Street View New Zealand Roundup
Friday, 5th December 2008 by Alex Turnbull
With this week's launch of Street View for New Zealand we thought it was time for a quick roundup of the best Street View sights we've posted on our Twitter page over the past week. We've found several things to see in New Zealand so far:
- The world's largest Kiwi fruit is in New Zealand of course.
- Middle Earth's Mount Doom (aka New Zealand's Mount Ngauruhoe)
- Could this be the world's largest dog and sheep?
- Looking into the crater of Mt Eden, Auckland.
- From our previous post on Zorbing in NZ, here's some zorbuses on top of the hill:
Whilst elsewhere in the world we've seen:
- The Castlemaine XXXX Factory from the label is now on street view
- It's alright mate, nobody's watching you painting that wall
- Jimi Hendrix rocks Seattle
- After a slow morning taking pictures of Florida, the Google Driver skives off
- A caged Polar Bear on the streets of France
- The World's largest baseball bat outside the Louisville Slugger Museum
- And finally, have you ever wondered what happens when the Street View car gets rained on? Well now you know!
If you'd like more sights like this, then subscribe to our twitter feed!
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Unfortunately, the world’s largest spoon is in Minneapolis, as we’ve seen here before. So how the hell are we supposed to eat that Kiwi fruit?
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time looking around my hometown of Christchurch, N.Z. on the new street view. Apparently it took around a year to do all of the city. Christmas decorations are up in the town centre (Christmas is in summer here), while in other parts of the city and on the Port Hills there is snow on the ground! Perhaps he funniest thing I have found so far is the scooter shop just round the corner from my house. In one view it’s all brown and dingy and boarded up before it became a scooter shop, and then if you click one arrow closer it turns bright yellow and is filled with scooters – obviously several months between these consecutive shots! View Placemark,,0,5 Also, the older shot is in winter, because the trees back down the street have no leaves, but if you go the one step forward all the trees are in summer bloom. It’s so much fun 🙂
The World’s largest sheep, Rambo the big merino ram, can be found at Goulburn, Australia. It doesn’t show in GE because it was being relocated at the time of the photo. You may be able to see it on Google Maps though. It’s pretty impressive, for a sheep.
Close to the zorbs (I can’t get the logic of ‘zorbuses’) is a pretty big ram: https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=-38.083314,176.192143&z=17&layer=c&cbll=-38.083359,176.192524&cbp=12,229.8855162588659,,0,13.587978283930287
It doesn’t look as big as the Big Merino but maybe this is the world’s largest ram visible in Street View?
@ dr. R.
The Big Merino IS visible on Street View!
http://tinyurl.com/6lx52l
15 metres tall? How utterly awesome.
Ah, that is good news! This gave me hope that the World’s biggest banana is also visible in Street View, and indeed, it is! https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=-30.273829,153.133729&z=17&layer=c&cbll=-30.274833,153.133979&cbp=12,259.5603476141698,,0,-1.8993342245961782 Hallelujah!
Since I live in NZ, I went searching for some landmarks to show the rest of the world.
Giant fruit salad when entering Cromwell: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map A bull on wheels in the town of Bulls: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Giant trout in Gore (unfortunately the car didn’t go down the street with the best view): http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Giant bottle of Lemon and Paeroa (NZ specific soft drink) in the town of Paeroa: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map One drink is never enough: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Kamikaze plane near Wigram airbase in Christchurch: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Another plance near Christchurch international airport: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Moving statue in central Christchurch. The red structures at the top rotate and move apart from each other periodically: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Artwork the Chalice in Christchurch city square: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Poor view of a 9/11 memorial made of twisted metal beams from the World Trade Center towers: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map The Bridge of Remembrance which commemorates those who fought in the 1st World War and a few earlier ones: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map Take a stroll past the beautiful Christchurch art gallery: http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-apla-nz-google-gm&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=map
There are heaps more, but I’ve already procrastinated enough!
Why are the streetview windows so narrow? They’re only a tiny strip of the window. That doesn’t make for comfortable cruising around.
Also, Petra’s links don’t seem to work for me. I just get a map of New Zealand.
I can’t seem to get my links to work now, even when I found the right link to copy they don’t got into street view, just map view. So sorry, I can’t update my above post which is a real pain because it took me a good hour to compile 🙁
@koen – could you post a link that doesn’t work? I can try and diagnose…
@Petra, I have emailed you separately about your issue creating street view links.
Hi Alex,
Every streetview link has the same behaviour:
http://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kiwibn7.jpg
This is on Opera, but IE did the same thing.
Hi Koen, I’ve fixed that issue with Opera. Thanks for letting us know.