Greater Wellington region
The Greater Wellington region is far bigger than just Wellington City. The old Wellington Province used to cover much of the southern half of the North Island, including the Horowhenua, Manawatu, and Wanganui regions. The region commonly (and officially, in Local Government Act terms) called Wellington includes:
Adjoining cities
There are three other cities that are so close to Wellington that they effectively form a single large urban area; in population order they are:
Understand
Wellington, known as New Zealand’s arts and culture capital, offers an unmatched blend of culture, heritage, fine food, and lively arts and entertainment.
Surrounded by hills and a rugged coastline, the city boasts a stunning harbor. Wellington’s charm is that it serves up a vibrant inner city experience with a slice of New Zealand scenery. And because of its compact nature, you can sample it all - boutique shopping, art galleries, trendy cafes and restaurants. Right on its doorstep is a network of walking and biking trails with beautiful wineries and vineyards just a few hours away.
Wellington is a city that brims with energy and vitality, it offers an almost overwhelming array of theater, music, dance, fine arts and galleries and museums. It also home to one of the nation’s key attractions, the museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which is recognized as a world leader of interactive and innovative museum experiences.
Wellington offers a unique mix of experiences few cities could lay claim to. With so many options at your fingertips, you’ll need at least three days to slip into the groove of this amazing place.
Politics
Because it is the capital city, the New Zealand Parliament and the head offices of many Government Departments and large businesses occupy central Wellington.
Geology
Much of the central city is built on reclaimed land that was raised up after a major earthquake in 1855. More land has been reclaimed since then. The shoreline as it was in 1840 is marked by plaques in the footpaths on Lambton Quay (hence the street name). There are several Quays which are now nowhere near the harbor. The harbor's former name was 'Port Nicholson' and the smaller bay surrounded by the city is called 'Wellington' or 'Lambton Harbour'.
Earthquakes have played a major part in forming the whole Wellington region - the exposed face of the Wellington fault being prominent as the line of hills adjacent to the harbor between Thorndon and Petone. There are several major earthquake faults in the region, some of which slip a meter or more in one jump every few centuries. Building regulations have meant that most of the older city buildings have been either demolished or strengthened in the last 20 years or so. Small and moderate earthquakes occasionally rock Wellington; so if the earth seems to move for you, it may not be just your imagination: stay indoors unless a "warden" or similar authority advises evacuation, and take shelter against potentially falling objects wherever you are.
Climate
Wellington is known as the Windy City. The prevailing wind is from the northwest but the strongest winds are southerly. The wind speed and direction can be seen by the flag being flown from the Beehive. A large flag is flown only on calm days, a small flag is flown when windy days are expected.
The temperature in Wellington rarely drops below 0 degrees Celsius, even on a cold winter's night, while daytime winter temperatures are rarely lower than 8 degrees Celsius. During summer, the daytime maximum temperature rarely gets above 23 degrees Celsius. Away from the seaside, in inland valleys, frosts of up to -10 degrees Celsius have been recorded and snow has been known to fall and settle on the nearby mountain ranges for a few days after particularly nasty southerly storms.
Get in
By air
Wellington International Airport is in Rongotai, about 5 km from the central city. It sits on an isthmus between the Miramar peninsula and Mount Victoria. The southerly approach is over Cook Strait, while the northerly approach is over the harbor.
Wellington airport is a major transit point for domestic travellers. There are frequent flights to Auckland, Christchurch, Palmerston North, Rotorua, Hamilton, Nelson, Blenheim and many other destinations. International flights from Australia arrive about twice daily - the evening flight arrives after midnight when most facilities are closed.
Landing at Wellington Airport in a strong cross-wind can be an adventure, and most pilots adopt a powered approach for landing. This tends to create a rollercoaster ride, so make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened.
There is a regular Airport Bus known as the Flyer that departs from the south end of the domestic terminal. Taxis and covered carparking are directly outside the terminal.
By boat
There are regular ferries between Wellington and Picton, connecting with buses and the train to Christchurch. Cruise ships from overseas often stop in Wellington.
By road
There are only two major roads into Wellington, but they are the top two: State Highways 1 & 2.
By train
There is a train service between Wellington and Auckland. There are daily commuter services from Palmerston North and Masterton and a generally half-hourly suburban commuter service to Johnsonville, the Hutt Valley, Porirua, and Paraparaumu on the Kapiti coast.
Get around
Getting around the central city is easy on foot. The city is very compact and fairly pedestrian-friendly.
There are also plenty of buses, some of which are electric trolleybuses. You can buy an all-day central Wellington Daytripper bus pass for $6 ($10 for up to 4 people). If you take a bus trip into the city suburbs, it will cost you about $2-3. See timetables.
The train is the best form of public transport between the city and the Hutt Valley or Porirua. The easiest way to travel between the Hutt Valley and Porirua is by train via Wellington (it is no cheaper to change at Kaiwharawhara).
If you are driving into Wellington on the weekend, metered car parking is free, with a two-hour time limit.
Taxis cost approximately $2 for flagfall plus $1.70 per kilometer. Executive Taxis has professional service and a larger cab at $1.80 per kilometer. There are sometimes budget taxis for cheaper rates. The taxi companies in Wellington are not as useless as they are in other countries and they do tend to arrive more or less when expected.
See
Do
Eat
Wellington has a lot of restaurants and cafes, in fact more cafes bars and restaurants per head than New York City. Malaysian food is surprisingly popular and available in most areas. You can also get good Lebanese kebabs anywhere in the city. Fish and chips is the best value food but you usually get better quality in the suburbs.
More or less traditional:
Malaysian:
Indian:
Cafes:
Wellington is home to a range of insanely good coffee roasteries, which help the city's cafes produce, arguably, some of the best coffees in the world (consistently higher in quality than European cafes...).
Local roasters include Cafe Lafare (recently sold for $25 million to an overseas company), Coffee Supreme, Havana, Mojo, and People's Coffee.
Below is a very small range from the extensive list of the Wellington Cafe scene:
Lebanese kebabs:
Multicultural variety:
Fish and chips:
Every suburb in Wellington has a good fish and chip shop. You just have to know which ones are the best.
Fine Dining:
And one mustn't forget the range of high class eateries that can rival anywhere in the world (especially given the abundance of fresh ingredients...).
Drink
Wellington has a bustling nightlife, concentrated along Courtenay Place, one of the major streets running from the CBD. It runs through Te Aro and ends in Mt Victoria. The nightlife along this strip causes this street to have the highest population density in all of New Zealand on Friday and Saturday nights. In most establishments, drinks are remarkably affordable (~NZ$6), and cover charges are either nonexistent or minimal. In some of the better clubs reasonable dress standards apply, however in the day the mood is usually extremely causal, with even bare feet occasionally accepted (a common Kiwi choice on hotter days). Cuba Mall also features some cool and more alternative bars.
Away from Courtenay Place in the CBD district (Lambton Quay) there are many after work bars frequented by office workers, however this area becomes deserted in the later hours, and thus these establishments usually do not provide all night partying.
Sleep
Stay safe
Typical in most New Zealand cities, Wellington is reasonably safe at night, however common sense should prevail. This is especially relevant on Friday and Saturday nights, as in any city.
Get out
The nearby Hutt Valley and Porirua have a number of interesting sights and beaches. Plimmerton, for example, has seen future world windsurfing champions training, and Edmund Hillary practised rock-climbing at Titahi Bay before conquering Everest. Further afield, the south Wairarapa has become one of New Zealand's wine growing regions.
Wellington (unofficially Te Whanganui-a-Tara or Poneke in Māori) is the capital of New Zealand, the country's second largest urban area and the most populous national capital in Oceania. It is in the Wellington region at the southern tip of the North Island, near the geographical centre of the country.
Like many cities, Wellington's urban area extends well beyond the boundaries of a single local authority. Greater Wellington or the Wellington Region means the entire urban area, plus the rural parts of the cities and the Kapiti Coast, and across the Rimutaka Range to Wairarapa.
Name
Wellington was named in honour of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington and victor of the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke's title comes from the town of Wellington in the English county of Somerset.
In Māori, Wellington goes by three names. Te Whanganui-a-Tara refers to Wellington Harbour and means "the great harbour of Tara". Pōneke is a transliteration of Port Nick, short for Port Nicholson (the city's central marae, the community supporting it and its kapa haka have the pseudo-tribal name of Ngāti Pōneke). Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui, meaning The Head of the Fish of Māui (often shortened to Te Upoko-o-te-Ika), is a more traditional name, derived from the legend in which the North Island was fished up by the demigod Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga).
Importance
Wellington is New Zealand's political centre, housing Parliament and the head offices of all government ministries and departments, plus the bulk of the foreign diplomatic missions based in New Zealand.
Wellington's compact city centre supports an arts scene, café culture and nightlife much larger than most cities of a similar size. It is a centre of New Zealand's film and theatre industry. Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Royal New Zealand Ballet and the biennial International Festival of the Arts are all sited there.
Wellington has the 12th best quality of living in the world, according to a 2006 study by consulting company Mercer. Of cities with English as the primary language, Wellington ranked fourth.1
Settlement
Legend recounts that Kupe discovered and explored the district in about the tenth century.
European settlement began with the arrival of an advance party of the New Zealand Company on the ship Tory, on 20 September 1839, followed by 150 settlers on the Aurora on 22 January 1840. The settlers constructed their first homes at Petone (which they called Britannia for a time) on the flat area at the mouth of the Hutt River. When that proved swampy and flood-prone they transplanted the plans without regard for a more hilly terrain. Wellington has some extremely steep streets running straight up the sides of hills.
Earthquakes
Wellington suffered serious damage in a series of earthquakes in 1848 and from another earthquake in 1855. The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake occurred on a fault line to the north and east of Wellington. It ranks as probably the most powerful earthquake in recorded New Zealand history, with an estimated magnitude of at least 8.2 on the Richter scale. It caused vertical movements of two to three metres over a large area, including raising an area of land out of the harbour and turning it into a tidal swamp. Much of this land was subsequently reclaimed and is now part of Wellington's central business district. For this reason the street named Lambton Quay now runs 100 to 200 metres from the harbour. Plaques set into the footpath along Lambton Quay mark the shoreline in 1840 and thus indicate the extent of the uplift and of subsequent reclamation.
The area has high seismic activity even by New Zealand standards, with a major fault line running through the centre of the city, and several others nearby. Several hundred more minor fault lines have been identified within the urban area. The inhabitants, particularly those in high-rise buildings, typically notice several earthquakes every year. For many years after the 1855 earthquake, the majority of buildings constructed in Wellington were made entirely from wood. The 1996-restored Government Buildings, near Parliament and the Railway Station, are the largest wooden office building in the Southern Hemisphere. While masonry and structural steel have subsequently been used in building construction, especially for office buildings, timber framing remains the primary structural component of almost all residential construction. Residents also place their hopes of survival in good building regulations, which gradually became more stringent in the course of the twentieth century.
New Zealand's capital
In 1865, Wellington became the capital of New Zealand, replacing Auckland, where William Hobson had established his capital in 1841. Parliament first sat in Wellington on 7 July 1862, but the city did not become the official capital for some time. In November 1863 the Premier Alfred Domett moved a resolution before Parliament (in Auckland) that "... it has become necessary that the seat of government ... should be transferred to some suitable locality in Cook Strait." Apparently there was concern that the southern regions, where the gold fields were located, would form a separate colony. Commissioners from Australia (chosen for their neutral status) pronounced the opinion that Wellington was suitable because of its harbour and central location. Parliament officially sat in Wellington for the first time on 26 July 1865. The population of Wellington was then 4,900 .
Wellington is the seat of New Zealand's highest court, the Supreme Court of New Zealand. The historic former High Court building is to be enlarged and restored for the court's use.
Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General, is in Newtown, opposite the Basin Reserve.
Location and geography
Wellington stands at the south-western tip of the North Island on Cook Strait, the passage that separates the North and South Islands. On a clear day the snowcapped Kaikoura Ranges are visible to the south across the strait. To the north stretch the golden beaches of the Kapiti Coast. On the east the Rimutaka Range divides Wellington from the broad plains of the Wairarapa, a wine region of national acclaim.
Wellington is the southernmost national capital city in the world, with a latitude of about 41°S. It is more densely populated than most other settlements in New Zealand, due to the small amount of building space available between the harbour and the surrounding hills. Wellington has very few suitable areas in which to expand and this has resulted in the develoment of the surrounding cities in the greater urban area. Because of its location in the roaring forties latitudes and its exposure to omnipresent winds coming through Cook Strait, the city is known to Kiwis as "Windy Wellington".
More than most cities, life in Wellington is dominated by its central business district (CBD). Approximately 62,000 people work in the CBD, only 4,000 fewer than work in Auckland's CBD, despite that city having three times Wellington's population. Wellington's cultural and nightlife venues concentrate in Courtenay Place and surroundings located in the southern part of the CBD, making the inner city suburb of Te Aro the largest entertainment destination in New Zealand.
Wellington has the highest average income of a main urban area in New Zealand and the highest percentage of people with tertiary qualifications.
Wellington has a reputation for its picturesque natural harbour and green hillsides adorned with tiered suburbs of colonial villas. The CBD is sited close to Lambton Harbour, an arm of Wellington Harbour. Wellington Harbour lies along an active geological fault, which is clearly evident on its straight western coast. The land to the west of this rises abruptly, meaning that many of Wellington's suburbs sit high above the centre of the city.
There is a network of bush walks and reserves maintained by the Wellington City Council and local volunteers. The Wellington region has 500 square kilometres of regional parks and forests.
In the east is the Miramar Peninsula, connected to the rest of the city by a low-lying isthmus at Rongotai, the site of Wellington International Airport. The narrow entrance to Wellington is directly to the east of the Miramar Peninsula, and contains the dangerous shallows of Barrett Reef, where many ships have been wrecked (most famously the inter-island ferry Wahine in 1968).
On the hill west of the city centre are Victoria University and Wellington Botanic Garden. Both can be reached by a funicular railway, the Wellington Cable Car.
Wellington Harbour has three islands: Matiu/Somes Island, Makaro/Ward Island and Mokopuna. Only Matiu/Somes Island is large enough for settlement. It has been used as a quarantine station for people and animals and as an internment camp during the First and Second World Wars. It is now a conservation island, providing refuge for endangered species, much like Kapiti Island further up the coast. There is access during daylight hours by the Dominion Post Ferry.
The city averages 2025 hours (or about 84 days) of sunshine per year.
Energy
The energy needs of Wellington are increasing: one likely source is the wind, and a large farm is proposed for that purpose. The project will consist of 70 turbines with a maximum capacity of 210 MW, just a few kilometres to the south-west of Wellington CBD, between Makara Beach and Cape Terawhiti.
Demographics
The population of Wellington, including the outlying areas, is approaching 450,000. In the 2001 census, 18.5% of people were under 15, compared with 22.7% for New Zealand. About 8.6% of people were aged 65 and over, compared with 12.1% for New Zealand. 85.6% of people in Wellington city said they are of European ethnic origin. Around 4.1% are Māori, with the remainder being of Pacific Islander, Asian or other ethnicity.
Arts and culture
Wellington is the arts and culture capital of New Zealand, and is the centre of the nation's film industry. Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and a growing team of creative professionals have turned the eastern suburb of Miramar into one of the world's finest film-making infrastructures. Directors like Jane Campion and Vincent Ward have managed to reach the world's screens with their independent spirit. Emerging Kiwi film-makers, like Taika Waititi, Costa Botes and Jennifer Bush-Daumec, are extending the Wellington-based lineage and cinematic scope.
Wellington is home to Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand), the Museum of Wellington City and Sea, the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Museum, Colonial Cottage, the New Zealand Cricket Museum, the Cable Car Museum, the national opera company, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, City Gallery, Chamber Music New Zealand, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, St James' Theatre, Downstage Theatre, Bats Theatre and the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.
The once-prosaic capital has become home to dozens of high-profile events and cultural celebrations, including a biennial International Festival of the Arts, annual International Jazz Festival, and major events such as Cuba Street Carnival, New Zealand Fringe Festival, Summer City, New Zealand Affordable Art Show, numerous film festivals, and World of Wearable Art. Many of the city's neighbourhoods and ethnic communities also host annual festivals.
The local music scene, on the success of bands like The Phoenix Foundation, Shihad, Fly My Pretties, Fat Freddy's Drop, and The Black Seeds has become a diverse and thriving pool of talent. The New Zealand School of Music was established in 2005 through a merger of the conservatory and theory programmes at Massey University and Victoria University.
Wellington is also home to groups that perform Improvised Theatre and Improvisational Comedy, including Wellington Improvisation Troupe (WIT), The Improvisors and youth group, Joe Improv. Poet Bill Manhire, director of the International Institute of Modern Letters, has turned the Creative Writing Programme at Victoria University into a forge of new literary activity. Te Whaea, New Zealand's university-level school of dance and drama, and tertiary institutions such as The Learning Connexion, offer training and creative development for the next generation.
The city's new arts centre, Toi Poneke, serves as a nexus of creative projects, collaborations, and multi-disciplinary production. Arts Programmes and Services Manager Eric Holowacz and a small team based in the Abel Smith Street facility have produced ambitious new initiatives such as Opening Notes, Drive by Art, the annual Artsplash Festival, and new public art projects.
As a capital city, Wellington is home to diplomatic missions with cultural officers ready to interface with these aspects of the City's life. In the early part of the 21st century, Wellington has confirmed its place as a vibrant centre of arts, culture, and creativity in the South Pacific.
Sport
Wellington is the home to:
Sporting events hosted in Wellington include:
Notable Wellingtonians
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See also
External links
