Neighborhood Meanderings and Coincidences

While Bob and I are in Auckland, Auckland is a large city of approximately 1.7 million, so to be more specific we are staying in the Mount Albert neighborhood of Auckland. It is a lovely residential area with lots of schools. While we have had really only two days of exploring, we have had a number of coincidences in meeting people or places that remind of us of home or places we’ve just visited.

First coincidence — about the only thing we left the house for on our first full day here was to go check out the local community center (YMCA) that our home owner had recommended and pick up some groceries. At the rec center the woman who met with us was born in China, raised in New Zealand, and studied at UW Green Bay! She took an immediate liking to us and introduced us to a young woman from California who has been in New Zealand for 5 years.

On Friday, the rain stopped, so we got out to do more exploring. We thought we should start in “our” hood, so we walked to a historical home called Alberton that we had read about. It was built by Allen Kerr Taylor, a Scotsman who had emigrated to New Zealand after marrying a woman in India who was of mixed ancestry. They weren’t accepted in either India or Scotland, so they came to New Zealand to start anew. The home was originally built as a farmhouse but was later expanded to an 18 room mansion as his wealth (and family) grew. It is now a museum but also serves as an event space for weddings, etc.

From the Alberton home, we summited Mount Albert which was just a couple of blocks from the home and used to be part of Mr. Taylor’s estate. It also used to be larger. The top half of the original mountain was removed for quarrying. The top now has large green spaces, a couple of soccer fields, and what seemed to be an empty pasture. It seemed to be a popular place to take dogs.

Bob found us a great pathway for our walk about. A treeway actually. It was lovely and made you feel far removed from the city. Signage stated that is a recovering green corridor to protect two threatened ecosystems– lava flow forest and wetland. Yep, not in Texas anymore.

The second coincidence on Friday was that we discovered the neighborhood next to ours is called Morningside which is also the name of the college where Bob and I got our undergraduate degrees. Bob was doing some research on a place to try for a drink and noted that there was a Morningside Tavern in that area (about a 25 minute walk from the house). We decided we had to try it just because of the name but then especially when the website showed that they made cocktails. However, it became mandatory that we go when the tavern website explained the origin of the name Morningside.

Third coincidence– Morningside is named after a nickname of Allen Kerr Taylor (he of the Alberton house fame, see above)! Allen’s older brothers also came to New Zealand but bought land in other parts of Auckland that they felt were far superior to the area where Allen was buying land. In fact they thought he was crazy to buy the then swampy land and called Allen “Morningside” after an Edinburgh suburb known for its lunatic asylum. After proving them wrong and succeeding in his businesses, he embraced the name and used it for this area of Auckland when he was dividing up his estate. (Note the coincidence here is that we had just been at this guy’s house to appreciate this story, not that our college was in any way similar to a lunatic asylum.)