43.5300° S, 172.6203° E - Christchurch

Marlborough Sound

        

      

Beer Festival in CHCH

The Container Mall

Christchurch Cathedral Post Earthquake

The Cardboard Cathedral

The Memorial for the 2011 Earthquake 

CTV Site 

We headed off to Christchurch early doors and got the ferry over to Picton, passing through the Marlborough sound. We stayed with the eldest of the Charlick's, Sam, who kindly took us to a beer festival in central Christchurch on the saturday. On the sunday we went for a mooch in the city centre. 

In 2011 185 people died after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the city. Today the centre of Christchurch is all slighty bizarre which is to be expected after the earthquake, there are shops still standing which look still in tact but have been abandoned since the day of the earthquake due to structural damage. We passed a theatre which looked as though it had been cut in half, such as you see with a model building you can see straight to the back of the theatre where the rows of seats are still intact. The stage has fallen away, so that now the play that is unfolding is the rebuilding of the city. 

Despite this tragedy the atmosphere in the city is warm and welcoming. The damage has been created into makeshift venues, such as The Pallet Pavillion and The Smash Bar. In the February 2011 earthquake the cathedral was famously destroyed as shown in the pictures above. So they built a temporary new cathedral that was opened August 2013. It is predominantly made of massive cardboard tubes. It's really cool and hopefully will always stay there, the people who used to volunteer in the old cathedral now come here. 

Across the road from the Cardboard Cathedral is the memorial to the 185 people that died in the 2011 earthquake. Each empty chair represents each person that is now absent since the disaster. Just over the road from the memorial is the CTV site. This marks the spot where the CTV building used to stand and in this one building 115 people died when it collapsed. Oh and we also saw two wizards having a nice coffee and a catch up....sometimes potions just don't cut it like coffee ey!