WILD ABOUT WELLINGTON

Our Happy Place

Is there anyone more boring than a Wellington whinger?

John Key should use his new majority to ban offenders, drop them 1080, spray them with
glyphosate. Friendly Freedom Campers have already been exterminated, so the precedent is there to purge this more irritating species.

If none of the above work the present policy of doing nothing with the economy should be
effective, making the grinches jobless and forcing them across The Ditch. They probably voted Labour last November so won’t be missed.

Only when gales blow so hard the Makara turbines are turned off and Qantas jets turned
back that a slight note of discomfort can be allowed into the conversation, for
our location should be the envy of the world. Here’s why:

As I write relatives in Chicago huddling in muffs and mittens are greasing shovels, ready
to dig their way to work through snowdrifts.

Family members in arid Western Australia have turned nocturnal, creeping inside at
dawn, sheltering from the blowtorch winds, super-heated across the burning
sands of the empty interior.

Their two-minute showers use desalinated seawater. And they call WA the State of
Excitement.

Friends in Singapore joke that when children draw chickens they sketch the deep-frozen
plastic wrap variety. It’s the same with the sky. The locals buy it in paintings to hang on the walls of their matchbox flats, for the real thing is seldom seen.

Most days I walk to the CBD past dripping red pohutukawa from a dormitory suburb dozing
beyond the Town Belt. Via Wadestown the trip takes an hour. Some puff’s needed
past Blackbridge but compensation comes where the dark green tree-tunnel of
Lennel Road meets Barnard Street.

The dress circle views are splendid, memorable, flawless, free – so much space after
confinement. Sydney Harbour is also grand, though over-busy. The best views
are through the acrylic on an Airbus queuing to land, but with no noises or
smells the experience is sterile, two-dimensional.

Hong Kong? There’s a challenge, but Wellington wins with its magic backdrop of the Rimutaka, white-capped in winter, smoky grey in summer when the light is most intense.

From Mount Victoria see the topsides of planes sailing slowly, silently into the Rongotai
isthmus, like docking spaceships as in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Watch them from the
gods while playing Strauss on your device of choice. That’s impossible at Heathrow, Tullamarine,
Charles de Gaulle and almost everywhere else.

The more poetic can park in Lyall Bay and marvel how 150 tonnes of metal, fuel and flesh
can roar free of earth’s surly bonds. This is a stalls view. Try doing that near New York’s JFK and you’ll be viewing prison bars.

Another walk to the CBD follows the onomatopoeic Kaiwharawhara stream. Rainfall drained from a vast catchment that includes Karori, cascades, bubbles, washes and tumbles its way through fern and flax, one moment placid, the next a rush.

The creek might be laced with coliform and protozoan parasites, but it looks clear and
clean, and smells the same. Probably not a top drink, but great for a splash after a heated hike.

The Trelissick Park walk takes 90 minutes – and that includes stopping to chat with
the volunteers yanking out Wandering Willy and other Pommy invaders. No need to shout, you could be in Te Urewera. You are just ten minutes from the cavernous furniture shops of Thorndon Quay.

Some vile bureaucrat with a vision as narrow as the gorge once proposed this valley for a
city tip. The idea was knocked back by far-sighted citizens who were green long before the word became political, in the days when gay meant jolly.

Pause a moment, hark to the tui and give thanks to our ancestors.

When it’s too wet to walk (never too hot) take the train. It’s great fun, a real delight.
In any other capital the trip would be sold as a fairground ride, a scary
journey through narrow tunnels dripping damp, on a cliff edge, then hurtling
downhill, rocking and rolling on a 74 year old line to a station by a stadium.

Was this foresight or oversight? Most cities separate transport from sports grounds to ensure maximum congestion before and after games. This is the art of town planning that includes building a city on an earthquake faultline.

Where else could it have gone? The first settlers were washed out of Petone. Eastbourne is
too narrow. There wasn’t much space around Pipitea either till the Deity added extra with the 1855 earthquake, upheaving enough rock to put Lambton Quay well inland.

The result is a city compact – but not compressed, handy but not grasping. An accessible centre of government, when elsewhere that term’s an oxymoron. A stroll between Parliament and the City Council passes a file of ministries.

The Sunday Farmers’ Markets are in Wellington, preserving the rural, village feel. Many cities flank the ocean – but how many have an Oriental Bay for swimming, a waterfront for promenading, rocks for fishing plus seals and penguins all within a gentle, level, buggy push?

Retract the opening sentence – one complaint is in order. Too many vehicles. To make
Wellington perfect let’s ban all private transport.

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