Saluted for each 96 years
A pause, a command, a bang ... 96 times.
Echoing into a rare still night, cannon fire broke a solemn silence on Wellington’s waterfront as children in puffer jackets, mums with ear muffs and silver-haired folk with thick glasses gathered to honour the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
She may have died more than 18,000 kilometres away but Wellingtonians arrived in their hundreds yesterday to see the New Zealand Defence Force pay tribute to their late monarch, firing a shot for every year of her life.
Photographers were perched on the nearby dive platform, and families with young children, students and people leaving work quietly stood as the shots rang out for exactly 16 minutes.
Colleen Singleton said she was ‘‘staggered’’ to see the number of people who gathered for the event. She attended ‘‘out of respect for the Queen – a wonderful woman’’.
‘‘I remember when her father died and when she was crowned. It will be a part of my life forever.’’
Former army Major Sam Stevenson was there with his 6-year-old daughter, Rose, and their basset hound, Bletch.
Rose Stevenson had put her special rose perfume and pineapple clip-on earrings on ‘‘for the Queen’’.
Bletch, a hunting dog, was ‘‘not gun shy at all’’, Sam Stevenson said.
‘‘But it is lucky no-one played the bagpipes or he would have started howling.’’
The formalities in the capital will continue tomorrow at the Beehive, where there will be short Cabinet and Executive Council meetings, then the Proclamation of Accession ceremony on the steps of Parliament.