We had a good night’s sleep and woke fairly early to a dreary and rainy morning. Pooh. Virtually all our plans today are for outdoors, so we are sort of in a pickle here. But, we figure we’ll just hang out, drink our coffee and wake up for a while and maybe the weather will change – this is New Zealand after all – the weather changes constantly.
We finally make our way out of the apartment around 10:30 and decide to reverse our planned route by starting with the Clapham’s National Clock Museum in the Town Basin. At least we’ll be inside, and hopefully the weather will be better once we’re done.
We successfully navigate our way into town (a feat I’m very proud of, thank you), and make it to the clock museum easily enough. The parking is crazy – it’s a Sunday morning after all – and we end up finally finding a space a fair walk away from the entrance. But it’s not raining anymore, so at least that is a bonus.
The museum is amazing. The staff lovely, giving us a wonderful overview and tour of the different clocks and music boxes. Archibald Clapham was given a music box by his father when he was young, which became fascinated with anything mechanical after that. He left England for New Zealand when he was young, played soccer for the national team, and went on to buy property in the Whangarei area as he began to collect his clocks. He originally displayed them in his house, and invited anyone in to see them. The collection was later purchased by the Whangarei council after which they opened the museum, in 1962. There are over 1300 clocks and time pieces on display now. And they are truly fascinating.
The first area we enter contains the tower clocks, which give you a good idea of how a pendulum clock works. There is also a display of clocks from a recent youth competition, where children were asked to use recycled items to create their masterpieces. I absolutely love the one that uses old nescafe instant coffee wrappers. But the robo/metric boy clock is also amazing.
Around the corner, the museum stretches out down a long narrowish room, totally stuffed with all sorts of clocks on both sides of the walls and in displays in the center of the room. The displays are set up in categories – there is a wall of cuckoo clocks, where we get a lesson in how the cuckoo sound is made, it’s these little odd valve like things that are lifted and overturned when it is time to chime…
..there are the old time clocks where you literally “punch” your time by your employee number and it is “punched” on a roll of paper inside the clock….
…an entire wall of the pendulum clocks…
…the mechanical clocks, like this steam engine clock, and the rolling ball clock, both of which just fascinate me…
Then there are the novelty clocks. They are just adorable and fun, and interesting. There’s a Punch and Judy clock, plus this teacher clock where the teacher’s arm moves up and down (almost like smacking the students with a ruler), the bird cage clocks, and the best – a Maori clock that was recreated in 1974 from a kit, but in the medieval fashion of a “flying pendulum.” It’s amazing enough that we took a video.
Really a great visit – you wouldn’t think it would be interesting, but it truly is.
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