Wellington - Week One! Temperature: 8C/46F

Welcome to Winter!

My first week in Wellington is complete - and what a week! I think I've experienced every type of weather one can in such a short time - when the sun comes out, like today, it's glorious!! And my apt heats up like crazy (the giant window facing the harbour helps with that...) - but when the wind blows and the sleet comes down - it is COLD!

Alas, I haven't seen snow...yet! But there is a trip to the mountains coming very soon! I just need to decide whether I want to watch the All Blacks play rugby this weekend, or go snowboarding instead...hmmmm...tricky!

Te Papa Tongerawa - the museum I'm at, as I've said in a previous post, is truly amazing! They're very social here too - the whole lab goes out for coffee every morning (and believe me, I need it!) and there's even a whole event planned starting at 6.30 AM tomorrow morning (Monday) to watch the World Cup final at a bar near the museum - so most of the Museum staff will be stumbling into work after the match - myself included :)

So on my first weekend in Wellington, I did a little exploring, primarily at the Te Papa museum itself, since the labs are in a separate building. I'll post a few of the better pictures here - but the rest will go up on my facebook.

Looking down into 'The Void' from the top floor of the Museum - there was a Rubik's Cube speed competition going on - very cool!

Huge blow-up of the Treaty of Waitangi, which was supposed to give land rights back to the Maori people - more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi

View of Wellington Harbour from the Sculpture garden at Te Papa - so beautiful, but very windy!

Along with the Colossal Squid, the museum has some truly amazing exhibits and dioramas - they have taxidermied animals to rival my stepdad's collection!

In upcoming conservation work - now that I'm done with my train models, I'm going to start the conservation of a few scraps of metal from the NZ ship, the Rainbow Warrior, that was sunk by the French secret service b/c it was the flagship of Greenpeace. So a really political piece, and in fact, my conservation work will be dictated by the fact that these pieces are court evidence from the original trials.

My workspace at the Te Papa Conservation Labs

My desk at the Te Papa Conservation Labs (the centre desk is mine - my two supervisors are to each side)

Also, on the 26th, I will start work on taking down the exhibited skeleton of Phar Lap, the NZ/Aussie racing horse from the 1920s/30s so that it can be shipped to Melbourne for the 150th Anniversary of the Melbourne Cup (he'll also be displayed next to his skin, though his heart is still displayed in Canberra) - it's a little gruesome, but very cool nonetheless =)
AND - I'll be on TV!! That's right - newscrews from NZTV3 will be filming the exhibit take down - so hopefully I'll be able to get a copy of that for the Te Papa blog.

That's really it for this week - more next week!