PHOTO STORY New Zealand

Rotorua

ROTARUA: The Legend of Tamo-O-Hoi

Many years ago, when the first great canoes arrived in New Zealand, Ngataro-i-rangi the high priest of the Awara canoe imprisoned Tama-O-Hoi, a man eating deamon who lived on Mt Tarawena, inside a chasm in the mountain.

Tama-O-Hoi remained inside the mountain for many centuries. Then the white people came and disrupted Maori morals causing Tama-O-Hoi to return. He exploded from the mountain in an eruption. The peaks threw out coloums of basalt and the bed of lake Rotomahana blew up, destroying nearby villages.

Some say before the 1886 eruption of Mt Tarawera a large war canoe carrying the souls of many Maori departed was seen on the Lake Tarawera.

Napier

How an earthquake made this Kiwi town an icon

of Art Deco architecture

In 1931, the New Zealand coastal town of Napier was devastated by an Earthquake. The rebuild reflected the architectural style of the era and resulted in the city centre being almost entirely built in Art Nouveau design.

Wellington

WELLINGTON WATERFRONT

ChCh

CHRISTCHURCH

It’s hard to describe Christchurch as a city. It may have been once and it may be again, but right now it’s more a construction site than anything, an ideal. In September 2010, the city was hit by a 7.1 earthquake. Though the quake caused damage, it was actually the aftershock 6 months later that devastated the city and took 185 lives.

But that was 10 years ago and the city still sits in this seeming hiatus of building codes. Meanwhile, the centre has shifted. Businesses moved out to the suburbs and with them went the office workers, shoppers and diners that once populated these streets. Life goes on, elsewhere, it’s just on hold here.


This makeshift church was built out of cardboard
Cranes are the current skyscrapers
A chair for every victim. Many who died had been at work
Almost every city building is a construction site
Coffee is a Kiwi staple, so its one of the first to show up
The lush beautiful park was not affected and remains a haven
Artists colour the bleak construction landscape
Some of the older buildings remained standing while modern ones collapsed
Swapping hard hats for boaters. Punting on the Avon in central Christchurch

One of the few original buildings left standing in the city centre.
Not at a loss of what to do with all the left over shipping containers they turned them into shops
Its uncertain when some of the landmark buildings will be able to be entered.



One of the completed buildings, the Christchurch tram has started running through
With the collapse of its bell tower the ChristChurch cathedral, the city's namesake and icon suffered irrepairably

Akaroa

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

AKAROA- It's a little bit French

In 1938, whaling captain Jean Langlois liked Akaroa so much he purchased the place from local Maori chiefs. In a case of getting a taste and wanting the whole pie, Langlois returned to France and got the King’s approval to make a colony. 80 colonists set off in a war ship, but arrived 2 months after the British already signed the Treaty of Waitangi. Bit of bad luck for them, but they got to stay on and Akaroa has a decidedly french feel about it.