April 1, 2025
Another day walking around Parnell, passing the usual mix or houses, apartments and light commercial buildings.
Washington DC readers will find the colors of this house rather familiar. All hail the Commanders!
Owners of one of these houses might want to ask their neighbor for the name of their painter.
This house looked like it belonged in the tropics rather than downtown Auckland.
We liked this house’s colorful selection of New Zealand’s national footwear, the jandal (flip flop in America).
Scattered throughout Auckland are little shopping centers like this one. They typically have one of more of the following, a pharmacy (small independent drug store), a fruit and vegetable grocer, a dairy (small shop selling assortment of everyday staples like milk, eggs, newspapers, bread, etc.), a butcher, a fish and chip store, and a cafe. This one had all of the above.
We continue to admire the beautifully painted electrical boxes in the neighborhood.
We passed by a house where Mal lived for a short while in the early eighties. It was abandoned and looked like it was about to be demolished, or at least renovated. To be honest it looked pretty much as it did when Mal lived there.
We ended up at the Parnell Rose Garden, in Dove Myer Robinson Park, named after a beloved Auckland mayor who spent almost 18 years in office from 1959 to 1980. He is one of several Jewish mayors of Auckland, although he was a life long atheist. He was also a rationalist, environmentalist and alternative medicine advocate. In his younger years he rode motorcycles and in 1936 held the World 500cc Speedway title. He also somehow found time to marry four times and have six children.
Mal and Lauren 