The Wellingtonista

Random stuff about Wellington since 2005

Alan Macdougall

Kākā cam

by Alan October 2, 2015

With more and more kākā spilling out of Zealandia and spending their ne’er-do-well days rioting in the neighboring suburbs, there are now nests outside the fence. So the council has set up some nestboxes to keep the new families safe, and in one, they’ve set up a live camera. Today, the five chicks are only […]

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Into the unknown

by Alan September 16, 2015

The deepest cave system in the Southern Hemisphere is in the Nelson hinterland. How do we know this? Because Kieran Mckay went in and explored it. One of Red Bull’s Explorers of the Century, he’ll be speaking about his experiences and introducing a film about his cave explorations on Saturday evening at Onslow College. “The […]

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WOAP: those doughnuts

by Alan August 19, 2015

The doughnut popup web page said Wednesday! Leeds Street Bakery! Rhubarb and cream! Salted caramel and bacon! Chocolate and hazelnut! This all sounded pretty promising. So I circled the day on the calendar and wondered. Would the doughnuts be ironically Simpsonesque, or would they be inspired by Portland’s finest? This morning, having heard the popup […]

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Review: Krishnan’s Dairy

by Alan July 29, 2015

   One of New Zealand’s most-loved plays has returned for a short season at the Hannah Playhouse. Having not seen it before (despite it coming around every couple of years for almost the last twenty!) we took the chance to finally go see it. Gobi Krishnan (“a small man”, as the McGlashan-esque song/narrator would have […]

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feed the birds?

by Alan November 24, 2013

So you happen to live out west in the faulted hill-folds. One day a kākā lands on your deck railing and winningly bounces along and back. It is looking at you. It is looking for food. Its head bobs up and down. It knows you have some. Do you: A) put out a saucer of […]

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La nouvelle bière houblon verte est arrivé!

by Alan April 10, 2013

Today is the first day of Hopstock, a celebration of the Nelson Hop harvest. In what seems just a little bit like some craft beer version of the Beaujolais Nouveau madness, for a very short time twelve bars around town will be showcasing eight new beers brewed with fresh (rather than the usual dried) hops. This […]

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Journey to Adventure

by Alan November 1, 2012

Here at the Wellingtonista we are generally in favour of the bicycle as a stylish and useful means of transportation. It’s true we don’t all cycle, but as proponents of livable urban spaces we can all appreciate that one less car trip is a good car trip. Along those lines, Cycling Wellington is a great […]

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now we’re cooking with fire

by Alan August 20, 2012

Leafing through the Wellington on a Plate catalog some months ago, one event in particular seemed to stand out for me. This was Cooking Over Fire, The Argentine Way, to be held at El Matador, the new “Café, Asador Grill & Bar” up Cuba Street. Asador is the Argentine national dish, a way of slow-cooking […]

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the Friendly Cyclist

by Alan August 8, 2012

Sometimes you see them: dignified, terribly cool, impeccably dressed, and upright, making their way through the rush hour traffic on their old-fashioned bikes in a manner poles opposite to the more common fluoro speedsters. A beacon of bicycling style, and also: fairly damned hot. Yes, you think, now that’s certainly one mode of commuter cycling […]

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Miniature Wellington

by Alan July 30, 2012

Via Dave on Twitter (and a few others including, we now see, the Dom Post) comes this lovely Wellington time-lapse video from local film maker Jared Gray: If only all those cars were that small in real life!

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