Tom’s been walking again. Follow his latest tramping adventure from traversing the Hutt Valley to Kāpiti via the Akatarawa Road here.
Up the back of Newtown — past the hospital, past New Zealand’s first branch library, past the community display-window where the Conscientious Objectors’ memorials absent from Pukeahu Park quietly underscore ANZAC celebrations — runs a narrow path marking the spine of Tangi-te-Keo (later Mt Victoria). Māori knew the spine of Tangi-te-Keo as Te Ranga-a-Hiwi, the Ridge of […]
A few photos I took as I walked the dog in the Mount Victoria town belt, and of the unveiling of a new living sculpture at the Innermost Gardens. “A Living Sculpture” On April 3rd, Grant Lyon’s sculpture “Yeah, Nah” was unveiled by Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown at the Innermost Gardens in Mount Victoria, at […]
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 […]
Yep, its not food. But I was seriously impressed with this place in our back yard that I had no clue existed. Nga Manu is the largest remaining remnant of coastal lowland swamp forest on the Kapiti Coast, and was established as a reserve in 1974. It has developed over the years to the well laid […]
Okay, let’s get the puns out of the way. While it is never inappropriate to spank your monkey in public, and only Peter Gabriel can shock the monkey, at Wellington Zoo you can, however, touch some monkeys. Sort of. Well, the touching part is correct, but technically the Black-and-White Ruffed Lemurs aren’t actually primates, they’re a […]
Take a break from watching polls and start watching birds with The Great Kererū Count. Forest & Bird have teamed up with local company Thundermaps to create an easy way for all of us to track these magnificent yet near-threatened native pigeons, using the Thundermaps smartphone apps or web application. Kererū are vital to the health of our […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stream is now fully canalised, a tame channel running arrow-straight towards the harbour, as subtle as an engineer’s ruler. It once meandered across the broadening valley, softly folding into the estuarine flats. On its left bank, the colonial forces built Elliot’s Stockade to oversee the new road, but the […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] Another bend; another ending. I cross into Tawa, which was a separate borough until 1989, when in the words of a former Mayor it was “just tacked on” to Wellington. Topographically, and perhaps in sentiment, it still leans more towards Porirua than to Lambton Harbour. But as the old track […]
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 […]