NaBloPoMo 11 - Thursday Challenge - Boulders

The theme for this week's Thursday Challenge is "Hard" - rock, ice, brick, steel, cement.

Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington was the perfect place to find things for this week's challenge.

So here are my pics  (click on pics to enlarge)

The Boulders outside the Te Papa
These boulders were quite fascinating and interesting (see info below the pic) and the kids loved climbing on them. This is the beauty of New Zealand, allowing people to experience history hands on rather than behind fences or cordons. The kids were having a blast climbing on and off the boulders.

 (taken from Our Building - Boulders)

The three boulders symbolise our commitment to New Zealand's land and people. They represent:

  o Papatuanuku (Earth mother) - the middle stone

  o Tangata Whenua (Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand)

     - stone on right

  o Tangata Tiriti (people in New Zealand by right of the Treaty of Waitangi)

     - stone on left

The first two boulders are andesite lava that erupted from Mt Taranaki about 75,000 years ago. 

The third boulder is Karamea granite, an igneous rock (formed from a molten state). The granite is about 350 million years old and comes from the Oparara River, north of Karamea. Granite represents solidity and permanence. Its various colours symbolise the diversity of Tangata Tiriti in New Zealand.

The Ball inside the Entrance

The kids love playing with this ball. I had to wait a while in the hope that it would be clear of kids, but no such luck. In the end I think the kids just add to the photo even more. 

 (taken from Our building - The Ball)

The large ball inside the main entrance is called the Sponsorship Recognition Stone. It acknowledges Te Papa's founding sponsors. The stone:

• is 1.4 billion years old - the oldest material in Te Papa
• is made from gabbro (a coarse crystalline basalt often called Swedish Ebony Granite) from Transvaal, South Africa
• sits on a base stone of Indian Hassan Green Granite
• weighs 0.79 tonnes and measures 82cms in diameter

Low pressure water from a 500 litre tank provides the power to rotate the ball.

Here's a previous post on Rocks and Ripples, also appropriate for this challenge. This picture is taken at Oriental Bay, Wellington, New Zealand.

And zooming over from Wellington to New York, here is a pic of rocks at the edge  of the Hudson River taken on one of my visits to New York.

Linking to:
Thursday Challenge

  


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