Free Public transport day

On Sunday the 23rd of June Auckland City had a free public transport day in celebration of reaching 100 million public transport trips in the preceding 12 months. This is a great achievement and shows all the hard work to create a completely new bus route system combined with the new electric trains is working as more and more people are using public transport to get around our city, including me to and from work.

An interesting fact is that Auckland previously had 100 million trips within 12 months on public transport all the way back in 1950, 69 years ago when the population was only 350,000!! and not the 1.6 million people we have in Auckland now; clearly shows what a busy tram network Auckland had before it was unfortunately dismantled.

So with all public transport free, this was a great opportunity to take the whole family out into the city, I am a regular public transport user but the rest of the family are not.

I had two main concerns that I was really worried about.

1. The weather which was supposed to rain (and it didn’t!!)

2. Not getting a double decker bus into the City from New Lynn, as I knew the boys would enjoy being up the top of a double decker bus.

We were going to head into the city around 10am, but at 8-30am I noticed that the weather was supposed to get worse later in the day so we all rushed out the door quickly and were at the New Lynn train station by 9am hurriedly saying goodbye to my mother who had stayed the night before. Talk about amazing luck we arrived just as a double decker bus was about to leave – so a quick 10 metre dash and we were all aboard a double decker bus – so my second worry was solved – the boys got to ride a double decker bus !!

There were a couple of people sitting in the very front seats upstairs, but Luke just joined one of them with no worries and Julianne, Robin and I sat in the row behind until he got off halfway through the trip when Robin joined Luke. The boys enjoyed the view from above as we traveled into the city including going past MOTAT. Luke liked to think that he was sitting on the drivers head.

We arrived at Victoria St in the city and headed over towards the Maritime Museum which was the activity we planned to do in the city, but on the way we talked about visiting Devonport on the ferry and we decided to change our plans and head out on the ferry now – before the weather got bad especially as Julianne gets sea-sick very easily.

So when we got to the waterfront, we turned right and headed to the ferry terminal instead of the maritime museum and as there were no crowds we easily board a ferry which was about to depart at around 10am. Again it was up to the top, this time an outdoor roof and grabbed a great spot up the front so the boys could see where we were going as we headed across the harbour on our 10 minute trip ferry trip, and still no problems with the weather it was just overcast.

As we walked along the wharf at Devonport I realised we had left our umbrella on the ferry, I ran back but it was just leaving. I asked at the counter and they said they would try and find it when the ferry returns.

We strolled over to the park and shops near the wharf. First up was the playground for Luke, who especially liked the steep twisty slide, through initially he was too scared to go down it but he finally got his courage up, and he loved it.

Julianne has spotted a second hand book shop across the road so that became our next stop, and what an impressive array of second hand books but they were quite expensive – I suppose that is Devonport. Luke got a Winnie-the-Pooh story book that had puzzles in it, and Robin four commando comic magazines. We then headed over to the new library to have a nosy around then as it was getting close to 11.30 we decided it was time to jump back on the ferry and head back to the city for lunch.

This is when we realised how lucky we had been in starting out early this morning and deciding to go on the ferry to Devonport before doing anything else as the queue to get back on the ferry was long and kept getting longer. We ended up being in the queue for around 20 minutes and had to wait for not the first but the second ferry. The people who joined the queue after us would have ended in the queue for a long time and had to wait for multiple ferries. This ferry ride was spent inside the ferry as it was beginning to drizzle and we wanted to get off quickly as we were all getting hungry. There was also a very long queue in Auckland City for the ferry to Devonport, and to think we jumped on the ferry quickly with no queue only an hour or so earlier.

Board Luke while in the queue for the ferry

Also good news on the umbrella front, as on returning to the information counter I was able to pick up my umbrella which had been located on the ferry.

Two bored boys with the queue back along the wharf to the shore.

By the time we got off the ferry it was 12.30 and everyone was getting quite hungry. The original plan was to go to the sushi train for lunch but on arrival we found out there was a queue – the public transport day was certainly making the city busy!

So we headed back to Britomart for Better Burgers for the family and a kebab for me. We ate our lunch watching all the people going past at the Britomart train station – it was like a rush hour work day not a Sunday afternoon – it was great to see.

After lunch both Julianne and I were tired and we both had headaches so were tempted to head on home, but on asking the boys what they wanted to do was a resounding ‘Maritime Museum’.

So we headed down to the Maritime Museum and spent a fun several hours exploring and learning about New Zealand’s Maritime history. Robin especially enjoyed spending time with Julianne going through a number of the exhibits while Luke just wanted to get into everything.

Robin and Julianne learning about Polynesian maritime history

Helping Robin complete a kids activity sheet

Robin and Luke have spelt their names using flags.

I especially enjoyed an America’s Cup computer game which required 6 people to play and another family joined us to get a full crew. The first 2 times we were disqualified but by the third time I had the system worked out – I took the tactician role working out where we needed to head in regards to where the wind was coming from and giving directions to Robin who was the helmsman while Julianne and Luke worked as grinders and we got the end of the course – a lot of fun.

We finished the museum around 4pm and headed back to Britomart for the train trip home, and Britomart was still humming which was great to see.

It was a long day, but we successfully got a ride on a double decker bus, ferry and a train and unlike most other holidays, today was full of random ideas and choosing things to do on the fly which was not at all like me but was a lot of fun. Also the weather turned out to be great for most of the day.

Blog