Come the school holidays, what’s good to see in Auckland? My answer, aged 11, a visitor from the provinces, was MOTAT. MOTAT and LynMall.
These were two places I had never heard of, had no idea they existed. Inside two minutes they had me captivated.
MOTAT. What a revelation. Technology and transport, and a living piece of Auckland in the middle of the nineteenth century: steam engines; grimy blacksmiths working their forge; soldiers in uniform; wretches in irons; women in hooped skirts, women churning butter; vivid life. I had never seen the like. I could not get enough.
