Bit of rain on our drive down to Wellington from Napier but we were still running early for the check in time at our bach so we stopped at Queen Elizabeth Park in Paekakariki. We took a walk on their wetlands loop which wound through some farmland and then into a wetlands that was built in an area used by US Marines in WWII. Nice reuse of military site!
The park also has a tramway museum with a working tram line (about 1.5 K in length), but it is only open on weekends so we just walked past part of the tram line on our walk. As in most of the parks in New Zealand there are signs along the trails about plant or animal life or the geology or history of the area. One of the signs here seemed happy to point out that the highway leading into Wellington that runs past Queen Elizabeth Park is built on top of one of the four fault lines that are in this area. (As we discovered on our tours of buildings the next day looking at the earthquake abatement measures in the buildings is part of the tour.)
After leaving the park we headed to our bach in Johnsonville, one of the northern suburbs of Wellington, located near the top of one of the many valleys heading out of Wellington. Here is a view from the street in front of the bach. Good thing we’re not biking here – the climb up from the town centre is quite steep.
Our host suggested that the best way in to Wellington was to park near the Johnsonville Railway Station and take the train in to the city where the station is quite close to their Parliament buildings. We found a parking spot less than 100 meters from the station and caught the 9:30 train, avoiding the morning rush hour. There are 6 or 7 stops on the route and it took less than half an hour to reach Wellington. We walked to the Parliament buildings and signed on for the 11:00 AM tour. Since we had some time to spare and Parliament was in session we went up to the galleries and listened to their debate. It was quite animated – much like the British House of Commons – with members loudly voicing their assent, or particularly their disagreements, with what had just been said. They also have a question time, but that was not going to occur until the afternoon.
The tour was quite informative, and the buildings are beautifully maintained and quite stunning, and we got to go into the basement to see how the foundations had been dug out, reinforced and then put on earthquake absorbing platforms to prevent the building from swaying when the big one hits. They said that when the big quake hit the South Island several years ago and the effects of the quake did a fair bit of damage in Wellington, many people came to the Parliament buildings with their sleeping bags so that they could stay there since they knew that these buildings were now quake-proof.
The only unfortunate part of the tour is that photography is not allowed inside the buildings. Here are some shots of the exterior. Their Executive Offices building is known as the Beehive. The older buildings house their Parliament, which now only has one legislative chamber since they abolished their Upper House in the 1950’s, and their Parliamentary Library.
After the tour we headed to the waterfront where many people were out of their offices at lunchtime.
GreenPeace’s latest version of the Rainbow Warrior is docked here. (New Zealand has a memorial site to the original Rainbow Warrior which was blown up by French commandos off the shore of New Zealand back when GreenPeace was using the ship to sail into French territory near the islands where France was testing nuclear weapons. New Zealand also prohibits any nuclear-powered vessels from entering its territorial waters, which led to several decades of the US breaking off military relations with New Zealand. We’re on better terms now, at least for the moment.)
We walked as far as Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. There are 6 stories of exhibits, some permanent and some temporary.
One of the two major temporary exhibits at the moment is celebrating the 125th year of women getting the vote – New Zealand was the first nation to allow women to vote, and according to the stories told on our Parliament tour it happened due to some trickery between the Upper and Lower Houses to allow the vote to occur in the Lower House since the Prime Minister at the time was opposed to Women’s suffrage. This exhibit was pretty sparse, although they are patting themselves on the back for being the first country to have had 3 women leaders (Prime Ministers) and where 48 of their 120 MPs are women.
The other major exhibit is about the New Zealand military’s participation at Gallipoli during World War I. It was primarily Australian and New Zealand troops that were under seige for months on a beachhead in Turkey. There were giant, amazingly realistic, statues of many soldiers, doctors and nurses with lots of memorabilia and witness accounts of the battles and building trenches and the horrific conditions. Thousands were killed and wounded there, and after many months of repeated assaults which were ultimately repelled the troops were pulled out.
We then walked back through the city centre to take their cable car up one of the many hills surrounding the city. The views there are spectacular, and there are a number of museums and the Botanical Garden at the top. There is a walk down through the parks back toward the Parliament buildings which we managed to stay on for a short amount of time, and then we let Google get us back to the train station.
We got there right at the heart of the evening rush hour. The streets were busy with people heading to various trains and busses, but when the train pulled in we got seats, and it appeared that while all of the seats were occupied there weren’t any standers on the train. Our station was at the end of the line, and we were back right on schedule.
Thursday 9/27
Good bye North Island! We had some time to kill before the ferry so we went to the very entertaining Wellington Museum. I only took one picture but it’s a gem. This is a hobbit foot
They also had things like a video of the chimps tea party that the zoo used run every afternoon and a stuffed lion from the zoo. I think the Wellington Museum deserves way more publicity than it gets!
The ferry crossing started out a tad on the terrifying side. I guess the seas can be rough leaving Wellington! Fortunately it settled down. Not a beautiful day but the scenery coming into the Marlborough sound is gorgeous
