The Cook Strait ferry sailed us to Picton on the South Island on January 21. Picton is the port city for arriving ferries from the north and where we stayed before driving to Christchurch the next day. We hurried to Christchurch to enjoy the fifty five acts performing in the 2014 World Buskers Festival. There were performers from ten countries in indoor and outdoor theatre style shows, ranging from stand–up comedy to cabaret to circus–arts performances.
The home-grown event continues to get bigger and bigger; thrilling and captivating audiences during the 10-day festival of fun, laughter and chaos. The world’s best street and stage performers turn New Zealand’s second-largest city into one big, brash street party.
Christchurch has a violent quake history. On 22 February 2011, a quake killed 181 people. Thousands more were made homeless, and an area more than four times the size of London’s Hyde Park was deemed uninhabitable. 1,500 buildings and 7,500 homes have been/are scheduled for demolition. The quake moved the ground north and south, so the utility infrastructure was torn at nearly every coupling. Less than three years later, the equipment that rattles about Christchurch’s gridded streets are a constant reminder of how far there is to go to recreate what was once there.
Until recently, you could look through the dusty windows of a closed down cafe and still see an untouched 22 February 2011 edition of the local newspaper. And while creative novelties such as a retail mall made entirely out of steel shipping containers draw increasing numbers of visitors, the city’s other main attraction is the battered and broken cathedral in the middle of the main square – a monument to what was endured.
