Photos from the trip home

The Taieri Gorge train stopped on the way back to dump all of its icecream on the afternoon train, which had already consumed fearful amounts of it (and was packed with Japanese tourists who looked like they regarded Dunedin as being unpleasantly warm despite the airconditioned carriages).

This is the coach swap happening a little way north of Timaru. Ritchies’ reputation preceded them, so we weren’t looking forward to this.

This is the rack full of PCs at Base in Christchurch, and below is a shot of te Linux-based router controlling them all.

The Internet system was operated by small pre-paid tickets which allowed you to log in to an XP session, and kicked you off when your time expired. There was no continuity and from what I could see the system was set up to do a quick reimage on logout.

A UTP cable taped to the floor of the Internet room led away to one of the dorms, so I suspect that (given the unlocked rack door) bypassing the PCs with your own laptop and cable would not exactly be rocket science.

This was a truly ornate fountain on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens in Christchurch. There were many nice plants in evidence — as one would expect — so I’ll take time to cull out some pictures of those for you later.

This was a simple and obvious fitting in the Christchurch Airport departure lounge which I don’t see in Australian airports. It requires no paperwork or money for access, and works for all races, creeds, genders etc. I guess if the Aussies do implement these, they’ll have a coin-slot and a boarding-pass reader.

Transferring from International to Domestic within Sydney Airport took us past some repair hangers. Master Six was very impressed by the size of all of the gear. Not much else leaped out and said “photograph me!” in the two hours I had there.

Here is some of the excellent cloudscape which presented itself to the fading sun on the way across New South Wales towards home.