Museum of Transport & Technology
This museum 6 km (4 miles) west of Auckland is a fantastic place for anyone with a technical bent, offering not only a fascinating collection of vehicles, telephones, cameras, locomotives, steam engines, and farm equipment but also a tribute to Kiwi ingenuity. The aviation collection includes the only surviving Solent flying boat. One of the most intriguing exhibits is the remains of an aircraft built by New Zealand aviation pioneer Robert Pearse. There is a reproduction of another he built, in which he made a successful powered flight around the time the Wright brothers first took to the skies. The flight ended inauspiciously when his plane crashed into a hedge. But Pearse, considered a wild eccentric by his farming neighbors, is recognized today as a mechanical genius. MOTAT, as the museum is called, also has the scooter that former prime minister Helen Clark once rode.
