The central station and its surrounds in Auckland is called Britomart. Not, as you may reasonably suppose, an English supermarket, but a district. It was called after Fort Britomart, which was named after HMS Britomart, the navy ship that did the first survey of the harbour in 1841, way before they had supermarkets.  Actually it was the third HMAS Britomart – there were 7 in all, starting in 1805 and the last being a minesweeper sunk in 1944.

Of course that doesn’t explain why the Brits called a navy ship after a type of shop that was to be invented over 100 years later.  Actually they didn’t.  They named it after the Minoan goddess of Mountains and Hunting – Britomartis.  The Greeks followed the Minoans and associated Britomartis with a nymph (an oread to be exact).  The Cretans worshipped Britomartis as the ‘good virgin’.

Well not so good in the virgin department actually, since she had the demonic features of a Gorgon, held double edged axes and was surrounded by divine snakes (all of which goes a long way to explain why she’s still a virgin after 3,000 years) .  The dastardly Cretans just called her a good virgin to fool everyone into thinking she was a nice lady.  Just like a warship.

Obvious, yes?

Most of Britomart was underwater originally, and is reclaimed land, but now only the railway platforms are below sea level.

Which makes them really dark of course. However some clever use of reflected light has made the station platforms into a landscape of interesting contrasts. The ceiling has a few holes (the Romans would have called them Oculi) whereby the sun shines onto suspended reflective spheres. The walls have spotlights trained on the spheres. The result being a lot of direct and indirect lighting.

In addition to the roof lighting the bollards along the platforms, as well as most of the supporting pillars, are made of shiny steel, thus collecting and reflecting all incident light.

The result is diffused light, very pleasant, in what would otherwise be a dingy basement.

Add to this the trains being electric rather than diesel, and the carriages spotless, and you have an enjoyable train experience.

Which, in our case, included learning from a Maori cyclist that Sally was called ‘whaea’, which means ‘honoured Grandma’.  Sally liked the honoured bit.