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EXPLORING the city centre, it was a totally different place to what I had remembered back in the days when I lived here. The streets were still familiar, but following the 2011 earthquake, most of the high rise buildings I had used as landmarks had been completely removed. All that remained were large excavation pits where the foundations of new buildings were being laid, or largely abandoned car parks with artistic murals covering the otherwise drab walls of the surrounding buildings that had survived.
In the late afternoon I headed into the botanical gardens, framed by the city to the east, and the crystal clear waters of the Avon River swiftly flowing around its northern, western and southern boundaries.
Unlike the rest of the city, the gardens seemed largely untouched by the earthquakes, with the enormous trees planted here in the 1800s still standing, and the vegetation still brightly radiant with the brilliant colours of the late summer. The exotic deciduous trees provided shelter for the native trees and shrubs growing underneath in the tranquility under the bright evening sun.
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