Journey to Adventure

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 […]

No mere cat: the Meerkat encounter at Wellington Zoo

Welling­ton Zoo is now offer­ing MEERKAT ENCOUNTERS. The cap­i­tal let­ters are there to try to con­vey my excite­ment when I heard the news. I don’t think even cap­i­tal let­ters can con­vey how excit­ed I was when the zoo invit­ed us along to meet the meerkats for our­selves. I’m mak­ing it my aim to touch all […]

Wonderful Wellington Lux

Today we have a guest post from Suzanne over at Obser­va­tions. Yay guest posts! Last night I went to the fas­ci­nat­ing Welling­ton Lux light­ing event on the Welling­ton Water­front. (Runs from 6pm to 11pm, 1 to 9 Sep­tem­ber) This  “teas­er” event con­sists of four light­ing instal­la­tions, using new and inter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy. The idea is to […]

A lion (and others) in winter

Right now the mag­no­lias are in bloom along Roy Street in New­town, and it’s gor­geous. But of course, it’s around this time last year that it snowed, so don’t be fooled — it’s still win­ter. The good news though, means that Welling­ton Zoo has entry for only $5 on Wednes­days through­out all of August. Nat­u­ral­ly […]

a visit to Zealandia

Over East­er, the weath­er sud­den­ly went all set­tled and warm. This is per­haps not unusu­al for autumn, but giv­en the crap sum­mer most parts of the coun­try have had for the past few months it was some­what unex­pect­ed. In fact the fore­cast for East­er was so dire that it played a rea­son­able part in us […]

Notional Significance: Halfway

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts] On one side: the beige of town­hous­es; the her­met­ic white­ness of Fletch­er Construction’s offices; the twee com­forts of a gar­den cen­tre. On the oth­er: a wall of green­ery, smug­ly set­tled exotics loom­ing over dense indige­nous under­growth and the raw-cut clay below. Hard-won colo­nial­ism con­geals into aspi­ra­tional her­itage, but with a psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal […]

Wellywood: blown away

So appar­ent­ly we vot­ed for the Welling­ton sign that’s being blown away. Nat­u­ral­ly, Rob­bie Ellis has even more to say about it.

Where would you take an odd tourist?

We occa­sion­al­ly get requests from peo­ple who see us as being experts on Welling­ton, and it’s true, we are. But so are you. So help us answer this guy’s ques­tion! “I am look­ing for places/locations in the Welling­ton area to take a group of over­seas vis­i­tors too. I am not want­i­ng to go to the nor­mal […]

How we could actually improve our roads

If you’ve ever dri­ven from New­town to Kil­birnie, you’ll know how godaw­ful the inter­sec­tion with State High­way One is. The prob­lem is that in order to cross the con­stant stream of traf­fic, you are forced to rely on the kind­ness of strangers giv­ing way to you of their own accord. One enter­pris­ing young man had […]

Letting Space on the Terrace

From the pub­lic art pro­gramme which brought you Kim Paton’s Free Store and Tao Wells’ The Beneficiary’s Office (which both caused sig­nif­i­cant nation­al media inter­est and debate) I’d like to present to you: Col­in Hod­son’s The Mar­ket Tes­ta­ment. An entire office build­ing on Welling­ton City’s The Ter­race is to be turned into a work of […]