Beyond the Edge Beyond the Bar: 13.21 Wellington: The Windy City Plus

21.A Water, Father, Boy on a Toy, All in a Wellington Winter's Day, 3 June 2013

Last weekend was the Queen’s Birthday weekend in New Zealand. The first Monday in June is observed in New Zealand and Great Britain (among other places) as the Queen’s Birthday. It is a holiday. Queen Elizabeth II was crowned on 2 June 1953. So this year happens to include the sixtieth anniversary of her coronation and the sixtieth occasion for observing her birthday as queen.

Jean and I chose to travel to Wellington this weekend not to participate in any of the observances. Anyway, there were no obvious observances other than closed businesses and shortened shopping hours. We simply wanted to see the capital.

We weren’t disappointed. We came by train and perhaps in a subsequent post I’ll expatiate on that journey in New Zealand. But today I’d like to simply provide a record of our initial impressions of the capital city.

If nothing else, Wellington is windy or usually so. Photo 21.B, below, depicts a sign we saw somewhere in Welly, I believe on Mt Victoria, which is in the city. The windiness is almost inevitable given the capital’s spot in the world. For one thing the latitude of the city puts it in the ‘Roaring Forties’, that belt of bluster that circles the Southern Hemisphere between 40 and 50 degrees latitude south. At this particular latitude only New Zealand, Tasmania, and the far tip of South America obstruct the wind blowing from west to east over the open waters of the seas. Little land impedes the Roaring Forties from being a relentless raceway of wind.

And given that Wellington is at the far southern end of the North Island, sitting adjacent to the Cook Strait, which separates North from South, I imagine the windiness is enhanced by a funneling effect between the islands. On over half the days annually, average wind speeds will exceed 30 mph, or so we were told.

We stayed in a hotel, the Kingsgate, where friends had stayed earlier in the year. They especially commended the location for its being near the national government's executive and legislative buildings. Photos 21C thru E show the main buildings. There are many others. Free tours of the parliamentary complex are on offer every day, but we didn’t set aside time to take advantage of them. Ours was a whirlwind stay. We can’t begin to suggest how anyone else might spend two full days in the capital. But here’s a report of what we did.

We arrived by train on Saturday shortly before 7 PM and settled into our hotel room after shopping at the railway station’s great little New World supermarket. The following morning after breakfast in our room (thanks to the visit to the supermarket), we headed to church. The previous evening we’d noted that the Anglican St Paul’s Cathedral was but two blocks from our hotel (As we subsequently learned, the Catholic cathedral was just a bit further). The foundation stone for St Paul’s Cathedral was laid by Queen Elizabeth in 1954, upon her first visit to New Zealand. The cathedral was built in three stages over the following years, the last stage — the building of the tower — also being inaugurated by the queen (Photo 21.G). Because of lessons learned from the 1931 Napier earthquake, the cathedral was made of reinforced concrete. The building has a solid feel about it. The acoustics are good. The organ and its playing were splendid. Alas, no more than twenty percent of the pew seats were occupied. On the plus side, there were families with kids coming to church on a Sunday morning.

After church we walked to Old St Paul’s, which no longer serves as the home of a worshiping congregation. Following the occupation of the first stage of New St Paul’s, the church authorities intended to sell Old St Paul’s. But there was such a hue and cry, Old St Paul’s was preserved. The land is now owned by the national government. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is charged with maintaining the structure and keeping it open to the public. Old St Paul's is a wooden structure (Photo 20.I). Wood was chosen over brick because the founders considered wood safer than brick in the event of earthquakes. Wellington is built in an area of active faults. Kiwis thought the next ‘Big One’ would hit Wellington, but as we all know the Big One hit where least expected — in Christchurch (See post 13.13). While the wooden church has endured, it had to be expanded laterally in its very early years to secure the structure against the buffeting of Wellington’s winds.

Besides wedding services conducted at Old St Paul’s when the premises are hired, Old St Paul’s hosts one annual service on the Sunday of the US Memorial Day weekend. A force of 20,000+ Marines was stationed in New Zealand during World War 2 to the common advantage of New Zealand (whose young men were serving in North Africa and the likes) and the USA (which needed a strategic foothold in the Southwest Pacific). The wreaths placed in Old St Paul’s are tokens of the remembrance and gratitude that Kiwis give for the presence of the Marines during the war (Photo 21.J).

After a Sunday lunch at a pub in downtown Welly we took advantage of the cable car service up to the city’s botanical gardens. The Wellington Cable Car has been running since 1902. It’s the most elaborate of the city's cable railways, with three tunnels and three bridges (which can be viewed in this YouTube video). But it’s not alone. There are over 400 cable railways in the city, most rather modest single-rail affairs leading up to homes that would otherwise be inaccessible. Wellington, like San Francisco (its sister city), is very hilly. But then much of New Zealand, especially the North Island, is hilly where it's not outright mountainous.

Before Sunday was over Jean and I attended a production of Midnight in Moscow, a play by Dean Parker, set in 1947 at New Zealand’s Moscow legation. The play and production were very good. The play is about friendship and loyalty and misplaced dreams. Midnight in Moscow was performed at the Circa Theatre, which is a small neighbor of the huge Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s national museum. We visited Te Papa the next day, on Monday.

But first on Monday we took an excellent guided bus tour of Wellington. We caught it near the building where Wellington’s i-Site (or information center) is housed. Photo 21.N captures that building. I include the photo not for its architectural interest (if any) but because it illustrates the winter fate of native southern beech trees on the left and imported deciduous trees, which defoliate in winter. The New Zealand landscape is green year around (droughts aside), except where exotic species have been introduced. Why bring in the exotics? That's a question for another day, but not here.

I won’t give a running account of the tour. I have included a number of cityscape pictures. From its very beginning Wellington reserved land to be kept as ‘bush’, covered with native plant life. So amidst all the housing, schools, offices, shops, and so forth you’ll find broad stretches of green. The town’s harbor, which used to be adjacent to the central business district ('CBD'), was re-established at a container yard (Photo 21.U), thereby allowing the CBD waterfront to be redeveloped. Old customs houses and cargo sheds have become venues for museums, restaurants, and shops. Open areas have been developed into ‘squares’. And all this has been populated with sculpture, kid-friendly playgrounds, much of it touched with whimsy, even a pair of public toilets made to look like lobster tails.

In touring about we were taken to a section of Wellington now known as ‘Wellywood’. Wellywood is just past the city airport (Photo 21.R). The airport is about 300 meters shy of being able to handle the really long-distance international flights. That's one reason all such flights operate in and of Auckland. Just south of the airport one encounters a Hollywood-like sign that ought to read ‘Wellywood’, not ‘Wellington’ (Photo 21.S). For south of the airport is the so-named district now drawing, reportedly, 4000 workers involved in New Zealand’s film industry. That industry has rightly become a source of pride as well as income.

After lunch at an Italian place on the waterfront, we visited the New Zealand Portrait Gallery (in an old warehouse). Then we visited the Wellington City & Sea Museum, which provides splendid insight into the history of this city on the sea. And finally we visited Te Papa. We only saw a small portion of Te Papa. All these museums provide free admission, which is generally customary in New Zealand. Only the Andy Warhol special exhibit at Te Papa required paid admission (NZ$17.50 per adult). Te Papa could be visited many times without exhausting its treasures. Of the three we visited, my favorite was the City & Sea Museum.

Somewhere near the street depicted in Photo 21.Y we visited Smith the Grocer Café, where both Jean and I ordered chai lattés. Not only were the lattés delicious but the barista knew how to spell… in cinnamon. With that this brief excursion to Wellington is over. We flew back north Tuesday morning and hope to return some day.

Warm regards,

Tim (& Jean)

PS. A subsequent visit to Wellington, in 2015, is reported in this blogpost.