Churchy

Not that it really matters, but I'm doing a way worse job than usual keeping up with trip blogging. Oh well. It's all been very busy and I'm kinda lazy. We've been in Christchurch two days now and are heading off into the mountains this morning.

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You might remember that Christchurch had a big earthquake a while back - 2011 to be exact. This event dominated the walking tour that we went to yesterday. I think this is the 4th guided tour we have done, they have all been excellent. Anyway, they had 2 major earthquakes. The first, in 2010, was stronger but further away and caused minimal damage. The second, in 2011 at around 1 in the afternoon, killed around 170 people and damaged around 80% of the buildings, many of them beyond repair. As a result, much of CC has been rebuilt since. There are no buildings more than a few stories because while permitted, it's not economic to build anything tall and meet the new building codes.

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CC is lovely. It's only around .5M people, mostly lacks mountains (you can see small ones in the far distance every now and then) and while on the coast, the beach feels disconnected from the rest of the city (unlike Sydney where it seems like beaches are everywhere). But it's also perfectly maintained, tons of green, nice wide everything, little noise and traffic, etc.

TBH a big part of the hugely positive impression that CC made was because of the weather, which was fantastic yesterday, for the first time in a while.

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Back to tours, another one we did on Tas was of a former women's prison called "Female Factory". The guide was just awesome. Here are a few things I remember that stand out:

1. Prior to being British, Australia including Tas, was Dutch .Tasman was Dutch dude and Tas used to be called Van Diemen's Land. Australia was New Holland (and New York was New Amsterdam, there is a good HX on how that came about).

2. Upon arrival convicts were sent to prisons like the Female Factory, but were farmed out "on assignment" to help families as soon as they were sure of required behaviour. If they screwed up they got send back. They didn't just unload them on the beach and wish them luck, which is the impression I'd gotten from our Sydney tour.

3. There was a non-convict population (some ex-cons, some just came for the offer of free or cheap land) and for a long time, perhaps even some today, there was a prejudice against people with a convict past.

4. Women made up something like 20% of the convict population. Some brought and/or had kids while in Tas. Most were convicted of "survival crimes", a popular one was stealing clothing (back in the UK) which could easily be sold for food.

After the prison tour, we did a brewery tour as it happened to be just up the road. The woman doing the tour was great, super energetic, but I have done a couple of brewery tours before and didn't really learn anything new.

Lastly, we did a boat tour. Hobart (which is incredibly hilly by the way, and built around a large harbour) has an outsize bridge connecting the two sides of the city. A few years back a mismanaged ship whacked a pylon (a-la Baltimore) and took out a big chunk of the bridge, sinking the ship and causing a few deaths as well as months of traffic chaos.

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Two thumbs up for the Melbourne-Tas ferry, which takes 12 hours and was very pleasant. We had a stateroom and slept most of the way.

Two thumbs also up for ANZ, but their wifi, although free, is unusable. By contrast, AC's was good all the way across the Pacific.

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