Treasure hunt, Lyall Bay beach, Wellington.1975.

What:Enviro­tain­ment

Where:Ori­ent­al Parade (Frey­berg Pool/Mural end)

When: 2.30 till 4.00pm Face­book event page

Spring has well and truly sprung but the uni­verse is send­ing mixed mes­sages as usu­al. Lamb­ton Quay is dec­or­ated with slightly over-ripe kow­hai trees in full bloom; the petals trampled into the street by the suits, and what’s left on the trees disheveled by the spring rains. Con­fu­sion reigns, walk­ing down the street one day sans woolly hat, think­ing to one­self, “there is noth­ing like Wel­ling­ton on a good day” while look­ing up at the unim­peded blue sky. The next day remem­ber­ing you still haven’t kicked that damn cold, the elec­tion date means tis the sea­son for polit­ic­al hoard­ings to be lit­ter­ing the streets has begun and you really should­n’t be wear­ing open toed shoes yet because it is rain­ing again. Sigh.

How­ever, there is noth­ing like a good Spring clean to mark the change of sea­sons as Aotearoa does­n’t provide us with a clear demarc­a­tion. Plenty of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans have been clean­ing out their closets and attend­ing clothes swap­ping parties. It would­n’t be stretch­ing it to say that clothes swaps are the new com­post­ing. The grow­ing tribe of urb­an sur­viv­al­ists, envir­on­ment­al­ists, cheapskates, dig­ging for vic­tory types, crafters with atti­tude etc (I don’t think that the term “hip­pie” really cov­ers it) are part of a wave of chan­ging atti­tudes about the envir­on­ment. Either that or we are turn­ing into our nanas, in a good way.

The next thing big thing from the hivemind/noo­sphere seems to be beach clean ups. It is as if all of those with an envir­on­ment­al cast of mind have put down their knit­ting in uni­son and exclaimed, “how about we har­ness the power of the inter­net to organ­ise a beach clean up, yes lets!” I have noticed beach clean­ing meet-ups sprout­ing up all over the place.

Via face­book I have man­aged to double book myself for beach clean­ing tomor­row and on Inter­sect, “the social net­work for young pro­fes­sion­als who care about sus­tain­ab­il­ity” they were also pimp­ing an Ori­ent­al Bay clean up that is part of a stu­dent’s final year at Vic­tor­ia Uni­versity’s school of Art and Design. Gloves and rub­bish bags are provided and she prom­ises the first 50 people swag bags (reusable earth-day bag) con­tain­ing:

  • Free cof­fee from 2 of Wel­ling­tons best cafes Peoples Cof­fee and Milk Crate. Oh yes! 
  • Latest issue magazine from Forest and Bird.
  • Best prac­tice ‘fishing/eating guide’ of New Zea­l­and.
  • A bio­de­grad­able water bottle from Life Incor­por­ated
  • A one off art piece cre­ated for the event (small in nature)

The crew from the face­book group Keep Wel­ling­ton Beau­ti­ful will be meet­ing at the Zeph­ro­met­er (corner of Evans Bay and Cobham Drive) at 1.30pm if you want to go all out and make a day of it.

Photo info: Treas­ure hunt, Lyall Bay beach, Wellington.1975. Even­ing Post staff pho­to­graph­er Ref­er­ence num­ber: 1/4–022406‑F Film Neg­at­ive Even­ing Post Col­lec­tion, Pho­to­graph­ic Archive, Alex­an­der Turn­bull Lib­rary