Auckland War Memorial Museum
By James Anthony
Official
website
 Now
while New Zealand is a terrific place to do all sorts of outdoorsy
things - such as bungy jumping, sailing, white and black-water
rafting, climbing, hiking and so on - it also has some nice
indoors things to do.
If you are in Auckland then a place you must visit is the
Auckland War Memorial Museum, which is a terrific combination
of old-style and modern museum displays housed in a glorious
marbled structure within a beautiful grassy domain.
If you can drag your eyes away from the building you also
get to see some great views of the Waitemata Harbour and the
distinctive cone shape of the extinct volcano of Rangitoto
Island.
Entry to the museum is a donation - specified at $5 - and
for that adults can wander through one of the great exhibition
houses.
You can see whale bones, Polynesian artefacts, live shows
by Maori dancers, New Zealand's flora and fauna, relics from
ancient civilisations, historical looks at Auckland city from
the days of the pioneers through to the 1960s and much more.
With New Zealand having such a rich Polynesian connection,
the Maori and Pacific Island exhibitions are worth seeing.
The major attractions are Hotunui, the large Maori meeting
house that has just had four years of restoration work and
Te Toki A Tapiri, a mighty war canoe carved from a giant totara
tree.
 It
was captured on the Manukau, Auckland's western harbour, during
the New Zealand Wars in 19th century.
And, surprisingly, the Auckland museum has a fascinating
ancient collection that includes some major items from Egypt,
Greece, Rome, China, Korea and the Americas, as well as objects
from early Europe, the Middle East, Cyprus and Crete.
Egypt features heavily with one-third of the displays dedicated
to Egyptian artefacts.
They include two mummy portraits - one of a man and the other
a woman - attached to the bandaged ones when they were entombed.
Being a War Memorial, the Auckland Museum dedicates it entire
top floor to New Zealand at War and it is a very well done
series of exhibitions that cover the New Zealand Wars against
the Maoris, the First World War, Second World War, Korea and
more recent conflicts as well as New Zealand's peacekeeping
efforts.
Similar in style to the Canberra War Memorial, there is a
very moving and solemn wall of remembrance dedicated to those
who died in wars.
It is unfortunate that the military aspect of the exhibition
has been somewhat trivialised by the unnecessary title Scars
on the Heart. Anyone walking along the atmospheric Roll of
Honour corridor and looking at the thousands of names of those
who died fighting for New Zealand does not need a trite title
to tell them that war is terrible.
 On
to less serious things, the children will have a huge amount
of fun in the more-modern interactive areas of the museum
and can get hands on with various learning devices and come
face to face with bees (pictured: right) in a see-through
hive, cockroaches at breakfast, fish (including a Nemo clownfish)
and a lot more.
Be prepared as a parent to let them explore this area for
at least an hour!
For this Auckland Museum fan, however, the high point was
the display of dinosaur skeletons including the four-metre
tall Cryolophosaurus and Malawisaurus.
Check out a flying Pteranodon and then be gobsmacked by the
size of the moas - giant birds that stand three metres tall.
While looking at them wondering how they'd fit in your oven
at Christmas, you get a feeling that tackling a group of them
would not be easy.
Auckland War Memorial Museum is open every day except Christmas
Day and ANZAC morning (25 April). Regular hours are 10am to
5pm.
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