A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Christchurch - The Old Canterbury College
Canterbury College was established in 1873 and thus was the second university in New Zealand. (The University of Otago in Dunedin beat it by four years.) Over the years the college morphed into Canterbury University and outgrew it's quaint quarters in the old college. When the university finished moving to new quarters in 1974 the old campus was turned into the Christchurch Arts Center.
Our old friend from the cathedral project, Benjamin Mountforth, was the architect that designed most of Canterbury College structures and he did such a good job of capturing the spirit of Oxford University that John Godley would have been proud as punch. Godly was after all one of the men who had organized the Canterbury Association which had sent Mountforth off to Christchurch years before and had insisted that it be built as a traditional English community. (Godly had attended Oxford.)
Among the component parts of the Christchurch Art Center is the Canterbury Museum. This small museum has a superb collection of items related to the human heritage of Christchurch. Included in the collection is an original copy of Captain James Cook's "A Voyage Towards The South Pole and Round The World."
