On February 20th we took the bus from Thames to Wellington, en route to 3 weeks in south island. We were only staying overnight before getting the ferry across the Cook Strait, but intended to spend 3 or 4 nights in the city on our way back north. In the event, our plans changed and we never made it back, but we did spend a morning there and liked what we saw.
Maori oral histories tell of the first Polynesian navigator, Kupe, discovering Wellington Harbour in 925A.D. In 1773 Captain Cook was prevented from entering the harbour by fierce winds, and it wasn't until 1840 that the first wave of European settlers arrived. They renamed the settlement after the Iron Duke, and in 1865 the growing city succeeded Auckland as the capital of New Zealand.
We were booked into
Downtown Backpackers (
http://www.downtownbackpackers.co.nz/), a large Art Deco hostel: see 2 photos below.
After breakfast we set off with a morning to fill before we caught the ferry.
We hadn't seen many high-rise buildings in weeks.
We walked past some civic buildings......
......and a war memorial.
We walked on to the Parliamentary District, where the first building we came across was the Old Government Buildings which appears to have been constructed from cream stone but is in fact wooden. It was supposed to be built in stone but cost-cutting in 1876 forced a re-think. Nothing changes!!
We then reached the Parliament Buildings, an interesting trio of highly individual structures.
The first, the Beehive, a modernist seven-stepped truncated cone, houses the Cabinet and the offices of its ministers. It was designed in 1964 by Sir Basil Spence (who also designed Coventry Cathedral) and finally completed in 1982 after his death.
The Beehive is connected directly to the Edwardian Parliament House, with its statue of Richard Seddon (an early Prime Minister) outside. Earthquake-isolating foundations were retrofitted under it in 1992 to protect it from the fault line just 400m away!
This plaque reminded us just how ahead of its time New Zealand was in terms of female emancipation.
And the last building of the trio is the Victorian Gothic Parliamentary Library.
The complex of Parliamentary Buildings are set in pleasant gardens.
We know we haven't done justice to Wellington, and when we come back to New Zealand we'll definitely visit it again.
