Laundry, Battle Hill, and Pencarrow lighthouse.

When we came back from or hike to Battle Hill on Wednesday morning (Dec.30th), we started our own battle trying to hang out our laundered sheets in a southerly gale. There was no way we could do a neat job of pegging the sheets on the lines, particularly the fitted sheet, and we just had to do the best we could with oodles of clothes pegs and then keep an eye on what was happening. We got them in from the line just before we got some rain, and now they are draped around the apartment just to make sure they are really dry.

A view from the summit of Battle Hill, the scene of the first 'battle' with one tribe of the Maoris in 1846. This was the beginning of the "Maori Wars," although I believe it is more PC these days to say "The New Zealand Wars." On one of the explanatory displays it says that Governor Grey's methods used against the Maoris were "questionable but effective." At the entrance to the park there is a big sign that says "The Last Battle," beside which a Maori organisation has posted a sign saying "You think..."

At the top, after an exhausting climb.

We woke this morning (Wednesday 30 Dec.) and wandered into the living room just in time to see a huge cruise ship enter the harbour.

We made this walk on Monday, in rather overcast weather, on the east side of the harbour starting on the outskirts of a town called Eastbourne. The road led along the sea for several kilometers before we started the climb to the lighthouse. This view was on our way down from the lighthouse back to the road.

From an explanatory sign.

More from another sign.

You'll need to click on this to read the text. The light house sits high on a promontory called Pencarrow Head, which was the name of the Cornish home of Sir Somebody Molesworth (or was it Lord M.), who was one of the members of the New Zealand Company, which organised the beginning of systemic emigration from Britain to New Zealand. The first couple of ships arrived not far from Eastbourne.

Gusts of 70km/h Today

We've had another really blowy day today--Tuesday December 29. The following sums it all up.

Wellington wind summary:
• Wellington is located in a River of Wind - a wind corridor between the South Island and the North Island.
• Wellington is the windiest main centre in New Zealand with a mean annual wind speed of 22 km/h.
• Wellington also has an average of 22 days per year with mean wind speeds over 63 km/h (40 knots).
• Wellington averages 173 days a year with wind gusts greater than about 60 km/h or 32 knots.
• October is generally the windiest month of the year with a mean of 27 days with wind speeds over 15 knots, 19 of those days are over 20 knots.
• North is by far the most common wind direction, blowing from this direction (0 degrees) a massive 37.6% of the time.
• Wellington is one of the windiest cities in the world (possibly the windiest) and is windier than other southern windy cities including Cape Town, Perth, and Geraldton.
• The strongest wind speeds where recorded at Hawkins Hill of 248km/h (134 knots) on the 6 November 1959 and 4 July 1962.
Wellington is located next to Cook Strait, which forms a narrow gap between the mountain ranges of the North and South Islands. This gap between the islands and mountain ranges accelerates the wind through the Cook Strait making Wellington a very windy city.

Dominion Post Crossword

The weekend Dominion Post had a crossword that is something of a curiosity for Brits and Americans. It covered a whole page. Pretty simple definitions, but I couldn't come near to finishing it because it had Maori words, Australian birds, a native spider, a New Zealand motor race circuit, a famous New Zealander who died last September, and several references to NZ television programmes.
And the only headline in the Post that prompted a guffaw for Joan and me was:
"Immigrant Couple Sentenced for Blowing up Restaurant." An interesting story, not least because the couple were KURDISH. They had started a restaurant that lost money and blew it up to get the insurance money. You scratch your head a bit to read of Kurdish immigrants in New Zealand.
Posted by David on December 27

A Tractor for Brother John

This is posted for my brother John, who is something of a tractor enthusiast. There was quite a selection of tractors on one beach that we visited. They are used to tow boats out into the sea down a very gently sloping beach.

Boxing day Saturday Dec. 26

We drove up the coast on a very overcast and unpromising day, and after some walking on windswept beaches with rough, rolling surf we found a small cafe that had been recommended to us for corn fritters. I now see that I have got these pictures in the wrong order. So I have to move to the end of our meal and work back. When we paid the bill, we asked where the beach was, and the lady who ran the place gave us directions. She then volunteered that there were no public toilets by the beach and maybe we should use the ones in the cafe before we left. Sensible suggestion, although I think she was rather proud of her loo. It was wildly decorated. The beautiful mirror, encircled with shells, is shown above, and the walls were papered with posters as shown below. All very striking.

You will note the name Lembas Cafe in many of the posters. But what was also interesting about the cafe was the way it was decorated. There were a whole series of attractive paintings or art graphics, and I reproduce three of them below.

And one wall was covered with a complicated arrangement of driftwood. On all the beaches we have visited there are considerable amounts of driftwood, from huge logs to small bits and pieces. This wall was decorated with smaller pieces.

And now you can see below the meal we each had-corn fritters with a good salad. That greenish glob is an avocado. There was a large selection of beers, and we had the Tuatara Pale Ale. Beers are excellent here. The corn fritters were O.K.--just an omelette with sweet corn in...Oh, and there was some chutney. Not exactly gourmet. And presumably because it was Boxing Day, and perhaps a bit of an effort to open and get staff, a handwritten notice said that there was a 15 percent surcharge on the bills.

Well, I started off by saying how windswept coast was, and how the hills were wreathed in cloud and mist. Rollers crashing on the beach, cold wind, spray flying everywhere--rather like mid-winter on parts of the North Cornish coast. All the trees were shaped by the prevailing northerly wind.

Looking inland from the beach--

And looking along the beach--

As we drove back to Wellington the sun came out, and for an hour or so it turned quite pleasant: but now black clouds sit on the tops of all the hills surrounding the harbour, and the wind is getting up again.

Posted by David on December 26

Welly Walks

In the past week in Wellington, we've done a number of walks around the city and the surrounding area. It's amazing how quickly you can get away from urban life and into seemingly unspoiled nature. The names and places of our hikes won't mean a great deal to anyone except a Wellingtonian, but I wanted to make a list simply to memorialize where we've been and what we've seen.

I don't know how to enlarge this, but it is the Wellington contingent of a group of friends who regularly go on organized "tramps" together around NZ. We took the Southern Walkway through the city, up from Oriental Bay to Mt. Victoria lookout and down around to the Wellington Zoo, which had a surprisingly nice cafe, where our little group stopped for lunch.

The next day, we drove around the city to Otari, and visited the Otari-Wilton Bush, a nature center with walks through forests with ancient rimu trees, beginning and ending with a canopy walk through the treetops. No photos of this, but the above picture is of Makara Beach where, instead of undertaking the highly challenging tramp that begins there, we sensibly decided to have a bucket of fries and Hokey Pokey ice creams at a seaside cafe, and watched the surfers.

The above view is looking over Palmer Head, on a walk that begins near Seatoun at the Pass of Branda and skirts the coastline. This is the site of the infamous Wahine disaster, when a ferry sank in rough seas in 1968 and 51 people died, which you can well understand when you see the sea churned up by southerlies:





This walk takes you past the Atataturk Memorial, where there is a touching tribute paid by the Turkish leader to the many young men of New Zealand who lost their lives at Gallipoli in WWI. We understand there is a corresponding memorial in Turkey.

Across the harbor from Wellington, and about 8 miles to the south of Wainuiomata is Rimataka Forest State Park, where there are a number of walks through beech forest (above). Although the walk is pleasant, I was disappointed by the absence of any clearing that would have permitted scenic overlooks, after all the climbing the 5-Mile Loop entailed. Beyond that, you can drive to the coast near Baring Head and walk (driving not permitted) along the shore towards Turakirae Head, which was supposed to feature a seal colony, but nary a creature could be seen after trudging for an hour, so we gave up.

Also in the general direction of the Lower Hutt Valley is Belmont Regional Park, where an easy stroll alongside a stream leads to Korokoro Dam, built in 1903 to supply water to Petone, the smaller city across the harbor from Wellington. (A longer and more difficult climb takes you up to Belmont Trig).

This stream flows down to nearby Petone, a largely industrial area across the harbor from Wellington. Petone features the Settlers Museum, tracing the history of New Zealand through its earliest settlement by Polynesians and later discovery by the Europeans.

The coastline to the northwest of Wellington has a series of beach towns. We started by visiting Porirua, with a walk alongside the somewhat decrepit but picturesque boat sheds of Titahi Bay.

Their contents are guarded by some rather formidable looking dogs.

The weather did not, however, stop the local Surf and Life Saving Club from heading for the high seas by rowboat.

We then strode along Raumati Beach (above), looking rather bleak and forlorn on a cloudy and windswept day. Of course, even in these remote remote areas, the public conveniences are a tribute to the NZ government and its support of social welfare measures (see David's post, "Public Toilets: A Convenient Truth"):

The "ladies" entrance was even grander:

.........................................................................................................................................................................

(The above photo is part of a memorial tribute to Admiral Byrd at Mt. Victoria, one of the crowning glories of the hills of Wellington).

(Posted by Joan on Dec. 27)

Public Toilets: A Convenient Truth

If the civilised nature of a community is to be judged by the quantity and quality of its public conveniences (UK) or restrooms (USA) or toilets (NZ), then New Zealand must be up there with the world leaders. Here in New Zealand, one can hardly walk fifty yards in an urban environment without seeing at least one public toilet or a sign that points in the direction of the nearest public toilets. Of course, the three designations mentioned above are all euphemisms: but 'restrooms' are the stupidest, providing no indication whatever of their purpose, and 'conveniences' tell you nothing at all about their purpose, and they are often quite inconveniently situated. The 'toilet' was originally a euphemism, but overthe years it has acquired a non-euphemistic meaning. But I digress...I could also digress about what the availability of toilets says about national views of the role of government in providing for people's needs. But I won't.
It seems that New Zealand also leads the world in the construction of somewhat hi-tech conveniences. One must praise the makers of the EXELoo pictured below, whose products are available everywhere. They are--to quote the blurb--designed for your comfort and safety, although safety hazards would not seem to be great in a public toilet. But who knows?

As I have noted, signs to public toilets are ubiquitous. Nevertheless, as shown below there is often a map outside a public toilet showing you the location of other public toilets in the same area--as if, having sampled that one, or finding its stalls occupied by what seems a long term user, you may wish to judge whether you have time to get to another one.

Public toilets are sometimes strangely located. In Picton there is a building with a sign outside saying Museum (see below), and it is flanked on either side by a toilet for each sex. I did not have time to check the nature of the museum--they are another ubiquitous feature of New Zealand: The Cricket Museum, The Police Museum, The Settler Museum, The Museum of Monetary History at the Bank of New Zealand (a real thriller, that one), The Cable Car Museum--I could on. Is it possible that the museum in the photo was The Museum of Public Toilets?

The need for toilets at remote spots is another expression of the concern of the authorities to provide for this very human need. The Department of the Environment provides excellent facilities in the national parks. And in Picton, with some time to spare before we needed to check in for the boat, we hiked a couple of miles along a trail above the sea to a place called Bob's Bay, which consisted of an smallish patch of grass and a minute rocky beach. But here was a neat little toilet.

It was also a good example of New Zealand vernacular architecture. Concrete blocks painted a dark green, corrugated iron roof, with one slope longer than the other (not, I think, 'hipped,' which is common here). What was also interesting was the small bunch of flowers by the entrance. They are just visible. But the big surprise was when I went inside....

A very attractive arrangement of dried plants that I am sure was not supplied by the Picton authorities. How very New Zealand--this country of gardeners and flowers arrangers (they are not all bungy jumpers)--that someone would feel moved to decorate this humble little public toilet.

Here is another example of a public toilet. This is, I believe, an Exceloo. It is hi-tech to the extent that for each individual toilet (indicated, as you will see, as men, women, children, and handicapped) have two lights outside--a red for occupied and a green for vacant. When you enter, you need to press a red button to lock the door. When you are ready to leave, you press the green button and the door unlocks--unless, of course, there has been a power failure in the meantime. You are then, presumably, locked in.

Internal equipment is usually pretty good. Toilet paper is sometimes dispensed single sheet by single sheet, but generally there are huge rolls of paper of what seems fairly good quality. As you can see, wash basins are a common fixture, as are changing tables for babies and waste cans for diapers (nappies) or whatever. In one toilet I visited, there were two forms of changing table (why, I could not figure) and there was a small metal step beside the toilet bowl, presumably for a small boys to stand on if they were too small for the usual male position.

I intend this to be an ongoing project while we are here in New Zealand. Today I visited one that was very cruddy-but just as the snow in Washington and Europe does not diminish my belief in global warming, so one crappy toilet on the sea front in Petone does not diminish my view that New Zealand is a world leader in public toilets.

Photos and text by David--posted 24 December

IgnoreThese Photos

I am trying to find a way to bring up the pictures more effectively by using their 'names' and I had to choose any old photos to do that. This is actually the coast near Wellington, and a bleak and windswept coast it is. We clambered over rocks and shingle for an hour trying to find the colony of seals, but failed to do so. The seas coming in were enormous. Nevertheless there young kids surfing.
Now let me see if I have cracked the system by bring up a totally random photo.
No--I have not. I still have to follow what we have been doing, which is a bit tedious.

A Kiwi Christmas

Wellington is definitely quieting down for the Christmas holiday which, of course, coincides with the start of summer vacation here (that still seems totally incongruous, but that's life below the Equator for you). Schools are out, people seem to be out enjoying themselves at cafes or strolling along Oriental Parade (or even swimming, for the truly hardy).

The beautiful pohutukawa tree is in full bloom. It is called the NZ Christmas tree because of the distinctive red blossoms, which can be seen from a long distance.

We were at an outdoor barbeque (remember, it was just the longest day of the year here) when the sounds of Xmas carols played by the Salvation Army band were overheard. We went out to the front of the house as they passed down the street, collecting contributions along the way.

This quiet time permits a few reflections on other aspects of life in Wellington. First, the discerning reader will have noticed that my blogs typically feature photos of colorful murals (or perhaps you were wondering what these were). These paintings appear throughout the area on all sorts of walls, particularly in schools, parks or just along the road, as free-spirited expressions of visual creativity. They are often done on corrugated iron, which makes for an interesting effect:

Anyway, they're very striking as you drive, walk, jog or cycle around the city. And on the subject of the sports, many Wellingtonians seem passionate about keeping fit, or perhaps cyling home up a 15 percent grade is simply a fact of life for many commuters. I am constantly amazed by the runners and cyclists that seem to think nothing of climbing incredibly steep hills as part of their daily routine. NB: not everyone falls into this category:

On any given day, regardless of the weather, Oriental Bay (and its beach area) is a parade cyclists, joggers, rollerbladers, skateboarders, kayakers and even rowers, undoubtedly participating in some team building exercise for the office.

(This is the Deloitte crew). The Kiwi passion for fitness seems to start young, as the playgrounds are very imaginative and encourage both physical challenge and a bit of daring.

Some of us still prefer a pure adrenaline rush, though.

And what generates the energy for all of this activity? Kiwi cuisine, of course, about which a few observations may be made. First, the local supermarket is virtually identical to those in the US, in terms of what it offers, how it is organized, and other "logistics". (Leaving aside the far greater availability of such anglophile culinary oddities as Marmite, Bovril, lemon curd and Branson pickle). Second, as a seafaring nation, NZ cuisine does feature alot of fish and seafood:

NZ has, like its British antecedents, made a speciality of fish and chips (pronounced "fush and chups" here), which seems to be offered in the same little shops as Chinese takeaway. But here's an exception to that.

Third, one could go on and on about lamp and sheep here, which give us lovely warm merino wool and lots of tasty meats. But --yes-- there are alot of them, and one photo will suffice.

Finally, you have to love a country where excellent coffee is ubiquitous, and is even dispensed right next to a free ambulance service.

Happy holidays to one and all....

(Posted by Joan on Dec. 23)