WELLINGTON - NEW ZEALAND

1st - 4th August 2011

The city sign from the 1980s.

By commuter train in less than two hours from Masterton to Wellington, or Whaganui-a-Tara as it was called before the Brits occupied it. The capital city is renowned for it's winds due to the channelling effect of the Cook Strait between the north and south islands. It was flat calm when I got there, thankfully. I think the 'nuclear free' bit reached it's climax when the French blew up Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985. Understandably the Kiwis had become a bit pissed off with the Americans, French and Brits exploding there nuclear fireworks relatively nearby in the South Pacific. This ( above ) sign was later ceremoniously broken in half and discarded, but I suspect they are still not too happy with having a nuclear testing ground so close. It makes the fish glow.

Left: A view, looking north-west from the look-out point on Mt Victoria. As you can see it is not a big city, much smaller than Auckland, and easily walkable. It has the dubious distinction of sitting right over the Pacific/Australian tectonic plate fault line. It is well prepared for an earthquake and it was considered surprising when Christchurch, not this place, was substantially wrecked by a series of quakes last year and earlier this.

Right: A view south-east from the same spot over the airport. Approaches from and departures in this direction must be 'challenging', passing between plenty of high ground and often in howling gales and with associated turbulence.
Just to the left of this pic are the 'Weta' studios of film director Peter Jackson ( Lord of the Rings, amongst many others ). He is a staunch Wellingtonian who, I was told, has resolutely refused to be lured into Hollywood and has made NZ a respected success in the film world. Hollywood now comes to him, as his studio has a big reputation for engineering, special effects and props etc. A weta is a large cricket-like insect unique to NZ. Talking of 'airt', there were many colourful wind-powered statues around this bay which moved or spun and made funny noises in the breeze, and even a 50 ft high pointy thing with a big ball on the end which tilted as a wind direction indicator. I had hit a rare period when these 'objets' were having a rest. 

The city features many old British favourites such as this ( working ) telephone kiosk and post-box ( left ).

Do you remember those old giant tomato shaped squeezy ketchup dispensers which disappeared from UK caffs around the 1970s? Well, I've found them. They didn't disappear, they all emigrated over here! I saw lots. How nostalgic.

Right: The cable car from the city centre up the hill to a smart residential area, Kelburn Park. It was built in 1903 on the 'funicular' principle. The journey takes about 10 minutes and ends at a cable car museum and the top entrance to the Botanic Gardens.....

...I know nowt about gardens but these seem to be pretty smart by any standards; best viewed a bit later in the year. The bit on the left is the 'duck pond'. I'm not sure if the white structure is a butt, and I'm also not sure when the NZ duck shooting season starts, but there were plenty of mallard on the pond. Must be the close season.

Right: The 'Te Papa' museum. This was truly magnificent; one of the world's best and well worth a visit. It was also FREE! I remember the museums in Canada and USA were extortionately expensive ( Toronto museum...$25 entry ). It has an excellent and fascinating area devoted to earthquakes, including a simulated earthquake in a mock-up house. I am now an expert on tectonic plates and such things

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It  was big, displaying on 5 levels, and all the displays were impressively put together. I suspect Peter Jackson with his props and special effects team had a hand in all this. The natural history section was also most interesting. This thing ( left ) is a 'colossal' squid. That's the next one up from a 'giant' squid. Possibly something that benefitted from nuclear testing. It was caught live at 1500ft down by a long-line fishing boat. It is nine paces fom end-to-end, and had even shrunk somewhat since it was caught. The tentacles have large rotating hooks as well as suckers on them. It's eyes were the size of footballs. It makes me even more wary of swimming in the Pacific ( below 1000ft, that is ).

Right: A moa. These mammoth flightless birds, unique to NZ, became extinct only about 100 years ago, I think. Perhaps they became too popular as a Christmas lunch. "I think we'll only have a 500lb one this year, dear". There would be much moa too eat cold for months after. There are plenty of buried bones around to give an accurate idea of what they looked like. Hasn't it got big feet? This model was about 8ft tall, and the eagle attacking it was no midget either.
There was also a display devoted to the famous NZ bred racehorse Pha Lap which won many races, mainly in Australia. Unfortunately the stuffed creature itself had been falling apart a bit recently and so was absent being restuffed and refurbished.  It is probably still good enough to win a seller at Ripon though.
The museum boasted two 'rides'. One was called the High Ride; the other was called the Deep Ride. I had to try them out. I went to the High Ride first. There was only me, a small child and a rather 'well built' lady there. We were put in seats with a five-point safety harness plus handles to hang onto and it was suggested that I remove my hat and camera. How pathetic, I thought. A total 'elf 'n' safety' overreaction. The lights were dimmed, the 'wrap-around' screen lit up and, with a serious lurch, we were off. I think this ride was supposed to simulate biking down mountain tracks, hang-gliding off precipices, abseiling off the SkyTower in Auckland and much else around NZ. It was like being in a bloody washing machine on fast spin rolling down a hill! After about three minutes of this I was being thrashed around so much I lost all interest in what was on the screen. I was beginning to feel sick and bruised and holding on for dear life.  My face was being stretched by the 'G' forces. I didn't know whether to close my eyes, look at the floor or the ceiling or scream for help. There was no ejector seat. It was seriously violent, and I have been in a few sporting aircraft and other extremely lively motion simulators in my life which were all pussy-cats in comparison. I don't know how long this torture went on for; it was too long, and I didn't care what it was meant to show. I survived, just, without throwing up. When the damned thing finally stopped, I was a sweating nauseous wreck, my jaws were locked in some sort of rictus and several fillings were loose. The child and fat lady were totally unfazed and just asked me if I had enjoyed it! It took me about an hour to recover sufficiently to speak, and to walk unaided. I didn't bother with the Deep Ride. I suspect Peter Jackson had a hand in this too. High Ride: WARNING!

There was another smaller museum; the Wellington City and Harbour museum. It was, again, well put together and FREE. As it's name suggests it dealt with local historical things. This set of 'maxims' produced for the NZ police in Victorian times amused me. If you enlarge the photo I hope you can read them. I think they should be re-published and issued to HM Constabulary in the UK. Without delay.

Right: The Executive building of the NZ Parliament otherwise known as the Beehive.

I was given a guided tour. Most enlightening. The buildings have been subjected to a couple of bad fires in their lifetime. After the last one ( can't remember when ) it was closed for a couple of years. They took the opportunity to 'earthquake
 proof' it. The whole building was cut laterally at it's base and is now supported on thousands of flexible mountings which can move laterally 100 cms without the upper part of the building shaking. It has vertical cuts as well. We were shown these. Extraordinary. In fact all the old buildings were meticulously and impressively renovated. It looks very grand inside. We were strictly forbidden to take cameras inside. The statue here is of an early and probably the most renowned Prime Minister, Richard Seddon. He died on board a ship returning from Australia in 1912.

The NZ parliament has no upper house. This was sneakily abolished just after WW2 because the incumbent prime minister thought it was counter-productive and always stacked with the sitting government's cronies. He stacked it with his own cronies who then abolished themselves. They were known as the 'suicide squad'. 

Did you know that the NZ parliament was the first in the world , in 1893, unwisely to give women the vote. It nearly resulted in prohibition!

I watched their debating chamber in action. They were, I think, having a debate, or trying to, on a private members bill about university unions and the right of students not to join them. It was difficult to understand what was going on. It involved the Labour opposition calling 'point of order' as soon as anyone got up to speak. The Speaker left, and was then recalled, and left again and the Chairman ( a rather dour and incomprehensible chap along the lines of that Glaswegian sheet-metal worker bloke we had as Speaker before he was sacked ) eventually expelled a member of the opposition for being troublesome and several Labour wimmin started to shriek wildly at anyone who spoke thereafter. I thought it all looked remarkably childish, even by my standards, with egotistical politicians just showing off. If anything, their Labour party MPs looked an even more squalid rabble than ours. They must have been trying to copy Westminster, and maybe overdoing it a bit.
I got bored and tootled off to a pub opposite called 'Backbenchers'. It was marvellous. The place was festooned with lots of papier-mache, or foam-rubber, caricature puppets ( as per Spitting Image ) resembling, presumably, NZ politicians and All Blacks stars. I didn't recognise any of them, but they looked quite humorous. Good food there too. Recommended.
On the whole, I was rather impressed byWellington. The place was compact and seemed clean and modern with pleasant buildings and there was a lively feel to it plus lots of affluent looking shops and plenty of decent bars and reasonable restaurants. It wasn't even windy....but maybe I was lucky.

Left: Just for your info. A map of Wellington.

There was an exhibition room in the City museum given over to the 'Wahine Disaster'. This occurred in 1968 when a new ferry, the Wahine, operating between the north and south island was coming into Wellington harbour in a howling storm. It ended up being smashed on the rocks in the bay somewhere with the loss of 51 lives.

I am off to the south island in a ferry and I sincerely hope the wind holds off and the sea is calm.


More uneventful ( hopefully ) reports from the south island to follow soon....