry Walden Via Flickr: Tourists taking a boat ride to view the ships tied up two abreast during the National Union of Seamens strike. Closest is the 7236 GRT 'Port Lyttleton'. (Southampton, England 1966).

On 16 May 1966, the NUS launched its first national strike since 1911. The strike aimed to secure higher wages and to reduce the working week from 56 to 40 hours. It was widely supported by union members and caused great disruption to shipping, especially in London, Liverpool and Southampton.

The political importance of the strike was enormous: the disruption of trade had an adverse effect on the United Kingdom's (precarious) balance of payments, provoked a run on the pound and threatened to undermine the government's attempts to keep wage increases below 3.5%. The Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was strongly critical of the strike, alleging that it had been taken over by Communists to bring down his administration. On 23 May, a week after the outbreak of the strike, the Government declared a state of emergency, but emergency powers were not used. The strike finally came to an end on 1 July. (© Wikipedia)

[lindoig5]

Saturday/Sunday    Days 30 & 31  The final dash for Lyttleton and Christchurch

Saturday - at sea     They promised us a calm voyage up the west coast of NZ to Lyttleton: the port of Christchurch.  Well, they got that one wrong(!!!) and we were buffeted around almost all the way from The Snares to the port.  It was the last day (and two nights) of the expedition and it was all at sea.  There was a lot of administrative tasks to fill the day, with packing and preparing for land, paying shipboard accounts, returning borrowed gumboots and life jackets and so on.

They had a really great final recap session in the afternoon with a comprehensive review of our voyage and answers to many more questions. Dan had produced a wonderful 27-minute video featuring most of the highlights of the trip and they premiered that during the session.  (We were all given a copy of it, along with a timeline and some great maps of our voyage, on a USB stick when we left the ship.)  He is a great photographer and the whole video is a truly brilliant reminder of so many aspects of the trip.  It is also a great way for us to show people what the trip was like in quite a condensed and very visual format. We have shown it to some of our kids and the trouble is that as it plays, we keep wanting to pause it to elaborate or explain the experience, or add something of our personal touches to it.

There were also lots of thank you speeches – for each member of the staff, the Russian crew, even for us expeditioners.  A particular highlight was a thank you to David Harrowfield, the historian who was retiring from guiding after 51 trips to the Antarctic.  The whole wind-up session was all very emotional for most people.  We had all contributed donations that we gave to David to pass on to the Antarctic Heritage Trust that works on the historic restoration projects down there.

Sunday  Christchurch      The ship found a relatively calm anchorage overnight, but set off again quite early today so we arrived in Lyttleton as soon as the pilot could get us into the port.  Then it was getting our passports stamped by Immigration and a sign-off by Customs, lots more ‘thank yous’ and a few emotional farewells to staff and numerous passengers and eventually onto the bus to take us for a surprisingly long trip into the Christchurch city centre where quite a few alighted. We stayed on the bus with quite a few others who were heading to the airport (another fair distance) for flights later in the day.

At the airport, we collected our bags from the bus and trekked the 50 metres across the carpark to the Novotel where we were staying overnight.  Fortunately, despite the early hour, we were able to get straight into our very comfortable room and enjoyed a leisurely cuppa and a sit down before even opening our bags.  We did a minimum of organisation and set off to walk to the International Antarctic Centre half a kilometre away.  (The Novotel is in a great location.  We had been dropped virtually at the door, the Antarctic Centre that we really wanted to see was an easy walk away, and the airport check-in was only a hundred metres or so in the opposite direction.)

The Antarctic Centre is quite fabulous with lots of history and natural history exhibits, and hands-on experiences enough to fill in several hours.  There is a penguin display where several rescued Little Penguins (aka Fairy or Blue Penguins) and New Zealand’s White-flippered Penguins were being fed.  They have a realistic ‘Antarctic Experience’ a few times a day where tourists can get rigged out (much as we were in the wild) and enter a big room at -18 degrees with snow and gale-force winds, etc.  You have to pay extra to do that and having just spent days doing it in real life, we elected not to participate in that one.  There is also an area where you can get smashed about as if in a ship in a storm, but again, we had the bruises to prove we didn’t need to do that again.

It is an outstanding museum, crammed full of memorabilia, exhibits, information boards and hands-on devices and we enjoyed it immensely.  Definitely worth visiting if you are ever near Christchurch.  We had a pie (had been hanging out for some really good food!!) in a poorly-serviced dining area then returned to the display area to explore a bit further and watch a couple of excellent videos. There was a massive screen showing a 17-minute loop of life in Antarctica and another much longer one about a year at the McMurdo Base.  It ran for well over an hour and was very US-centric, but we watched it all and it was excellent.

Back in our room, we relaxed for a while and took advantage of the free Wi-fi and fired off a few quick emails, mainly to the family. I had nearly 700 waiting for me – fortunately mostly spam but I still had to look through them to retrieve the kosher ones that had been placed in the spam folder in error.  We had heard about the crazy panic buying of toilet paper in Australia so we slipped one roll from the hotel into our baggage in case we arrived home to find our apartment burgled and all our rolls stolen.  This was just before the world finally imploded completely: an event that our return to Australia seems to have precipitated. Madness!

We had booked an early meal in the Novotel restaurant and it was excellent – much better than anything we had on the ship with the possible exception of one excellent Sunday roast dinner.  Then an early night with the alarm set for 3am – that is not yet another typo – it really was 3am.

[bedlessbug]

exegesis section - Maddie Leach

The artist Maddie Leach has an artistic practice which may indeed be described as occupational. Rather than, as Steyerl notes, hinging on an end result, Leach’s projects develop already existing material, which pass through the artists hands before being offered to viewers/participants to continue. Two projects in particular: The Fountain: an art technological social drama and I was using six watts when you Received me have been formative in understanding and subsequentially practicing this cyclical hand-off.

         Focusing on reimagining the lives of abandoned projects, The Fountain: an art-technological social drama considers what it means to take something up. Centred around a defunct public artwork – LHT-Fontänen – in Lund, Sweden, Leach’s ongoing research discusses ideas of “authorship, artistic originality, and the capacity to reimagine… public artwork.” In the blog that accompanies the project she outlines a more intimate example of picking-up-where-another-left-off. “As a micro companion to the larger, much more visible fountain project”,  she describes an encounter with a long-abandoned cabin in the woods – “another site”, the artist writes, “where I encounter questions of authorship, continuation, and regeneration.” Discovered in the cabin is a half-completed to-do list, which, inheriting the tools of the absent occupant, Maddie takes up.

Such ideas seem in line with Barthes’ thinking around text. Instead of being the wholly original product of an author, “text is a fabric of quotations, resulting from a thousand sources”; writing, he suggests, “is to mingle writings” already written. Leach forfeits her role as originator of The Fountain…, thus entailing the death of the artist,to instead focus on the infinite possibilities for continuation that arise through reimagining artworks already made.

In 2013 Leach organised I was using six watts when you Received me, the first SCAPE Public Art project to go ahead post-quakes in Ōtautahi. For over a month’s time Leach and members of Christchurch’s Amateur Radio Club attempted to make contact with the International Space Station as it passed over the city. Drawing from the National Sound Archive, the artist composed a broadcast of tracks which were transmitted to the ISS. Comprised of both monumental (the Queens visit to the city in 1954) and mundane (the Lyttleton port, cathedral bells) moments, the audio broadcast acted as a historical recount of the city-now-in-ruins.

Leach describes the project as “an idea of imaginative transcendence ”, a term which has since become central to my practice. If the imagination is our intuitive ability to form mental images of things not present, and transcendence is that which moves beyond the empirical, then imaginative transcendence is the act of imaging beyond; beyond ourselves, where we find ourselves, and what we find in front of us. In this way, actually communicating with astronauts was secondary to the idea that it was possible. Leach asked her audience: where is it, imaginatively, that you might transport yourself to? And in gathering to gaze upwards, in imagining beyond Christchurch’s broken landscape, somewhere as elusive as the ISS becomes a viable destination.

[thinkingaboutbees]

None of these are mine, but the first two are from tonight, the third is from last night. A lot of people I know have had to be evacuated from their homes because the fire was getting too close. It’s dark now so they can’t fly helicopters in to douse the flames with water from monsoon buckets, and it’s a frankly terrifying situation.