What to do in Wellington with a motorhome

This post is sponsored by Wil­der­ness Motorhomes We love telling people what to do. Espe­cially telling people what to do in Wel­ling­ton. That’s why we exist. So when we were offered this sponsored post we were happy to take up the chal­lenge of what to do in Wel­ling­ton if you’re an out-of-town­er vis­it­ing in a […]

The Open Space Plan

While the shape of this city is a curse for trans­port­a­tion plan­ners, it is a bless­ing for any­one who even just occa­sion­ally wants to get out­side, because the city’s edges are close by and full of oppor­tun­ity. We don’t all take advant­age of this though. There’s lots of good and bad reas­ons why people don’t, […]

Mushroom, mushroom

Last week Zeal­and­ia pub­lished a glor­i­ous little photo-essay An Enchant­ment of Fungi, alert­ing us to the fact that after a long dry sum­mer, the recent rains have brought forth a rich crop of fungal fruit­ing bod­ies. I went for a walk there last Fri­day and found plenty of vari­ety amid the damp forest, espe­cially on the Val­ley View and […]

Towards Tangi-te-Keo

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 […]

Into the unknown

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 […]

New Zealand Fringe Festival

The New Zea­l­and Fringe Fest­ival is com­ing at you with their 25th year of excit­ing, fright­en­ing, amaz­ing, and puzz­ling works. As well as loc­al artists there are 39 out-of-town acts bring­ing their stuff to Wel­ling­ton. Prices are mostly under the $25 mark but the smart choice is to buy an Addict card. It’s only $15 […]

World Homeless Day

Today is ‪‎World Home­less Day‬, when we often find ourselves ask­ing, what can I do to help those in my own city who are exper­i­en­cing home­less­ness? One prac­tic­al way you can help is by giv­ing or encour­aging people to give to DCM Wel­ling­ton – Each year DCM works with over 800 people in Wel­ling­ton. – […]

Serious Monkey(ish) business at Wellington Zoo

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 […]

Spot That Pigeon!

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 […]

Walking in Light

We’ve already pre­viewed the LUX fest­iv­al, but now we’re a bit over halfway through and the weather­’s look­ing kind, it’s worth remind­ing you to See. It. Now. You have until Sunday. We had a wander around last night, and the atmo­sphere was (appro­pri­ately) elec­tric. Quite apart from the install­a­tions them­selves, the exper­i­ence of being around so […]