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 […]