On topic:
I think it's a brand new A320, certainly shinier than the one parked next door.
Not a peep from you thank you, Wing Commander - passenger experience is second to none, tasteful cabin fit and humungous overhead storage. Flight ex Auckland smooth and fast.
SO: Te Papa Museum is a must, they of course have Weta's giant WW1 figure sculptures in their Gallipoli exhibition.
You could spend an hour just pondering each one, absolutely brilliant work.
I took this one to show the size, look carefully at the person in shadow on the right.
And THEN, along the road to Peter Jackson's WW1 exhibit at the Dominion Museum.
He takes you on a journey with a young soldier, with the backdrop of the war unfolding.
You walk through a series of portals, each shaped like a dated gravestone...
The dioramas were what captured me, constructed with the care only Weta can deliver:
We've all heard about how the lads could hear the enemy from the opposing trenches, they were that close.
This was the first time I really "got it", thanks to the "drone's eye view" of the diorama.
There they go, "Over the Top" and they will die as surely as the sun rises tomorrow.
The full-size stuff is pretty amazing, here's the shock of a tank trampling the German defences.
(It's as real a tank as you could hope for.)
It must've been terrifying, I stood and looked at this for a long while:
And of course: Gallipoli.
Bearing in mind the exhibition takes pains to humanise the combatants, this construction really takes it to a new level.
A huge historically and geographically accurate depiction, with individually crafted figures at something like 1:30 scale.
Here go "our" lads:
And here die "their" lads.
The Ottoman Turks took horrendous losses, way more proportionately, than any of the allies.
Gallipoli is as much if not more, to their descendants, as it is to us.
Sir Peter deserves another Oscar for this performance, if you can get to Wellie, don't miss out.
