The Municipal Destructor

Welcome to Auckland’s original ‘Municipal Destructor’. Everyone, like me, know it as Victoria Park Market – a super popular open air market through the 80's to 2000's – a great place to buy your crystals and tie-dies etc! I've always known that it was originally the city rubbish dump – when the city was waaaay smaller). There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times.  The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restau...

Good mail!


I like getting good things in the mail, so I was pretty happy when Luís Ançã's Desenhos do Alentejo came in last week. I had recently been checking out Luís' excellent sketches on his blog and eventually left a comment on an Estremoz sketch - a historic hill town I remember vividly from a cycle tour through the Alentejo region back in 1991. That part of Portugal was one of the highlights of 3 or so months cycling through Spain, Portugal and France. Thanks Luís your sketches really capture the region well!



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