16 February 2018

On our last full day in Wellington we were anticipating rain, which never came, so we planned to spend it inside the Museum of New Zealand or Te Papa Tongarewa. The museum is free, except special exhibitions. The exhibits include Maori culture, natural science and history, New Zealand Wars, and WWI’s Gallipoli campaign.

It’s hard to beat The Great War Exhibition to learn about New Zealand’s involvement in WWI but Te Papa has an impressive exhibit, ‘Gallipolo: The Scale of Our War’. The exhibition features several larger than life representations of soldiers and nurses who contiributed to the war effort. We had never seen anything like it before.

The exhibits of Maori culture, the New Zealand Wars, and the effects of volcanos and earthquakes on New Zealand were similar in quality to the War Memorial Museum we visited 2 weeks ago in Auckland.

We got lucky. They had a special exhibit of Legos which our kids loved. We spent plenty of time marvelling at the Lego reproductions of iconic world structures.

The museum is located on the waterfront in the heart of Wellington so there were plenty of options when we finally left to grab dinner.

Gallipolo: The Scale of Our War