This past weekend we all took a short holiday and went to the Art Deco weekend in Napier as mentioned in a previous post, and enjoyed the hundreds of classic and vintage cars driving around in sunny Hawkes Bay weather, as well as the other events, including jazz, cabaret, theme dinners, and lots of people dressing in 1930s clothing styles.
This year being the 75th anniversary of the RNZAF there were flying displays of acrobatics in propeller-driven trainers as well as a few other aircraft next to the Napier airport. One of these providing joyrides was a restored Swissair Dragon Rapide, a 2-engine biplane of which the first flight was in 1934, so it fitted the time-period perfectly. Of course, there is a story of how it got to be registered in NZ, which is in Classic Wings magazine.
We took lots of pics of the cars until the camera battery ran out and we discovered we had forgotten to pack the battery charger -- lesson learned! The above is a better shot than we could have got from the ground anyway.
On the Sunday afternoon we drove to Auckland and spent yesterday looking around the Museum of Transport and Technology collection of classic vehicles; most are of Auckland origin, as you would expect although there are a few ex-Wellington trams and the one running between the two parts of Motat was an ex-Melbourne SW6 type from 1944. It's good to see Auckland's transport heritage well cared for in contrast to the desecration of Wellington's hertitage by the so-called Wellington Museums Trust.
We'll post pics from Napier over the next few weeks.
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