Bella Bella tours Wellington

The Carter Observatory (which I wrote about in my previous post) sits high above Wellington, on the top of Druid Hill in the city’s Botanic Garden.  You can drive to it, or you can ride there from downtown by cable car. A “cable car” carries passengers like a bus, but it runs on rails, and is pulled by a cable.

Now, Wellington is a really hilly place, wrapped along a winding shoreline near the southwestern end of New Zealand’s big North Island. Many homes are built up on ridges, and have their very own, private cable cars … in fact, there are about 400 private cable cars in Wellington, more than any other city in the world. It must be like having an elevator to your house instead of a driveway!

To visit the Carter Observatory, we first walked through Wellington’s busy, bustling downtown along Lambton Quay, an important business and shopping street. A little passageway called Cable Car Lane led us to the terminal for the cable car.

It took just a few minutes to ride to the top of the hill.

We also visited the Wellington Cable Car Museum. The first cable cars began running here way back in 1902.

The Botanic Garden is part of a great idea: the Town Belt. The Town Belt is public land all around the city that was set aside for recreation and nature when Wellington was established, in 1839. Nobody back then knew that Wellington would grow into a big city of nearly 400,000 people, but thanks to the Town Belt, there’s still lots of green space and parkland.

Wellington became New Zealand’s capital city in 1865. Here I am at the New Zealand Parliament Buildings. This round building is called the Beehive. The prime minister and cabinet ministers have offices in the Beehive. I wonder if people buzz around a lot in there? 

This is the Parliamentary Library. It was built in 1899!

Here I am with my friend Dave in front of the Beehive and Parliament House.

You know, just when we were visiting New Zealand, there was an election campaign going on. There were campaign signs and posters all over the place. It was really interesting, but still, I liked this sign best. Somebody made it out of plastic bags:

Down by the harbour, in a place called Oriental Bay, we visited “boatsheds.” People store their boats and equipment in them, and have workshops.

The Maori name for Wellington Harbour is “Te Whanganui-a-Tara,” which means “the great harbour of Tara.” Tara was a Maori leader who decided to settle here nearly a thousand years ago. I bet he built himself a nice boatshed, too!

Far above the boatsheds is the summit of Mount Victoria, or Matairangi.

It is marked by a Maori pole called a “pou” because it was used as a lookout. It also made a pretty good place for me to look out over the city …

This cannon used to be fired at noon each day. Over a hundred years ago, it was a useful way to let everyone in Wellington know what time it was. Hey, that reminds me of Vancouver’s own Nine O’clock Gun in Stanley Park.

Ha ha, Sue, not funny …!

 

At Breaker Bay, I saw a sign that said “Penguin Crossing.” It’s true, there really are penguins here! They nest in the bluffs next to the rocky shoreline.

Before human beings came to New Zealand, the only mammals here were bats. Birds evolved to take the place of mammals in the ecosystem.

Wow, that means that the only thing in New Zealand as big as a bear would have been a bird … the “moa,” in fact. Now extinct, moa are known today from their bones and eggshells. These birds could be over three metres tall, and weigh as much as 230 kilograms. My goodness, we Kermode bears never weigh much more than about 135 kilos!

Moa couldn’t fly, but this particular Kermode bear can … as you’ll see in my next post.

Moa print courtesy Wikipedia

Photos and story © S. Clouthier