To the city

One day I catch the train into the centre of Auckland. I meet a lovely old 80-something lady at the station and help her to get her ticket. Her name is Valma and when she hears I'm travelling around the world she tells me about the organisation she's a member of, Servus, a peace movement that hosts travellers worldwide. She also tells me she has 22 grandchildren and a clutch of great-grandchildren too.
So my first stop once I arrive at Britomart railway station is in honour of feisty Valma. It's a half-forgotten staircase saluting the suffragettes who won women the vote in New Zealand. They were the first women in the world eligible to vote, in 1893 (yes, really) and these slightly off-the-beaten-track tiled panels mark their phenomenal achievement.

Over the road is the Auckland Art Gallery and when I'm done going into raptures over the handsome Kauri timber extension I venture indoors to linger in front of its collection of 19th century paintings of contemporary Maoris, tattooed, wrapped in finery and fiercely proud. I also like this gigantic flower chandelier suspended in the atrium, like an outsize version of something you'd find on your dressing table in a down-at-heel guest house. 

Behind the gallery is Albert Park, teeming with outdoor art and student life, then moving on a little I find old merchant houses now serving as university departments. Those windows reveal studious faces at work and serious looking tutorials in progress. 

Auckland University's clock tower is one of the city's most famous landmarks but here it is teamed with a recent addition to the cityscape, Sky Tower, cut down to size by this interesting perspective, I reckon.

My stroll takes me over to the Domain, one of central Auckland's greatest parks and home to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. What should I find along the way but a statue of Robert Burns. That's two I've seen now, this one and the one in Melbourne. I feel a surge of patriotic pride.

The Museum is so named because it was built originally to commemorate New Zealanders lost in all the wars, a great monument on a hill with views out to the harbour and beyond. Inside it is stuffed with treasures from all corners of the globe and Maori artifacts sourced closer to home.

There's an adventurous new extension positioned inside the building's original forecourt. It resembles a great wooden cocoon and when Anouk and Amanda arrive we make the most of the new space and its glass staircase.

The children's area of the museum is busy. They've clearly been inspired by the old exhibits in the vaults that no one particularly wants to look at these days – stuffed animals for example – but which serve as excellent educational tools for kids. So they've dusted them off, created a modern colourful setting for them and put them in context with interactive buttons, spyholes and display boards. It keeps me amused, anyway. Meanwhile, Amanda gets busy repairing the ripped spine of one of their books (spot the teacher). Anouk insists on doing a photo-shoot of me and Amanda on the steps of the gallery, then takes a few nature shots in the temperate houses. Pretty fine, I'd say.

Another day I visit Alberton, Amanda's local stately home. The house is elegant though a little gloomy inside with its 19th century furnishings and wallpaper frozen in time. The story interests me, however, the house being built by a Scotsman, Alan Taylor, who grew up in Edinburgh (he went to the Royal High) and then went to India to serve in a regiment. On being de-commissioned his father gave Alan and his brothers a lump sum each to enable them to emigrate to New Zealand and make something of themselves. Alan didn't do half bad with his share.