Canadian in KL: NZ Day 11. Wellington Guided Walk, Zealandia

First order of business was getting from Lower Hutt to the i-site in Wellington to plan our time. Turned out that Easter Monday is a statutory holiday in New Zealand so parking was easy! At the i-site we signed up for a guided walk which was an interesting introduction to some of the history and oddities of Wellington. As everywhere else the tectonic activity of the region is central to everything discussed. In Wellington they have inspected all the buildings and assigned their degree of stability under expected earthquakes. Those that score poorly have 10 years to make the shortcomings good and in any case the rating they receive directly impacts property values. They measure this as a percentage and those that score less than 34% have to be upgraded. Many people, and the government, have set themselves to meet a standard of 67%. Somehow this must tie into Standard Deviations, but I don’t know haw the system is evaluated.

Bridge with Maori decoration

Looks like an old lamp…

Really 4 sided rotating diorama of Wellington history!

Second-largest wood building in S. Hemisphere

Saw the esplanade, the parliament building (originally designed symmetrical, but only one wing was built initially. later extension scrapped the plan for the symmetrical wing and added the ‘Beehive’ instead! Also the second largest wooden building in the Southern Hemisphere and the ‘Old St. Paul’s ‘ Anglican wooden pro-cathedral. A Beautiful building inside, with stain glass windows and warm wooden beams and arches.

In the afternoon we took the cable car and shuttle bus to Zealandia. This is a fenced off area where they have removed the non-indigenous mammals and reintroduced native bird life. We were fortunate to see most of the bird species listed in the brochure, the Bell bird being the notable omission from our observations.