From this side, you have a compass with a nice triangular sail pointing south. It is my mistake that that's all I took it for. Turns out it's a memorial to Admiral Byrd, my favorite explorer, who used Wellington as the base for his 2nd Antarctic expedition. The other side of this blue tiled prism has a statue and text and all this meaningful stuff. Go see it.


At least I checked out this cannon up there as well. Unusually, this was never used for defence of the city. This was the Time Cannon. From 1877 to 1900, it would be fired at exactly noon every day so that people could calibrate their timepieces.


The views, in the order I saw them. The first set looks southeast toward the airport and the south side of Miramar Peninsula (a rare double-pointed peninsula, connected to the mainland by the airport in the centre), then pivoting toward the southwest past Lyall Bay. These were not taken at the official lookout, and you can therefore see the Byrd Memorial in the last photo, mocking me even now.


Pivoting through downtown Wellington, or the Te Aro district, to the west.


Lambton Harbour, where Te Papa Museum sits, and the northern half of downtown feature as I continue to pivot north to the industrial area. The circle is Westpac Stadium, home to Wellington's rugby, football, and cricket matches and one of the home venues for the national All Blacks, All Whites, and Black Caps respectively. (Hey, at least their national teams even have names.) The Interislander Ferry docks just to the right of there.


The Petone district of Lower Hutt is in the foreground as I look northeast across Wellington Harbour, with the Tararua Range and Mt. Hector in the background.


The last set of photos pivots through the east quadrant, dominated by the Mt. Victoria Radio Tower in the foreground and the Remutaka Range in the background behind Miramar Peninsula.

See more of Wellington
Back to New Zealand Non-Roads
Back to Non-Roads main page