Ben @ Paihia School: Amazing Wellington Camp

Kia ora, the year seven and eights have just been on an amazing trip to Wellington. We were there for a whole school week. We were lucky to have the people who accommodated us, they were very welcoming and kind. The trip was enjoyable and I had learnt a bunch of stuff down there, especially at Te papa and Parliament.

When we arrived at Parliament we sat down on the steps of the Parliament House. I noticed on the front there were three big letters engraved on the metal in the middle top of the front exterior. They were GRV, later I asked Erin (our educator) what they meant which I learnt what they stood for. King George the fifth (I have no idea where the K came from but the V is Roman numerals it stands for five). I also learnt what a whip does and that the Queen can’t come into the debating chamber nor any place in Parliament with a green carpet.

At Te papa there was an interesting exhibition about the battlefront of Gallipoli in WW1. It was mind blowing because in there, there were these massive sculptures of people, but the thing was, they looked really realistic (these sculptures had been made by Weta Workshop which I will talk about later). They almost looked as if they were real but they were frozen in time. You could see the sweat on their faces and the blood that was on them, one person even had a bullet wound in their arm but the man was still holding his pistol / revolver. The story behind that was, there was a man was leading the Wellington platoon and they had been charging up the hills, then he had been shot in the arm but he was determined to defeat the Ottoman and had lay down and kept shooting his gun at the Ottoman until he ran out of ammo or bled out to death. At nightfall he had been found by a medic and he was taken back to camp. He recovered and two months later he was back in action. He had led the Wellington platoon again and his platoon had captured somewhere up the hills. They had lost it after five days and had to keep retreating. Finally after eight months at Gallipoli and a furious battle he had been shot in the head from a Machine Gun. The bullet that killed him was from friendly fire.

We had gone up Mt Victoria for a view of Wellington and it’s pretty big compared to Paihia (by the way this isn’t in the order of where we went). Another place we went to was the zoo, and I loved most of the animals there, I wanted to take some home as pets but I couldn’t, plus it would’ve been hard to feed them. Before we even looked at any of the animals there was this man that showed us behind the scenes, like what the animals eat, I found out most the animals eat, vegetables. The man who’s in charge of what the animals eat is given about 5,000 dollars a day to feed the animals. Whatever meat he gives the animals it’s always the same thing; Horse meat because it’s cheap and the Horse meat is stored away at - 18 degrees celsius. After we had looked at all that stuff we had gone to pick up two handfuls of grass each and chucked it in a bucket. We had then proceeded to feed the Kunekune Pigs. Once we had finished that we could go and look at the animals.

We went to the National Library which holds special artifacts like the real Treaty Of Waitangi, New Zealand’s Declaration Of Independence and Kate Sheppard's Petition to have the right for women to vote. Did you know the suffrage petition was 270 m long? We had to go to the National Library twice because when we first walked there, the treaty was a replica but on Thursday the real one was there.

The Cable Cars were pretty cool especially in the tunnel because there were all these fairy lights that were going different colours every three seconds. After we had our little trip up the hill we walked into the Cable Car Museum. The Cable cars were made in 1902 but they were operated a lot differently from what they are now. Everything now is automated where as back then the driver had to be strong and have good grip. After we had learnt a bit we were then split into two groups, the groups were either making badges or making simple machines (like the pulley machine) with stuff that looked like Mechano. When we went to make the simple machines we were in, where the Winding Room was back when the Cable Cars were in the early stages of being built (the Winding Room is the control room basically but it doesn’t take full control of the Cable Car).

My first impression on the Westpac Stadium was WOW it’s big. We got to sit in some places we will probably never be able to go in ever again, like where the media reporters sit or where the TMO’s sit. The Westpac Stadium can hold up to 35,400 - 40,000 people. It can hold up 40,000 only if they bring out the foldable chairs. The Westpac Stadium was gifted a Springbok head because a few decades ago if the Springboks were beaten they gifted the team they were beaten by, a Springbok head. The place I enjoyed going the most, in the Westpac Stadium was the going down into where the players run out onto the field. We also walked into the changing room all I can say is, it stunk; badly.

On Tuesday night we had a student from the University that was right across the road. Her name was Tayla but she preferred to be called Aunty Tay. She gave us a tour of the University but before she did we played a ice breaker sort of game. We formed a circle and said our name with an action. My action was shrugging my shoulders because I didn’t know what to do, so that’s what made me choose that. She told us the story about Rata and why they had named a whole science research lab Rata. She had shown us her office and she felt very honoured to have a statue of Queen Victoria right outside her office. The University was named after Queen Victoria.

We had gone to Weta Workshop. It’s just amazing, mind blowing. They spend months upon months just making things for movies or something else like the giant sculptures at Te Papa. The designs they make may take longer because the director of the movie might change their minds and choose a different design. Weta Workshop has been invited to help in many famous movies such as, District 09, Avatar, Lord of The Rings and two of the Narnia films. When Weta Workshop had first started it wasn’t even named Weta Workshop; it wasn’t actually named anything, it was just a little workshop at the back of the founders apartment. The suburb that Weta Workshop is in, Miramar. Miramar is probably the only place in the world you could complete a really good movie within a mile and that’s because there’s other companies around Weta Workshop that do good editing and arranging and that sort of stuff also Weta Workshop.

Capital E! The exclamation mark isn’t out of excitement. It’s named that. What happened at Capital E!? We made a movie. The movie we made was about Parliament, and Jacinda Ardern banned the internet. I was a political forecaster. I don’t know why but it was really nerve racking for me and we had one practice run then we made it for real. I mucked up because of how nervous I was. Our end result is pretty good and I think it’s better than our ‘dress’ run.

Zealandia was a cool place because we saw cool things like an endangered skink, two Tuatara and even some Weta that were hiding inside of a tree which you physically had to open. Zealandia is also 98% pest free and that’s only because there’s some type of bird that keeps meaning to eat mice but they end up leaving them behind. How they keep all the pests out of Zealandia is the use a giant metal fence that goes underground and it has a little cap that prevents cats climbing up and jumping over. We heard a lot of Kiwi calling but sadly we didn’t get to see one, I don’t think we were ever going to see one anyway because Kiwi can pick up vibrations and because there were about 13 of us, our vibrations would’ve been pretty heavy for a Kiwi (or however Kiwi sense vibrations).

That’s everything that we had done. We were very privileged to go on this trip. We only had to pay $50, which is nothing to what the price of the trip was; 14,000 dollars. Our principal prepared a lot and put a lot of time and effort into making the trip work. Us year seven and eights basically did nothing except fundraise a bit of money, plus we had a generous donation of $10,000 from the Board Of Trustees.

That is all from me. Thank you if you read the whole post. Bye.

Here are some photos