Wellington   NZ’s capital was originally at Auckland, but in 1865, the capital was transferred to Wellington, since it is more centrally located between north and south. This is exactly the same logic that moved the US capital from New York to Washington. Wellington is the most populous urban capital in Oceania, and the southernmost capital city in the world. Wellington is at the western end of that southern peninsula of North Island, where there is a huge bay that serves as its harbor. Downtown Wellington is a C-shape on the western end of that bay. There are hills all around, and part of the center is on landfill. Picture from left to right a C of hills, a C of original land, then a C of landfill, all spooned-up together, and you’ll understand the layout of downtown. The station is at the upper end, and the principal street is Lambton Quay (“Kay”) at the foot of the hill. Its name tells you it was once the waterfront, and today it forms a C between original land and landfill. The next street closer to the water is Featherston Street, where my hotel was, just a few blocks south of the station, and just one more block was the waterfront, with the historic Queens Wharf. Down at the south end of the three C’s is the Te Papa Museum and the Cuba Street Mall.

I had rain in Wellington, but everything worked out well (also, it was clear and sunny on my half-day there coming back north). All I needed good weather for was to see the view from the top of the funicular, and that I had. Otherwise, I sneaked around between the raindrops when necessary.

PARLIAMENT The first day I walked inland from the station to the government center, which includes the Parliament and the distinctive, contemporary Beehive (it really is shaped like one), home to the executive branch. I didn’t intend to take the free tour, but it started to drizzle, so serendipity called and I took the one at noon. It was fortunate, since I really did enjoy it, and it was also the last one of the day that would also get to go onto the floor of Parliament, since Parliament would be in session right afterward.

Two things stand out, and the first one might surprise you, as it did those on the tour. Right near the start, we went down to the basement for a demonstration of what has been done to preserve the buildings in case of an earthquake. Do remember that NZ sits astride the Australian and Pacific plates, and quakes are a reality. The technique, developed in Wellington, was demonstrated, called seismic restructuring, which allows buildings to sway during a quake, and which has since been adapted around the world. After the walls of the buildings had been strengthened, horizontal, rectangular “windows” were cut in the foundation all around, and “base isolators”, familiarly called “quake breakers” were wedged into the openings. These are large circular units that consist of 2-3 dozen layers of steel layered with a rubberized material. Each one looks something like a pile of LP’s on a record changer, and is about the same size. Once these units were installed entirely around the perimeter of the building, “windows” were opened in the remaining part of the foundation between the units, so that the top of the foundation was now independent from the bottom. In this way, the units supported the entire weight of the building. During a quake, the base isolators allow the building to sway up to 30 cm (12 in), which would absorb most of the damaging shaking. It was also pointed out that the new Te Papa museum has base isolators as well, and when I was there two days later, I saw the special exhibit below the building that they, too, have on the subject.

The other standout was of course how the government works, which was explained as we stood on the floor of the House of Representatives. It looks just like the British Parliament, with the Speaker in the back, his mace on the table in front of him, the Government on the benches on the one side, to the viewer’s left, and the Opposition on the other, to the right. I was surprised to find that the legislature is unicameral—it was as early as 1950-1951 that the upper house, the Legislative Council, was abolished (personally, I’ve been waiting for years for the British to do the same with the House of Lords). I think the other point that was made surprised me almost as much. In a referendum in 1993, the people decided to follow the German model of proportional representation, where seats are allocated by the overall number of votes received by a party, and with a minimal “threshold” percentage necessary for a party to be represented. In NZ, as in Germany, parties receiving less than 5% of the vote are excluded, to avoid the multiplicity of tiny parties that cause governments in some countries to fall frequently.

We did visit the ornate chamber of the former Legislative Council, now just used for social and formal occasions. The Governor General, and on occasion the Queen, does open Parliament from this room, just as happens in Britain’s House of Lords, but nothing else happens there other than the odd reception of dignitaries. This room has a red carpet, and no official in this room is allowed to enter upon the green carpet in the House of Representatives, to maintain the independence of the House.

MUSEUM OF WELLINGTON I walked down Lambert Quay, which has a smart, urban atmosphere that pleases the eye, and turned to the water at Queens Wharf, which has a number of historic buildings. Located there is the Museum of Wellington, in the 1892 Bond Store, where arriving goods were kept in bond (storage) until duties were paid. Of the exhibits, one in particular stands out, the one that tells about the 1968 Wahine disaster.

Today ferries go from Wellington to Picton on South Island, where the trip is continued by train, although that line was built only in 1945. For a long time, there was an overnight ferry instead, with cabins, directly between Wellington and Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch. On 10 April 1968, the ferry Wahine was just entering Wellington harbor up from Lyttelton when not one, but two cyclones struck. One came down from the north and the other up from the south, and they merged directly over Wellington harbor, creating the worst recorded storm in NZ history. There was a 3-D isobar weather map in the exhibit, with high pressure areas appearing as mountains, and lows as valleys. Right over the circle of Wellington harbour it showed a low so deep it looked like you’d pushed your finger into pie dough. The winds in Wellington were the strongest ever recorded there. The ship foundered with a high loss of life. There may have been worse maritime disasters, but this one is remembered as the best-known one because it was so visual. The ship was almost in Wellington, but never made it, and radio and TV kept people informed throughout, making it a very visible disaster.

WELLINGTON CABLE CAR The next day in Wellington was even more fun. First, it cleared enough for me to enjoy going up on the Wellington Cable Car for the view from the hills over town and bay. The name is today a misnomer, since it’s now a funicular, but that’s part of the story.

As I’ve described, central Wellington is crowded against a row of hills, which accounts for the landfill areas. But in 1902, it was decided that the ridge on top of the hills would make an excellent suburban expansion area (and it did), but reaching the ridge involved going a long way around, so the Wellington Cable Car was built and it was an instant success, even for those people who just wanted an outing to stop at the tea room at the top for the view. It leaves from a short alley right off Lambert Quay and goes straight up the hill, and interestingly, has three stops on the way. The uphill car leaving Lambert Quay stops at stop one as the downhill car reaches stop three. They both then stop at stop two at the midpoint, and then uphill goes to three and downhill to one before reaching their terminal stops. To this day, people use the intermediate stops, especially since there’s a college campus along the way.

There’s a museum at the top between the tea room and the entrance to the Botanical Garden, and it’s excellent. Only then does it become fully clear what used to be here, and what’s here now. Let me tell the story backwards, just as I learned it.

There had been talk of abandoning the original system and route entirely. Fortunately, the route was saved in 1978, but change did come. A new Swiss funicular replaced what had been there, and works, as all funiculars do, on a single track, with a double-track passing area in the middle, and with one car counterbalancing the other. This gives a nice trip, but it no longer is the unique system that was originally built.

It’s still called the Wellington Cable Car (and not the Wellington Funicular), but both names are inaccurate for what was originally there, which was a combination Cable Car-Funicular, odd as that may sound. There were two tracks, one up and one down, so that each car had its own track. They were counterbalanced by a cable between them, which means that so far, I’m describing a funicular—but a double-tracked one. However, on most funiculars, that big wheel at the top is powered. If it turns one way, one car goes up, and one down, then its reversed. But the wheel at the top on this original system was not powered; it just guided the counterbalancing cable. [By the way, the original cars were so popular, that some old trams were converted to—now get this—trailers, and for years, each car had a trailer behind it.]

Amazingly, the power came from another, endless cable surrounding the system, just like the cables under the street in San Francisco. From the winding house at the top, the cable fed out down one side of the slope, around the bottom, up the other, and then back to the winding house. This provided all the motive power. The downhill car was unique. It had a gripman just like in San Francisco, and when he grabbed onto the moving cable, he controlled the whole system, pulling his car up or down, with the counterbalancing cable then responding accordingly, moving the other car. Because of the two cables, it was doubly safe. Picture it as a cable car like in San Francisco, but with the additional counterbalancing cable to take a lot of weight off the motive cable.

It now becomes clear why all the tunnels under the cross streets are now so wide, since they originally accommodated two tracks. The original coaches had inside seats perpendicular to the route, but then open seats on the side, parallel to the route, and it’s said people had fun “kicking the tunnel walls”. What a unique system.

It’s the former winding house that’s now the free Cable Car Museum, and it’s an excellent one. Upstairs are complete and easily understandable explanations of the history, and there is an original car you can clamber on, and also an excellently refurbished one, restored to its 1904 appearance. Downstairs, in the winding room where the cable was actually fed out, there is restored machinery. Just like in San Francisco, two large wheels as tall as a person provide traction, and a third wheel a distance away provides tension. They really run, although it’s all fake now and aren’t connected to anything. But it’s fun to watch.

I noticed at the entrance that one of the patrons of this museum, down at the bottom of the list, was the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. I wondered how one museum could support another, but later I noticed one possibility. On the refurbished car was the traditional genuine brass cable-car bell, and the one they had mounted on the redone car was an authentic period one provided by San Francisco.

There were three short films that were shown in the museum on the topic, and one illustrated a fact that I’d learned that’s amazing. Given the hilly quality around central Wellington, I was surprised to find that there are more than 400 PRIVATE funiculars in the city, and the film showed many of them. Some private systems just supplement roads, others reach private houses that have no road to them at all. Some tiny cars are like closed phone booths, others are like open dumpsters—there are all sorts of styles. Usually, it’s a matter of a winch at the top pulling the car up, but there’s some imagination in that, too. Some go up regular tracks, but others have a grip system that climbs up a sort of monorail. What imagination!

TATTOOS & TELEVISION A most unusual thing happened later that day. I walked down to the southern part of town to the Cuba Mall. The Cuba had been an immigrant ship, and again I’ll mention again how often names of ships come up in these islands that depended on them as a lifeline. Cuba Street, named after it, became a major shopping street, then declined with the move to the suburbs. Today, several blocks form the Cuba (pedestrian) Mall, and I was walking along it to see what it was all about. Apparently a TV crew thought that Cuba Mall would be a nice place to conduct interviews, and suddenly a woman reporter with a cameraman over her shoulder came up to me and asked if I’d be willing to answer some questions about tattoos. I agreed, and the first thing she asked was if I had one. I said “Certainly not.” She then asked me about my opinion of them as the camera ground away. I said I thought it was a sign of rebellion, most often by younger people, but also by older ones who want to “regain their youth”. I suggested dying one’s hair green also shows rebellion, but can be easily undone. And if people want to display pictures, how about a nice T-shirt? I called dying one’s skin a “desecration of the body”. She thanked me and said the tattoo piece would be on the news on TV3 that evening. Given the number of people they interview, I dismissed the idea and forgot about it.

That evening I did have the TV news on, because of the bush fires (forest fires) in Victoria, in Australia, were raging at that time, and I was following that rather carefully. I didn’t even know it was TV3 that I had on, when all of a sudden there was the tattoo piece. It started with a young woman who’d just had a huge dragon put onto her entire back, then a guy with tattoos on his palms, and more of the same. Then they moved to the negative side, showing a woman who regretted maybe 60% of the tattoos she’d gotten (how about the rest?), then showed a doctor explaining how painful it was to completely remove one, requiring several sessions. Then the reporter said something I didn’t hear, and then there I was on Cuba Mall, a head-to-waist shot of me wearing my signature black, and saying four words: “desecration of the body”. I was startled that I was on NZ television, but I supposed that that phrase made a good sound bite, which is unfortunately what much of television news today consists of.

Later on that evening I was watching the fires again, and, again purely by chance, I came across the tattoo piece a second time. This time I knew when I was coming up, so I listened for what it was she said. Right after the doctor said it was painful, the reporter said “Perhaps it’s a generational thing”, followed by my “desecration of the body”. Although that puts a somewhat different light on the matter, I do agree that it’s generational. Tattoos, piercings, pink hair for most people are a thing of rebellion, and that’s what many young people are all about. Anyway, instead of my requisite fifteen minutes of fame, I had just about four seconds. But twice.

On my last day I went to the new Te Papa Museum, hailed as a major development. I found it a disappointment. It’s very large, and rambles. It’s hard to find your way around (to me a major defect in any museum). They won’t hand you any map, but tell you to look at the (infrequently posted) wall maps. It tries to be ethnographic-historic, but also an art museum. I saw some exhibits on Maori culture, and some on European immigration. The information I wrote above on NZ being astride two plates came from an exhibit at the museum. But all in all, I enjoyed the Cable Car Museum and the Wellington Museum considerably more.

It was in Wellington where my laptop suddenly died. I couldn’t get online, or edit or send what I’d written, or write any new stuff. The hotel helped me get in touch with Dell, and we talked with the Philippines and Australia, and they decided I needed a new motherboard and power pack. Finally, I set it up with someone in Sydney for a tech to meet me five days later in my hotel in Christchurch, since train travel and the weekend prevented anything earlier. Talk about planning D-Day!

But there are silver linings. Because I couldn’t write, I watched more TV, both news and other programs. That’s how I found myself on TV, twice. There was a great deal of news from Australia about the fires and floods, including broadcasts from the Australian Parliament. The evening of the day I had been in the NZ Parliament I saw it in session, where they were commenting sympathetically on the Australian fires. It was watching TV that I felt, like no where else, the connection between NZ and the US. Aside from the fact that I bought several books at a Borders on Lambert Quay, aside from all the ads for KFC, McDonalds, and all sorts of very recognizable household products, there were ads for upcoming programs for CSI, Lost, Desperate Housewives. Letterman was everywhere (where was Leno, who I like to watch?). Only when commercials came on could you maybe identify a NZ accent, otherwise, you could be watching TV in any US city.

Interislander   As mentioned earlier, it would be logical that the ferry connection from North Island to South Island would run north-south, but owing to the fact that the North Island peninsula with Wellington on it faces down the east coast of South Island, the ferry sails roughly in a westerly direction in order to make the nearest land connection. Given this geography, it also becomes understandable that the former overnight ferry between Wellington and Lyttelton (Christchurch) had a straight shoot down the coast.

As I had planned it, my hotel was just a few blocks’ early morning walk from Wellington Station, where, next to the last track there was a modern bus shelter for the free five-minute shuttle connection to the Interislander ferry terminal, where the huge car ferry was waiting. Several ferries make multiple crossings daily, but the one that includes the rail connection is the MV Kaitaki, not only the largest Interislander ferry, but the largest ferry in New Zealand. Built in the Netherlands in 1995 and having sailed under several names in several locations, it holds 1600 passengers. Kaitaki is the Maori word for Challenger. There were recliner seats to nap in, and a cafeteria for a bite to eat. As the ferry left Wellington harbor, it looked something like this video on YouTube: Interislander Leaving Wellington Notice how hilly the area around Wellington is, and think of those private funiculars.

The northernmost part of South Island is the Marlborough area, noted for its wine industry. As a matter of fact, the reason you haven’t known about NZ wines forever is because the modern NZ wine industry was started in Marlborough only in the late 1970’s. Marlborough accounts for some 62% of the vine-growing areas in the country.

Geographically, Marlborough is known for the Marlborough Sounds. There are three principal bodies of water, and long, narrow, Queen Charlotte Sound is the first one encountered after crossing Cook Strait coming from North Island, and is the route of the ferry. Actually, the ferry takes a shortcut called Tory Channel (once again, the Tory was a ship, a pioneer ship that brought British colonists to Wellington in 1840). Tory Channel cuts through to the center of Queen Charlotte Sound so that the Interislander only has to navigate the upper length of the sound to the town of Picton at its far end.

Queen Charlotte Sound (and the others) and Tory Channel are all sea-drowned river valleys. They are defined as rias, and seem strikingly similar to fjords. Rias differ from fjords only by a technicality. Fjords and rias are both sea-drowned river valleys, but a fjord is formed by a glacier, while a ria results when the sea rises, or the land subsides, or both, causing the sea to gradually flood the rivers to overflowing. But the hills around rias and fjords still look very similar, as you’ll see on YouTube: Interislander Arriving in Picton The entire crossing covered 92 km (57 mi) and took just over three hours.

TranzCoastal   As I had read in advance, the walk in Picton from the ferry terminal to the rail station was just a few hundred meters/yards down the road, and checked baggage was transferred automatically. Many of the foot passengers were interested in just staying to vacation in the Marlborough area rather than making the train connection.

Of the three remaining rail routes in NZ, the one that connects Picton to Christchurch down the coast is called the TranzCoastal. As the name implies, it runs along a slightly raised route right along the east (Pacific) coast, sometimes with the coast highway between it and the water, and sometimes with the rail route directly on the water. Although the ferry crossing had been quite calm, it was an overcast day, and the sea sent constant whitecaps toward the shore, making for a spectacular sight. The central section of this route is a known whale-watching area, but we spotted neither whales nor seals. However, at one point, on the nearby beach, I’m sure I saw a pair of jackass penguins, typical for southern regions like this, just like I’d seen south of Cape Town six months earlier. I could be mistaken, but they were not rocks, they were indeed birds, and I’m rather sure of what I spotted. This is a short YouTube video of average quality showing the TranzAlpine’s run along the coast of South Island. It’s sunnier than what I had, but the waves are just as forceful and close, and the rocky beaches and water have potential wildlife to see. The highway is visible, as is NZ’s left-hand traffic: TranzCoastal

We arrived in Christchurch in the late afternoon after 348 km (216 mi) and 5.25 hours. The Christchurch station is nothing of importance. It’s located in Addington, a suburban area to the west, about a fifteen-minute drive from the center at Cathedral Square. Since no passenger trains go south of Christchurch any more, and only one other train, the TranzAlpine goes northwest, it was decided to build a small station in the Addington trainyard outside of town to replace the former station closer to the center. Auckland and Wellington have substantial commuter rail, and are expanding it. Unfortunately, Christchurch has nothing, having cancelled commuter rail routes due to low patronage in the 1970’s, but, given the traffic situation, a conductor suggested to me that Christchurch is going to need commuter rail pretty soon. It will be of interest to see what develops.

It isn’t necessary to take taxis to town. Inbound, there are waiting vans headed for Cathedral Square, each holding maybe a dozen people. They charge only NZ$5, which is about US$2.50, for the quick zip into town. I used these on both arrivals, this day from the TranzCoastal, and a few days later coming back from the TranzAlpine. I had read—and it was perfectly true—that to catch either train in the morning, free shuttle buses were provided. The only problem was waiting in the pre-dawn darkness outside my hotel on Cathedral Square, not having been able to make a reservation, several of us having gathered and hoping that the van would come by at the scheduled time. Both times they did, but it was just a bit nerve-racking until they showed up.

TranzAlpine   I stayed in Christchurch for five nights, the longest of my stays in the three cities (three nights, then four, then five), and it turned out to be fortunately planned. But anyway, on the third day, I took the side trip on the TranzAlpine to Greymouth. I’d like to discuss that in advance, in order to unify the later discussion of Christchurch.

The mountains that form the backbone of South Island, running mainly along its western side, are called the Southern Alps, so the route from Christchurch, over Arthur’s Pass, to Greymouth on the west coast (Tasman Sea), is called the TranzAlpine. It is considered one of the great rail journeys of the world. Many people (but far from all) do it as a day trip out of Christchurch. It runs 223 km (139 mi) and 4.5 hours each way.

After crossing the Canterbury Plains, the train runs along gorges and over viaducts, offering super views across and downward until reaching the top at Arthur’s Pass (920 m [3018 ft]), where the train pauses for a while. It then runs through the rather long Otira Tunnel (8.5 km [5.3 mi]) down the western slopes to Greymouth on the Tasman Sea, which is indeed at the mouth of the Grey River.

The Greymouth area is special. When New Zealanders on either the North or South Island refer to “the Coast” or “the West Coast”, this is the area they mean, and people here are called Coasters. Although Westland is only one of the districts here, many people use that term to refer to the entire West Coast.

Fortunately, while east of the mountains the sky had been overcast, once we emerged from the Otira Tunnel in Westland the sun was shining, which was fortunate, since Greymouth is a pleasant town. The Grey River runs east-west, and the main street, where the station is, runs in the same direction just south of it and has an early-20C look. Between the main street and the river, though is the Greymouth Flood Wall, about one story high. I suppose elsewhere the flood wall would be called a dike or a levee. It was built as recently as 1990 to prevent the floods that had plagued the town, and it provides a very pleasant park-like walk on its upper surface, with views of the river on one side, and down to the roofs of the town on the other. Day-trippers have an hour between trains in Greymouth, and the time is well spent walking the flood wall. Walking downriver a bit provides, after a bend, a distant view of the Tasman Sea.

Getting to Westland from Canterbury nowadays is easy with the railroad and the highway next to it, but that wasn’t always the case. What is now the TranzAlpine was started in the 1880’s and reached from Christchurch west to Arthur’s Pass by 1914. A railroad had also been built from Greymouth east to Otira by 1900, but the two railheads were not connected. Even when the two railheads were finally as close as 12 km (7.5 mi), passengers had to get off and take a stagecoach over the top of the mountains to reach the other railhead. Finally, in 1923, a major construction project, the 8.5 km (5.3 mi) Otira tunnel, completed the connection.

While I was walking down the main street of Greymouth during that one-hour layover I passed the headquarters of the local newspaper. On a wall outside the office was a mural showing the major headlines the paper had printed over time. I was quite amused to see the one from 1923 that said:

You have to, of course, take into consideration the remote location of Westland, as well as the time period, to be able to appreciate the exciting quality of that period headline as a synthesis of both geography and history.

Here’s a YouTube video of the trip from Christchurch through the Southern Alps to Arthurs Pass and then Greymouth. Do remember that all NZ trains are narrow-gauge, although not as narrow as some, since NZ does use the somewhat wider Cape Gauge. This petiteness is noticeable when you see the outside views of the train, and particularly when you see an interior shot. TranzAlpine