Curiosities
Toilets / Wharepaku
I never expected to have a section on toilets, let alone buy a book about Kiwi toilets. The book “Kiwi-as Toilets” says in its introduction ‘no other country does toilets like New Zealand does’ and separates toilets into different categories including artistic, architectural, community, wonderfully weird and loos with views. There are a lot of public toilets throughout the country and most of them are nicely decorated. Some have a very unusual design, some talk to you when you enter and leave, and play music whilst you are inside, some are in very remote areas, some have very interesting signs, some are even included on road signs, some have nice decorations inside, and a lot of them contain information on how they should be used.
Following the Canterbury earthquakes, much of the infrastructure was damaged, or munted, More than 185 miles of the wastewater system required repairs following the February 2011 quake alone. With sewage systems severely compromised in the days and weeks following each major quake, people were asked to avoid using their inside toilets. As a result, residents took to their backyards, creating all kings on practical, innovative and humorous temporary facilities. Many people dug long drops in their backyards. A website was set up to showcase the creative long drops. The council distributed 42,000 chemical toilets to homes and placed 2,900 portable toilets on city streets. It was said that they exhausted the world’s supply of chemical toilets and around 100 portaloos came from the USA.
Street art
I was amazed by the amount of street art that I saw around the country and in particular in Christchurch and Dunedin. In the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes, Christchurch became a world street art capital. A Lonely Planet book ranked Christchurch alongside New York, Barcelona, Berlin and London as one of 39 cities with a rich street art scene. Many of the bus shelters around Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula are decorated. Artist John Noakes had the idea to paint bus shelters when he was on a bus travelling to work, it was raining and he saw children huddling in a shelter. The children look miserable and he thought their lives needed brightening up. He painted 65 bus shelters. Unfortunately due to roadworks, I wasn’t able to take any photographs of the bus shelters, but I was able to take photos of some of the other examples around the city.
Signs
Some signs can be a bit disconcerting. I’m used to seeing signs in hotels about what to do in the event of a fire, but this was the first time I had seen a sign about earthquakes. It was also the first time I had seen signs about tsunamis.
Unexpected sights
The big things of New Zealand are large novelty statues located in small towns which typically relate to the town and its identity.
