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...
The Volvo Ocean Race has race arrived in Auckland. I sketched them at the event base yesterday morning where they were already up on cradles for service. Elevated like this I thought they looked more aeronautical than nautical.
The yachts set off on Leg 4 of the race from Hainan Island, China, on February 8th. From what I can tell they then traveled east across the top of the Philippines before heading southward, past exotic sounding Micronesian islands like Pohnpei and Kosrei, then the Melanesian islands of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
You would have to wonder if after 3 weeks without a shower they would have been tempted to stop off at a coral atoll for some cerviche and a hot shower.
Interestingly they all arrived in port within hours of each other. First in port was the Spanish yacht MAPFRE, followed 4 minutes later by Abu Dhabi (the overall leader) and Dongfeng (that's Dongfen in the sketch top left).
They'll all be back in the water on Saturday morning for an in-port race, before leaving on March 15 heading around Cape Horn for Itajai, Brazil.
Comments