Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2007
Location: Lower Hutt, New Zealand
Today we stayed over in Wellington. At first I thought that it might seem like a wasted day for everyone as we had not lined up anything specific as far as touring options. As it turned out I think that everyone enjoyed having the day to do whatever they wanted. Some stayed around the campground and did laundry, three went on an all day King of The Rings tour including Joan, one couple did a 2 ½ hour tour of Wellington and then dropped off at the TePapa Museum, and various other doings.
Myself and one other person took the bus to TePapa and started our tour there. Even though this was my third trip there you can always find things to see. It’s a very interesting museum. From there went to the Wellington City and Sea Museum which was another interesting stop. Then we walked to the Parliament building crossing paths with three others from our team. We took a public tour of New Zealand’s Parliament (capitol) building. It is very beautiful set of three buildings that are all linked together. One of the interesting things is that just a few years ago they installed the large rubber shock absorbers, similar to what they have at TePapa, to isolate the building from earthquakes.
After the tour we went into the Parliament chamber and heard a speech by one of the members about putting microchips on the country’s social services cards. The whole proceeding did not seem an effective way of discussing an issue. While she was talking other members of Parliament were shouting out negative comments and in the end it seemed a constant battle of who could talk the loudest. I left without a good feeling that the system was a good one. One interesting thing that I did not know before was that whichever party had the largest number of members of Parliament was of course the majority party. That party elects a head of the party and that person is then the Prime Minister of the country. This is apparently similar if not the same way England’s system works.
When they build TePapa they installed large shock absorbers that are a composite of rubber, steel, and lead that have about a three foot by three foot foot print and about one and a half foot thick. These are installed between all the pilings and the main structure of the building effectively isolating the foundation from the building structure. A significant project to do on new construction but to go in and do it on an existing structure that is basically all stone and marble was really quite the project. They had to slice the building masonry horizontally all through, cut space between the mortar foundation to install the absorbers and fit them in. They had to take out a 7 tonne block every 4 meters to install the absorbers. The building can move 300mm horizontally with respect to the foundation. Very impressive!
As we learned in previous years the western edge of the Pacific Plate goes right through New Zealand with the fault line going between the two islands. This is the so called Ring of Fire the eastern side of which goes through California.
Tomorrow we will be off to Napier up on Hawks Bay.
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