Weekend in Wellington

A mate recently moved down to Wellington for work.

Being the good mates we are, a group of us decided we had better head down to catch-up with him for a few beers. It helps that Wellington has quite the selection of craft beers / breweries to choose from..... :-)

But, it is also has a couple of amazing and moving Great War exhibits due to the work of Weta Workshops and Sir Peter Jackson.

The first is the Great War exhibit at Te Papa. This one focuses solely on the Gallipoli campaign and New Zealand's involvement. Put together by Sir Richard Taylor and Weta Workshops, so as imagined, it is a visual feast and very stunning.

Each section focuses on one individual at certain point of the campaign. The models they have built are something like 3 times the size of a normal person. The facial expressions are perfect. The detail is amazing. The photos simply can't really capture the extent of the diorama's or how they make you feel upon seeing them.

The second exhibit is Sir Peter Jackson's Great War exhibit at the Dominion Museum. It's aim is to take you through New Zealand's involvement in the entire war, so it has more of a focus on the Western Front (I recommend the guided tour even if you know a bit or a lot about the war).

This is a little more like a traditional museum, but it has some great displays. A lot of the items are from Sir Peter's collection and are real....  The colourised photos in particular have a powerful impact.

But what is also at the Dominion museum is a rather large display of the Chunuk Bair assault. All the miniatures were painted by local gamers. It is amazing and again, I don't think the photos really do it justice.

Finally, it is also home to our National War Memorial.

Mother and children comforting each other in hope for the return of a loved one

Representation of the close ties between Australia and NZ since WW1

But... the post started about beer, so it would be remiss of me to not at least mention a few places we went too.... :-)

(Last two photos borrowed from Ade :-) )

Little Beer Quarter
Garage Project Tap Room
Laundry
Rogue & Vagabond
Goldings Free Dive
Hashigo Zake

I can absolutely recommend any (preferably all) for a beer or three :-) It makes for quite the little pub crawl!

It's been awhile...

Wow, I hadn't realised just how long it has been since I have been on here!

Almost 3 months. Time flies! Especially when change is about.

The main change for me, well I bought a house at the end of March and moved in a month later. Now I'm settled, but am finding owning a house takes up quite a bit of my weekends!! :-)

Still, I'm pretty happy.

With all the house stuff going on, gaming and photography has taken a back seat. Changes within the wider gaming group have also made gaming a little harder, but it's all starting to settle now, so hopefully I can get back into more regular updates.

This one is a photography one. Ardmore airport / NZ Warbirds Association had it's first open day for the year last Sunday and the winter weather decided to play ball with a fantastic winters day.

Unless you were taking photos, then the weather wasn't so good as we were staring into the sun the whole day!

A first for this open day (since we have been attending) was the RNZAF turning up and the recently restored Catalina. Great to see.

Here's a few of my shots from the day. Enjoy :-)