The town of Napier, in New Zealand's North Island, is famous for its art deco architecture.Supplied
New Zealand is renowned for its great outdoors: world-famous hiking trails, long uncrowded beaches, alpine grandeur and moody fjords. This is why so many Canadians take the 14-hour flight from Vancouver – or often longer from other North American embarkation points. For the visitor, the magical spirit of the country is captured by its Maori name, Aotearoa, which refers to long, white clouds that helped early Indigenous navigators discover the land.
But what does a traveller do when the weather doesn’t co-operate, or photo-op fatigue sets in after yet another spectacular vista along a twisty mountain road? There may be appetite for a break that enhances the mind as well as the soul, preferably both together.
Quirky New Zealand, the land of bizarre museums, eccentric streetscapes and historical oddities provides a refuge from a rainy day or from a frenzied if-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-Wellington itinerary.
New Zealand offers plenty of big-museum experiences, such as the Peter Jackson-supported warplane exhibition at Blenheim or Wellington’s Te Papa with its powerful story-telling – from the cultures above ground to the geological forces below.
But the little attractions off the beaten track also strikingly reflect the Kiwi psyche, a freedom to be who you want to be. This is, after all, the edge of the world. The two main islands, North and South, meld the daringly progressive with the shamelessly incorrect, often on the same site.
Where to find New Zealand’s quirky side
Oamaru in the South Island: I didn’t know anything about “steampunk” before I landed in this gorgeous old port town on the Pacific, between Christchurch and Dunedin. I quickly learned it is a subgenre of science fiction that deploys Victorian steam technology to create unique art forms and experiences. (Or at least something like that.) Oamaru contains a museum devoted to steampunk that must be seen to be believed – welded sculptures, immersive mind trips, throwback machines, all in an elegant old building.
But Oamaru is more than that. The steampunk exhibition lies at the core of a perfectly preserved historical precinct, commemorating when the town was an important 19th-century port for the wool and grain trades. The area is teeming with galleries, small shops and cafés. It’s a great escape for the travel weary. And for the nature enthusiasts, a nearby viewing area – with bleachers seating – offers a chance to spy little blue penguins on their nightly march up the beach from their Pacific travels.
Oamaru is a gorgeous old port town on the Pacific that's famed for its steampunk museum and little blue penguins who make a nightly march up the beach.Supplied
Gore in the South Island: Travellers often take the far-south route as they circumnavigate the South Island, and it’s a beauty. But there is another road that crosses the island, just to the north, through less spectacular farm country.
That’s how you get to Gore, a thriving service town that bills itself as the Country Music Capital of New Zealand, mainly because of an annual festival. The Kiwis love country music.
The Gore district is thus New Zealand’s Appalachia and not just because of its fan base for Garth and Reba. A non-descript modern building houses the Hokonui Moonshine Museum, a monument to the glories of illicit, untaxed and unrestricted liquor trade.
The star of the show is Mary McRae, a 19th-century refugee from Scotland and matriarch of a clan of bootleggers whose products were beloved of farmers and patricians alike. She was a combination feminist icon and rule-breaking outlaw who captures the Kiwi identity. And the museum tour ends with a shot of modern-day whisky distilled – lawfully, we believe – on the site.
Waipu in the North Island: Waipu looks like a conventional market town lodged near a deep bay north of Auckland. But a one-storey building off the main drag tells a fascinating story of grit, ambition and absolutely mad blind faith. The Waipu museum is all about a world-roaming community of 19th-century Scots who, under the guidance of charismatic Calvinist preacher, Norman McLeod, left their native land in search of a better life. They found it in Nova Scotia, where they prospered for a while. Then, a spate of crop failures and disappointments broke their attachment to Cape Breton Island.
So, they moved again in the 1850s, first to Australia and then again to this remote bay in New Zealand. It is the story of almost 1,000 people locked in a cult of personality, undertaking a hop-scotch voyage over several continents, and thousands of kilometres, in search of God and prosperity. They finally found a lasting refuge in this town. The Waipu Scottish Migration Museum contains photos, maps and artifacts that tell this quixotic story.
Napier in the North Island: In 1931, an earthquake levelled the town of Napier on Hawke’s Bay on the eastern coast of the island. Hundreds were killed in the area and the town lay in ruins. As the leaders consulted architects about the rebuilding, there was a consensus that the new Napier be built in the style of the era – art deco. Thus emerged one of the finest assemblages of art-deco architecture in the world.
My wife and I were fortunate to land in Napier on the February weekend that celebrates its aesthetic provenance. Great timing. The festival features tours of many 1930s art-deco buildings at the town’s core; local folks dressed up as flappers and flashy gents; classic cars and vintage aircraft flybys.
Lush vineyards have made Hawke’s Bay a popular wine tourism region in New Zealand's South Island.Supplied
But on any occasion, one should visit MTG Hawke’s Bay, the combined museum, theatre and gallery at the heart of Napier, which features testimonies from earthquake victims – children at the time of the 1931 quake – and revelatory exhibitions that capture aspects of the rich Maori Indigenous history.
Not far away lie the lush vineyards that have made Hawke’s Bay the country’s second wine region after Marlborough in the South Island (with the Central Otago region on the rise, as well).
Hotels with character
New Zealand has preserved a bunch of historic hostelries that tell the story of its rich mining and farming past and the complex interplay of settler and Maori cultures. Consider the old hotel in Blackball, a ghostly coal mining town in the South Island, a detour off one of the highways between the east and west coasts.
The hotel is emblematic of the country’s struggle of labour versus capital, sitting at the site of a 1908 strike that gave birth to the New Zealand Labour Party (the party of former prime minister Jacinda Ardern). One of the strike’s firebrands was Montreal textile union organizer Harry Fitzgerald. The hotel was once cheekily called The Blackball Hilton until a certain global hotel chain heard about it and dispatched lawyers to force a renaming. So, the owners – cheekily, again – called it Formerly The Blackball Hilton, and that sign still hangs over its entrance. Don’t tread on Kiwi sensibilities
The oldest legal watering hole in New Zealand, the Duke of Marlborough Hotel, was once the favourite imbibing destination of rogues and rascals. It’s located in Russell, an early capital of the New Zealand colony, and formerly known as the Hell Hole of the Pacific for its rowdy ways. Today Russell is an elegant village with a splendid seaside boardwalk on the Bay of Islands in the north of the North Island, and a well-stocked museum that captures its colourful past. And the Marlborough is a fancy dining spot with a spacious patio.
Just across the wide bay sits the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, a UNESCO site, featuring a museum complex honouring the 1840 signing of a historic document by British and Maori leaders that, in a sense, created today’s New Zealand. The museum café, by the way, is excellent with exceptional mussels.
Russell and Waitangi represent the essence of the New Zealand experience – natural beauty and gastronomy, with a touch of quirk, captured in the lens of a complicated history.