Previously we walked through the residential neighborhoods that make up much of Parnell but there is also an extensive redeveloped industrial zone and that is where we began our walk. Today it is the center of Auckland’s design industry and there are a number of upmarket furniture stores and galleries. There is also a very nice pub called the Paddington.
We dropped in at Foenander Galleries where they had an exhibit of works by Simon Ogden called Diving For Pearls. The paintings were crafted from and on linoleum which he had sourced from an old house that was being renovated. They were very cool.
Here are some more photos from the walk.
We walked by the home of Reverend Robert Burrows, one of the first missionaries to come to New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands in 1840. The home, constructed in 1850, had a beautiful garden.
The Pah Homestead is a historic home located in the Auckland suburb of Hillsborough. It is, currently, owned by the Auckland Council and is operated as an art gallery. It was built in the 1870s for businessman James Williamson. Among other things, Williamson was a Member of Parliament and co-founder of the New Zealand Insurance Company (NZI) and the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). On the day we visited, they were having a Community Day, so there was a lot happening.
A couple of posts ago, we mentioned the New Zealand artist, Max Gimblett, whose childhood home we passed. Here is one of his paintings.
And here is one by another well known New Zealand artist, Michael Smither.
The windows themselves looked like paintings.
The homestead sits in the middle of a beautiful park with views to One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie).
We walked over to our good friend John Gow’s gallery, for an opening for the Australian artist Dale Frank. Along the way we passed Onehunga High School
which has its own marae (maori meeting house).
We struck up a conversation with one of the school’s teachers and local musician, Dave Taylor.
Here’s some photos from the Dale Frank opening
John and his son Jack
After the opening, we continued our walk. Onehunga sits beside the Manukau Harbour and the name loosely translates from the Maori to “mud flats”, which aptly describes the harbor at low tide. During the 1800s, most of the shipping coming into Auckland entered through Manukau harbour which is on the west coast but the harbour is particularly treacherous (as evidenced by the sinking of HMS Orpheus in 1863, killing 180 people). Accordingly, as ships got larger, the wider and deeper Waitemata harbour on the east coast became the primary port which it remains today. Mal’s father grew up in Onehunga where Mal’s grandfather worked at the local slaughterhouse. The toxic discharge from the slaughterhouse back then had made the water unsafe for swimming or fishing and the neighborhood became a less attractive place to live. Although Onehunga was a predominantly working class suburb for much of the twentieth century, more recently there has been some gentrification and many of the bungalows built in the 1920s have been renovated. Here are a couple of examples of the typical houses in the neighborhood.
Previously, we have mentioned how during the walks we have often come across homes that once included a corner store. Here is another example.
On yet another beautiful sunny day we set out to explore Parnell, one of Auckland‘s oldest and most affluent suburbs. We started off walking around the edge of Hobson Bay before heading up into the neighborhood streets. These are some sites we saw along the way.
If you find yourself in Parnell, we recommend dropping by the Brighton Road Cafe. In a land full of amazing cafes, this is one of the best we have come upon. Definitely, try out the Avocado on Toast. So good.
Finding ourselves in Milford on the North Shore, we decided to walk up the coastline to Castor Bay. Because this is New Zealand where having a cafe nearby at all times is mandated, we came across this cute little cafe by the marina.
We then headed up around the headlands looking back down over Milford Beach.
We stopped in at Castor Bay
Where we loved this beautiful old tree.
Perched above Castor Bay is the site of an old Maori pa (fortified village) called Te Rahopara o Peretu. Sitting atop a steep hill with extensive views over the harbor and surrounding land, it is easy to see why the local Maori picked it as a prime spot to defend.
In fact, during World War II, a battery was built on the site that included two six inch gun emplacements and a battery observation post. The concrete gun emplacements still exist.
The Castor Bay Battery and camp is believed to represent the most extensive survival of Second World War ‘architecture of deception’ where the battery was disguised to make it seem like seaside housing to prevent aerial detection by an invading force. For example, influenced by Modernist style, the Battery Observation Post was designed to look like a seaside kiosk.
The park on which the battery stands was named John F Kennedy Memorial Park in 1962 after the assassination of the American President. A number of homes look over the park and harbor.
Back on Milford Beach, the water was so warm, that even Lauren went for a paddle.
A number of major roads converge on the suburb of Newmarket from all parts of Auckland and from early settlement times, it has been a retail center. Around 1850, it received the name Newmarket because it was the site of the new market for livestock, where farmers would bring their cattle and sheep for sale. Now it is the home of one of Auckland’s largest shopping malls, surrounded by narrow streets lined with trendy boutiques.
In the 1980s, the New Zealand government changed the country’s immigration laws to make it easier for Chinese to immigrate to New Zealand. Many took the opportunity to send their children to New Zealand to get their education. Newmarket is in the acceptance zone of two on New Zealand’s most prestigious public high schools, Auckland Grammar School (AGS) for boys and Epsom Girls Grammar School (EGGS) for girls. Wealthy Chinese began to buy homes in the Newmarket area so that their children could attend those schools. When Mal attended AGS in the 1980s there were barely any Asian students. Now the majority of students in both AGS and EGGS are Asian. Newmarket itself is now majority Asian with many living in new apartment buildings and townhouses that have sprung up on the northern edge of the neighborhood.
The new development has not stretched far, however, and further afield the streets of older single family homes still dominate.
We found interesting, the juxtaposition of this traditional home and its modern neighbor.
Tucked in behind the new developments and old neighborhoods is Newmarket Park. Its Maori name is Te Rua Reoreo which derives from the rua-reoreo (echoes) that could once be made when shouting across the valley where the park sits. In 1841, Apihai Te Kawau, the chief of the local Ngati Whatua tribe gifted 3000 acres of land to the Crown to establish Auckland city. That, supposedly, included the land on which the park sits, although Ngati Whatua still dispute this, arguing that the border of the grant was west of the park. The land was not always the pretty park it is today. It has been among other things, a garbage dump in the 1920s and 1930s, a golf driving range and a soccer stadium. In fact, a visiting Manchester United played there before 26,000 fans in 1967. In the 1980s, it was the home of the Auckland Grammar Old Boys rugby club. The clubhouse where Mal enjoyed many an after match beer has now been replaced by a playground.
Today we set out to explore one of Auckland’s oldest suburbs, Grafton. Today it is dominated by Auckland Hospital, surrounded by narrow streets that have not changed much since the neighborhood was established in the 1800s. The suburb is bordered on the east by what has always seemed to us to be the strangely named Khyber Pass Road. It is a not very memorable road, lined by nondescript buildings, that does not appear to have anything in common with the famous pass in Pakistan. Apparently, when it began life as a dirt track during the early settlement of Auckland in the 1840s, it was seen as a dangerous frontier along which British soldiers would travel during the wars with the Maori tribes, hence the name. Today the only dangerous thing about the road may be this adult store.
Waiting at the traffic light was the definitely the most stylish cyclist we have seen during our walks.
We liked this apartment building, although we weren’t sure how quiet it would be, nestled as it was right next to Grafton train station.
It is not uncommon, while walking through Auckland suburbs, to come across houses that used to include a small corner shop where the proprietor would also live. In fact, Mal’s grandparents used to own just such a shop and home for a while. Here is an example, which also happened to be the childhood home of one of New Zealand’s most famous artists, Max Gimlett, whose parents ran the corner shop.
There are very few old red brick homes in Auckland, because the bricks had to be imported from Britain at great expense. So, often, what looks like red bricks are actually the local pale brown bricks covered with red cement stucco with fake mortar lines. Here is an example.
Here are some other photos from the neighborhood.
Based on their impressive buildings that we have come across during our walks, the Church of Scientology appears to be doing quite well financially. The Auckland building was no exception.
Speaking of churches, we liked the, admittedly less impressive, Liberal Catholic Church of St. Francis.
Grafton includes The Auckland Domain, a 190 acre (75 hectares) park that is the home of the Auckland War Memorial Museum. We finished the day’s walk by wandering through its beautiful parkland.
Manitoga is the home and woodland garden of Russell Wright (1904-1976), who in the mid 20th century was one of America’s most prominent product designers. He is best known for his colorful American Modern dinnerware, which manufactured between 1939 and 1959, is still America’s most widely sold ceramic dinnerware.
The pitchers also make great vases.
In 1942, Wright and his wife Mary (1905-1952) bought an abandoned quarry and logging site. Over the next 34 years they transformed it, building a modern home on the edge of the quarry and redirecting a stream, so that it filled the quarry making a beautiful water hole for swimming. It reminded us of Frank Lloyd Wright’s (no relation) masterpiece, Fallingwater, with its Japanese and organic influences, and the way it sat in perfect harmony within the surrounding trees and water. Here are some photos.
The Storm King Art Center is a 500 acre outdoor museum in New York’s Hudson Valley. It is reminiscent of Gibbs Farm in New Zealand with its massive sculptures dotted within beautiful countryside. In fact, we noticed a number of works by the same sculptors that we saw at Gibbs Farm, including works by Maya Lin and Andy Goldsworthy. Here are some of the sculptures we saw along the way.
Mahatma (Mark di Suvero) 1978-79The Arch (Alexander Calder) 1975E=MC2 (Mark di Suvero) 1996-97Endless Column (Tal Streeter) 1968Three Legged Buddha (Zhang Yuan) 2007Us bald guys gotta stick togetherSuspended (Menashe Kadishman) 1977Suspended (Menashe Kadishman) 1977LinienLand (Alicja Kwade) 2018Storm King Wavefield (Maya Lin) 2007-08Storm King Wavefield (Maya Lin) 2007-08Adonai (Alexander Liberman) 1970-71Adonai (Alexander Liberman) 1970-71Spheres (Grace Knowlton) 1973-75Lookout (Martin Puryear) 2023Lookout (Martin Puryear) 2023Storm King Wall (Andy Goldsworthy) 1997-98Storm King Wall (Andy Goldsworthy) 1997-98City on the High Mountain (Louise Nevelson) 1983Frog Legs (Mark di Suvero) 2002
There is an interesting story about the following sculpture, Adam, by Alexander Liberman. It started out life in Washington DC where it was located outside the Corcoran Gallery. The Corcoran is located near the White House and at some stage the sculpture caught the interest of then President Richard Nixon. In fact, he was so outraged by the sculpture that he demanded it be relocated to the less visible nearby Haynes Point. It stayed there safely away from Nixon’s disapproving eyes until being relocated to Storm King a few years later.
Adam (Alexander Liberman) 1970
And finally, one of the sculptures, actually raced in the America’s Cup. Following plans by American pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein, students from the Rhode Island School of Design painted the boat, Young America, which went on to race in the 1995 America’s Cup. As a boat, it looked better than it sailed, and was swept by New Zealand’s Black Magic in five races, who took the Cup away from the United States for only the second time in 144 years. After retiring from competition, it was donated to Storm King.
Our good friends, Dale and Joe, invited us to stay with them for a few days in Connecticut. They live in the quaint seaside hamlet of Stony Creek. It would have been easy to waste the days away sitting in the beautiful home that Joe designed and looking out over the marsh to the old barn across the way.
But they had other plans for us and soon we were off to the nearby Berkshires, a range of hills in northwestern Connecticut and western Massachusetts (which by the way may be the two most difficult states to spell of the fifty that make up the United States). Our destination was Great Barrington, which reminded us somewhat of the small mountain towns we have visited in Colorado. It was a spectacular day and the leaves were turning, so it could not have been more stunning.
Joe and DaleGreat Barrington
Just outside Great Barrington is The Guthrie Center. Situated in an old church, the Center was founded in 1991 by Arlo Guthrie to honor his parents, Woody and Marjorie. It contains a room of family memorabilia, a kitchen to provide free community meals, and a performing space.
The Center
Woody Guthrie is one of America’s greatest folk singers and was a major influence on more recent musicians such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. He was also a prominent socialist and anti-fascist, famously playing with a sticker on his guitar that stated “This machine kills fascists”.
Although he is most famous for his songs, he also wrote a couple of great memoirs and semi-biographical novels. Most well known is Bound for Glory, written in 1943 and recounting his early life. One of Mal’s all-time favorite books is Seeds of Man: An Experience Lived and Dreamed which is based on a trip that Woody made as a teenager through Texas in 1931.
In true Guthrie fashion there were some friendly old timers hanging out and jamming on their guitars.
One of Mal’s favorite childhood memories is listening to his older sister’s Arlo Guthrie album, Alice’s Restaurant. It is funny talking blues record which tells how Arlo is arrested for dumping rubbish illegally which ultimately endangers his suitability for the military draft during the Vietnam War. The restaurant, located in the nearby town of Stockbridge, is no longer owned by Alice, although she is still alive (Coincidentally, Joe’s sister-in-law also once owned the restaurant, after Alice sold it). Although the church that contains the Center was later bought by Arlo, at one stage Alice owned it and lived there with her husband Ray and various bohemian friends.
Alice with friends. She is in the middle of the photo leaning over the table. Arlo is holding the guitar.
Mal and Lauren 