Dateline:Saturday 16th March: A Sunny Day in Christchurch - The Botanical Gardens and the Story of a Ship Called the Erebus

The Botanical Gardens are expansive and include a colourful 100metre long Herbaceous Border that contains almost all the plants and shrubs I have in my own garden but rather better cared for and laid out! There is also a large Rose Garden, but the real glory of the Gardena is its magnificent display of trees both native and from all over the world. In this respect the Gardens are more akin to an Arboretum.

Among the many splendid specimens is a Giant Sequoia (Red Wood) which has grown to almost the same height as those in its native habitat in the USA. Our Guide suggested that he reason this Red Wood is doing so well is the high water table.

Another interesting specimen is a tree presented to the Gardens from Nagasaki in Japan (Christchurch is twinned with Nagasaki).  It has been grown from material from one of only three trees that survived the Atom Bomb and now grows alongside a Japanese Peace Bell.

I mentioned in a previous Post that there was a connection between a feature in these Gardens and a book I bought to read whilst on my travels. The Guide pointed out a small green building and mentioned that Scot and Shackleton had both called into Christchurch to check the accuracy of their compasses using the instruments housed in this building.  We were speeding along in a Buggy at the time but if you look on the extreme left of the photo about two-thirds of the way down the left-hand side you might be able to spot the end green wall of this feature.

 So, what's the connection? The building was set up by Sir James Ross – he of the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic – in the Southern Oceans in the mid 1850s to map the Earth's Magnetic Field and enable accurate resetting of compasses between True and Magnetic South.  The full history is set out in a book entitled 'Erebus – The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin. It has proved to be a real page turner for me.

There is a second connection between this book or rather the ship the Erebus and New Zealand.  Whilst exploring what is now known as the Ross Ice Shelf in the Erebus Ross and his crew discovered a Volcano which they named after the ship Mount Erebus (Erebus from the Latin means 'Hellish' but you will have to read the book to understand the full significance of the name Erebus). Sadly, in November 1979 Air New Zealand flight 901 crashed into Mt Erebus with the loss of 250 lives. Another extraordinary coincidence arising from the mention of a small green, rather nondescript building on a March afternoon in 2024 and a book bought quite by chance!