When you come back home

OK Road, 8 March 2007 7:18:29amSome­times there comes a time when you must leave this town, your town for a break — it could be a hol­i­day; it could be your OE; it could be that career move; it could be to do a geo­graph­i­cal and just get away.

What’s that? Your favourite barista moved to West­port, and you had to fol­low? (Yeah, OK. There’s always an excuse.) But soon­er or lat­er, you must come back. And when you do there is always a moment when you know you are home.

Here’s one such:

Com­ing down the Ngau­ran­ga Gorge there’s that long sweep­ing curve where the Hutt and Porirua motor­ways meet. Look up from the road and you’ll see Welling­ton arrayed in full panoply before you. There are our small clus­ter of tall build­ings stand­ing proud, feet in the sea and backs to the hills. There are the hills them­selves, steeply car­pet­ed with hous­es in defi­ance of tec­ton­ics and plain good sense, look­ing on to and out to the sea. There is the bowl of the har­bour, rimmed with bush and filled with reflect­ed sky. There is the sky, most­ly blue, some­times grey, often set with clouds scud­ding.

There it is. Our town. Where you live. Where I live.

Where is this moment for you?

Is it, as the Front Lawn once had it, fly­ing over­head?

over Welling­ton Har­bour
Ori­en­tal Bay is stand­ing there in the sun­light

Is it that first sip of Mojo or Fuel?

Is it Courte­nay Place at the week­end?

Where? What? With whom? Com­ment, zoomin, or blog away!

Quote of the night

James, whilst walk­ing through Cuba Mall with us all: “Hey, that bol­lard (cov­ered in posters) looks just like our site!”.

Also, James gets super large bonus points for com­ing swim­ming tonight.

(And also: I heart Welling­ton.)

Let’s all shut up about the weather now.

Dear Welling­to­ni­ans,

I’ve become so sick of you whing­ing all the time that tonight I made this for you:

Sunset at Lyall Bay
Sun­set at Lyall Bay

Walking, 7:05am

Welling­ton is often a good city for walk­ing: some would even say it’s bet­ter for walk­ing than cycling.

Public Address | Club Politique | Burying One’s Feet

I’m sure Che Tib­by won’t mind, but this is one of the finest love let­ters to Welling­ton I have ever read. Pub­lic Address | Club Poli­tique — Bury­ing One’s Feet

Links for Monday, 30 May 2005

A cou­ple more addi­tions to the ‘Let me count the ways…’ Welling­ton­ist meme, from Sibylle at heimat­seek­er and Mr Rea­son­able at Whis­per­ing Infer­no The Welling­ton City Coun­cil in-fight­­ing reach­es new lows Tor­na­do action in Para­pa­rau­mu, result­ing in this from Met­Ser­vice… Severe-weath­­er fore­cast­er Paul Mallinson said he had “almost men­tioned weak tor­na­does” in pre­dic­tions for the […]

Let me count the ways…

Here at Welling­ton­ist tow­ers, we’re always think­ing of new ways to let peo­ple know just how cool this town is. And we know we have lots of read­ers out there who like to do the same. So here’s our sug­ges­tion: peo­ple of a mind to par­tic­i­pate can post to their web­site an arti­cle talk­ing about […]