wynyard quarter

jane got up fairly early for a run then we had breakfast. kezia poured a few too many cheerios

we all headed in to town for the opening day of the new wynyard quarter which is a new big open area down on the water front

it’s what all the building work is i’ve been taken pictures of for the last year, and of course ‘that bridge’ i take pictures of in the morning

it went up and down a number of times in the few hours we were there, so they were obviously giving it a good testing (or showing off)

there are loads of walk ways, an event centre, food outlets and generally loads of spaces for just hanging out

the place has an industrial past and until recently was covered in diesel and concrete storage towers. there are still a load of real ones left, but they’ve kept a few old ones in the new bit as features

it’s great to have this new area in auckland as it was lacking much of a waterfront feature due to the gas tanks in this area and the shipping container port further along. the shipping port is still there although they’ve also made some funky outdoor spaces near the main boat dock place

it’s all been done in time for the rugby world cup which starts soon

they even got some trams whizzing round the place, 30 years since they were decommissioned.

this thing was quite impressive. it’s a spy camera helicopter thing driven by the guy on the left, whilst the one on the right watched what it was seeing through his sunglasses which were streaming the video from the on board camera

we got back just after lunch and then went out to do various shoppings. kezia and i went to the mall to get a freeview satellite box which isn’t as dreadful as i feared despite the rock bottom price. no recording feature of course, so we have to remember to sit down at the right time if we want to watch a program, and no fast forwarding through the adds.

and the other big event of the day has been attaching the pool cleaner to the pool filter

and i even went out with a long brush to sweep some of the dirt in to the path of the ‘barracuda’ as it went by. my brush made an amazing spacey sound which i’ll have to video sometime. but i did get to use my brush as a depth gauge and it’s about a foot deeper than i am tall in the deep end. pretty deep

here it is without the cover on. still too chilly to consider going in, but we’d hope the weather would start to warm up around end of October/November perhaps