maori display (the last museum part 5)

Location: Auckland War Memorial Museum

Baskets Left: 1

_

well i'd been working my way down the auckland museum starting at the third floor and proceeding through all sections of the second floor. meaning that i now had only one more to go before i'd seen the whole museum.

i was not too discouraged. the flax baskets had thus far been pretty steady on their preference of what made them disappear. anything and everything to do with maori... which made sense as the kete were the repositories of ALL maori magic and mystical knowledge. you'd hope they'd be into that which they were about... which was a good thing.

cause the first floor of the museum was pretty much dedicated to the maori... though remember i said pretty much in that sentence please. its important later on.


so in i went, into the the last gallery of my quest (minus any and all of them i skipped from the many museums of picton...) hoping this would at last bring my task to an end.


their collection was nothing less of amazing. only te papa really rivalled them...which is to be expected of the two biggest museums of new zealand... though i'm more talking on the scale and number of artifacts. the other museums of new zealand all have great maori displays. just auckland and te papa have way more of them.


the collection has at least one really good example of any major maori artifact, art work, or tool you can think of. though some like this waka may not be the most spectacular the country has to offer (but than again where would they fit the 30 metre long ngatokimatawhaorua in the museum?) it is still an excellent representative of maori war canoes.

okay reading the sign i'm a little embarrassed people of the web wide world. i spoke to soon. though this may not be the biggest waka it is a very very important one. this is te toki a tapiri the last waka actually used in battle EVER!


the first gallery has some of the somewhat larger pieces like the waka, but it is mostly cases full of smaller items.


you than pass a wall covered in impressive carved statues...

you than enter the main hall called maori court. here you find full on buildings...

_

some of which you can only look at from the outside...

however here they have a marae (a traditional maori building that comboed city hall, church, community centre, and parliament) that you can walk into!

as i entered it i suddenly had a real funny feeling in this place (just like when i saw the black statue outside the museum). i couldn't figure out why or what caused it. the feeling wasn't the typical dizziness of when something magic was happening. i wasn't sure what it was, but i didn't imagine it...

this marae was very nice, and had lots of cool carvings and artwork on the walls.

as you leave maori court there's some more smaller artifact filled cases. after which you wander into the pacific people's area.


now don't get me wrong. other polynesian peoples have some neat looking artwork and artifact. like this "alien" looking statue head...

_

not that aliens would look like humans. why you ask? it'd be so silly is why! out of all the things on earth people are a single weird example (humans have to get over themselves already!). if aliens were going to look like something from earth (other than a scary tentacled thing) it'd be us dinosaurs. we were much more impressive than you humans, more to the point we were around longer, and there were many kinds of us to coincidentally look like! grey versions of man. HA i'd made a better sci-fi writer, and i have a brain the size of a peanut!

_
anyways i still liked the grey look a like statue (though i'm sure it was just a statue of a dude).

my favourite pacific island piece was the creature carved and painted out of a whale vertebrae.

as i completed this gallery my heart sank for a moment. the basket hadn't done anything. in desperation i circled the whole floor again. still nothing.

despair changed to out right panic! what was i too do? the only thing this could mean was that the stops in picton had been important, and that by skipping them i'd botched up the quest.

i was going to have to figure out how to get all the way back to the south island... which was now a big deal. i'd used up all the tickets, rental vouchers, and even money ms. rhonwyn had left me to do the quest...

suddenly giving me momentary relief a feeling of dizziness swept over me. finally i thought. the magic in the basket must have kicked in... only the crazy penetrating feeling that accompanied the baskets disappearing hadn't happened yet. in fact the basket wasn't doing anything. normally they'd float before vanishing. this one just sat still in my pocket.

than i heard it. a familiar clicking sound of stone on stone. i instinctively ducked behind the closest display.

a moment later none other than whiro himself waltzed into the hall!!!

what was i going to do?!?

_

he had me pretty trapped... even if i could get out of the museum, how was i going to get out of auckland? even if i managed that how was i going to get back to picton so that he won't catch me?!?!?!?

_

to be continued!