Haven't added to the blog for some time, so here we are on the other side of the world from Freiberg and my front door. The journey here was a major odessey, from SA to Dubai, and then a long slog across the Indian Ocean and Australia, a stop at Sydney, and I landed in Christchurch on 10th September. Impressions are good, the city is neatly laid out in grid fashion, the street names reminiscent of Olde England: Worcester, Hereford, Armagh and the like. Christchurch was settled in 1850 by a party of Anglican settlers led by one Mr Godley, and the town and surrounding farming areas on the Canterbury Plains have thrived. The city boasts a very "English" stone cathedral, rahter like an old English cathedral town, but strangely incongruous as the surroundings of the cathedral have no other ancient monuments, all is new and modern. there is a pretty park, Victoria Park, laid out along the Avon River (what else?). A typical statue of The good Queen graces the square, but by a curious quirk of design, Victoria had her back to the statue of Captain James Cook, who was in at the start here, so to speak. I read a biography of the captain last time I was in Australia, by R Hough (?), which made me thinkCook was one of the great navigators, and a hero to boot. He was undoubtedly a great explorer, I've seen the replica of his ship, the "Endeavour", built in Fremantle in the 1990's, and the thought of voyaging around the world in such a small vessel gives food for thought. however, this week I heard a talk on Radio New Zealand by a biographer who claims to have found out much more about Cook's last voyages; it has long been known that Cook's widow destroyed most of his later letters, and it now emerges that there may have been a reason for this; James Cook suffered from quite serious mental illnes towards the end of his life, and on the last voyage this author claims that Cook "lost it", and often became psychotic. I recall that his relations with the Maori and Polynesian tribes were erratic, to say the least, and as is well documented, the last fight with the Hawaiian king resulted in Cook's murder. Judgement is reserved until I find the book.
Coming over here after spending spring in Switzerland and Germany, was, to put it mildly, an antipodean move of gigantic proportions. I like it here, the towns and cities are clean and neat, the people really friendly and easygoing: clichés which are easy to quote, but oddly true. In fact, apart from some language differences, people are not that much apart: in spirit, as it were. Europe has the backing of centuries of history, and all the artifacts of great monuments, musical heritage, and beautiful countryside that readers of this blog would doubtless have picked up. Countries commonly spoken of as former "colonies" (as if that were derogatory, which is not valid), now forming a somewhat hazily defined Commonwealth, have something in common. I've been lucky enough to have visited the old dominions -- Canada, Australia, now New Zealand, and of course my troubled home South Africa. Physically they couldn't be more different, but one comes to admire the similarities; tough people carving a living from the wilderness, urban and rural communities who display remarkably similar spirit and solidarity: when you live far fromthe "old country" you tend to rely on your neighbours, and they on you, for companionship and assistance. There's of course the downside of colonialism, as I well know from my native SA, and the Zulu and Border wars etc, and of course the colonies built on slavery and repression, but one could go down that road at another time.
Which brings one back full circle to the heritages of ancient Europe: Germany in particular, has a chequered past to put it kindly. In the shocking aftermath of world War Two, Europe only really got it together with the Treaty of Rome in 1957; having celebrated the 50th anniversary of the European Union, they have got something to look back on with pride. Time can soften the memory, but the horrors of the Holocaust remain, as do the memories of wars strtching over centuries. In June 2007 I visited the site of Buchenwald concentration camp Memorial; that was a deeply moving and shocking experience, I've felt it was wrong to take photos, and have only ever shown them to one other person.
That opens up a whole train of memories and speculations, and probably doesn't really gel with my peaceful (if cold and wet) day on the shores of the beautiful Lake Te Anau, and the glorious scenery I saw yesterday at Milford Sound, justly regarded as one of the great natural wonders. More on that, let's look up again.
Before leaving Maritzburg, I bought a copy of the Odessey, thinking it might be appropriate reading for such a long plane journey, but found it heavy going. I'm no classicist, and the Greek mythology has largely passed me by, but I thought to end this post with a quote from Tennyson's Ulysses, a poem not for all tastes, but it strikes a chord with me:
".................Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars, until I die....."
One didn't exectly smite the sounding furrows, we came in an Airbus A340-500, at 11500m and a lot faster than Ulysses' oarsmen, but you get the drift. Happy landings.
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