Easter is Coming! Bunnies Beware!!!

Back in the 1980's I remember being intrigued by tales from friends who had visited New Zealand. They spoke of a beautiful land with millions of sheep; a place where outside of the cities many of the roads were unpaved, some closed after dark, with trouble finding a business open after 6 or on Sundays. Many sheep have now been replaced by dairy cattle and deer for venison, all the major roads are paved, and mostly you can dine out or shop seven days a week. A few vestiges of the old ways remain, though, such as the Shop Trading Hours Repeal Act 1990, which requires a surcharge for restaurant patrons and makes it illegal to open most retail shops on Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Anzac Day. The details are quite labyrinthine, widely ignored many places, and the subject of a lot of current debate.
Easter Monday is also an official holiday creating a four-day weekend, so time to get out and about. We first headed south to Dunedin (from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh). With the recent destruction in Christchurch, Dunedin may have the most intact 19th/early 20th Century architecture. Good Friday saw the tail end of a passing ex-tropical Cyclone Ita with gale-force winds and heavy rain. It was a good day to visit some of the local cinemas, but we also squeezed in a visit to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory in town, featuring a chocolate "waterfall" and some vintage delivery trucks.

 

Saturday weather was better ("four seasons in a day" is the saying here). We had a good walk through town, by the new rugby stadium, and up the hill to Olveston, a well-preserved historic home of a wealthy businessman. 

Later that day we drove inland, passing through Alexandra, home to one of the most anticipated holiday events, the Annual Alexandra Bunny Hunt. Twenty-five teams of hunters (with colorful names like the "East West Bunny Boppers" and "Half Cocked") compete to see who can bring in the most dead rabbits, along with hares, stoats, wild pigs, turkeys and possums; basically any of a variety of non-native pests. It can be fun for the whole family with some teams including hunters as young as six.

 

This years haul was a disappointing 7.478 varmints, down from the all-time high of nearly 20,000 a few years ago. No doubt they are striking a blow for the indigenous species, but they thought of explaining what happened to the Easter Bunny to my grandchildren gives me pause.
Our destination was Wanaka, the lake-side village that was hosting the 25th Anniversary Warbirds Over Wanaka. Sheltered by the Southern Alps, the area escaped Ita and was sunny and bright.

I've never really attended an airshow before, and this was a great one to start with; well-run, and a lot of fun. Below is a collection of my photos from the event. I'm no expert but I think I got the captions right. My favorite was the plane vs. Lamborghini race. The auto won.

A Lamborghini vs. a Sukhoi 29 (upside-down) piloted by Lithuanian Jurgis Kairys

Avro Anson 652A

P-51 Mustang

DC-3 and Little Buddy Sukhai

DC-3

Fantail formation from the YAK 52 Team

Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk

Pitts Model 12 Aerobatic Plane

RNZAF C-130 Hercules

RNZAF Iroquois

RNZAF NH90 Helicopter

RNZAF Parachute Team

Sopwith Triplane

Vintage replicas on the 100th Anniversary of the start of WWI

April 25 is Anzac Day, making it three national holidays in an 8-day period. Anzac Day is by far the most revered secular day of the year in New Zealand and Australia, the equivalent of our Veteran's Day. I have written of this in prior blogs (here, here, and here), but next year will be the 100th Anniversary of the Kiwi and Aussie forces landing in a small cove on the coast of Turkey, where they were pinned down for 8 months until they evacuated. In the glow of nostalgia, some say the battle was when "New Zealand came of age as a nation". This editorial on the real meaning of Anzac Day by Chris Trotter offers a different view. About 17 million people died in WWI. Extra credit if you can tell me why.

The Cenotaph in the Botanic Garden in Timaru......

laid with wreaths to honor the dead.."lest we forget".