Auckland Domain volcano

I took a lunchtime walk from the office to the top of the inner cone of the Auckland Domain volcano on Tuesday.

The guidebook is full of facts and natural history. More or less the same as all of the other volcano facts and natural history I’ve read so far. Although I’m not too worried about whether my readers find this boring or not, regurgitating too much of this volcano trivia is a bit geeky even for me.

This picture, from atop that inner cone, is of Auckland Hospital, which is where Lee worked when we first got here (actually she was in a separate building down the hill, but all part of the same complex). It was that job that gave us the visa that allowed us to come to New Zealand in the first place. The hospital itself, and behind me the Auckland Museum, are situated on the ring of the outer cone, much larger, which had exploded and settled before the inner explosion happened, creating a little island in a giant crater.

Just to the left of where I was standing when I took the picture is a special tree, special in the sense of being important to Māori culture. It has some carved wooden things around it, and a fence. When I was there, a middle aged Asian man was practicing his trumpet playing right there, blowing directly at the sacred tree.