In the wee small hours of a summer’s morn’, Cunard's Queen Mary 2 slipped quietly into the Waitemata Harbour. It may have been 5am, but there were a number of us ‘shippies' standing on the breakwater at Judges Bay watching her glide past, lights ablaze, out of the gloom and into the bright lights of the container wharf where she would dock. The ‘Mary’ fulfills the lofty title of the 'Worlds Last Liner' and even at 22-years-old – which is getting on in ship years – she still evokes a certain awe when you see her.
Ships are the largest moving objects made by man. When you are standing on a rock at 5am on the harbour's edge and the 72m high walls of steel slide past you, you feel it.
It may be just another world cruise for this ship and its passengers, but for us here in NZ this will probably be the last time that we see Cunard for some time. Cunard and many other lines, have pulled their plugs on an NZ visit due, in part, to the high cost of doing business on this side side of the world and partly – as reported to me by a Cunard officer – “because of the high degree of cleanliness required of the ships hulls in keeping with NZ's strict bio controls.” According to the Cruise Association of NZ, it has hit our business community hard – a 40% drop in visits directly affecting an industry that contributes $201m to our city's economy.
Sadly, I am not a Cunarder cruiser this year and have to watch as Cunard's sole representative makes an appearance without me being onboard. But, I do have the bonus of a number of friends who are, and today is an opportunity to show off our magnificent country to them.
Eagerly meeting 'the usual suspects’, at the doors to the cruise terminal, we quickly found ourselves on the Southern Motorway taking full advantage of the new 110km speed limit. The QM leaves at 8pm tonight and she waits for no man or woman.
We often forget that we live so close to one of New Zealand's primo attractions – the Hamilton Gardens and it is visited from Auckland comfortably in a day. Designed by its visionary creator Dr Peter Sergel, the gardens are continually expanding, faithfully following the original plan of 50 gardens. Totalling 30 already, they have 20 to go and soon, by opening the 'Medieval Cloister', they will add another.
I have a special invite for us to preview the nearly completed garden, also to partake in a 'behind the scenes tour' of the facility.
We were led around the perimeter of many of the popular gardens to discover that they are serviced by a large number of underground tunnels and culverts, similar to a country house where, behind the walls of the great rooms, there are a series of hidden corridors and stairways to keep the working man separated from the 'better and the good'. While we walked through the culverts, there were groups of tourists walking above and around us, oblivious that we were just on the other side of the foliage.
Alongside the beginnings of the next great work – the Baroque Garden – 90% of the stonework of the Medieval Cloister is now complete with a projected mid-year opening. With clever sight lines especially set up it may appear to be a fully functional medieval monastery, but it is all a very clever movie set. The design leveraging forced perspectives with the never to be finished edges, tucked just outside the eye line.
At points where you perceive long alleyways leading off into the distance, you discover that the effect is just a mirage – the edifice may only be six feet deep.
Likewise, the homestead in the Mansfield Garden and the palace in the Indian Char Bagh Gardens, were exposed to us as mere imposters. Sure, they might seem like solid edifices made to host vast rooms within their confines, but go around the back of them and you will discover a magic that would make Hollywood proud.
But, before long, it was time to return my friends to another illusion, the QM2, waiting at the port to whisk them off to another exotic locale in their illusional bubble of Champagne and caviar, a condition that separates its passengers from reality, where you are deluded that all is right with the world and the existence of current geopolitical events don’t exist. I for one, can’t wait to be on next year's World Cruise for that very illusion alone. (ROSS THORBY)
