A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Christchurch - Canterbury Museum
Dioramas are usually not my cup of tea, but the Canterbury Museum has a number of them that are very educational if you know as little as I do about the lifestyle of the Maori people. I spent a particularly long time in front of the scene below which depicts a Maori hunter about to spear a Moa. Even after weeks in New Zealand and frequent reference to these now extinct flightless birds in every museum that we visited, I still have trouble imagining a bird that could reach twelve feet in height and weigh up to five hundred pounds. The Moa thing aside, it was also interesting to compare the Maori lifestyle to that of the American Indian.
