Last year my family and I had an epic holiday that took in Tokyo, a few places in eastern Australia and the North Island of New Zealand. Our base in New Zealand was the town of Whanganui. This destination was chosen as friends moved out there to run a holiday park. When we were there they were recovering from the biggest floods in a century that had submerged some of the park, but I think it's all restored now.
You can see that the grass is still recovering from the flood.
Whanganui feels like a small town to us, but it's actually fairly big for New Zealand at over 40,000 people. It has some cool old buildings including their Royal Opera House and various art deco shops in the centre. The museum is fun with great maori relics and a collection of moa (giant extinct bird) remains.
I found some cool graffiti around the back of some buildings.
We drove across town to the beach. It wasn't good conditions for swimming as it was winter, but it was spectacular with magnetic(!) black sand and epic driftwood. I think the locals get their firewood there.
Over the town looms the memorial tower with a great view. You can normally reach this via an elevator within the hill, but that wasn't operational that day.
The hill is obviously a prime location with some spectacular houses.
New Zealand has lots of birds that we'd never see at home including the pukeko that looks like a giant coot.
We had a great time. Would love to go back some time, but it's such a long way away!