For some reason I never got around to posting about a walk around the East Harbour Lakes Block back in July 2009, so this report will be more photos and less report. The future mother in law was paying a visit, which was reason enough (as everyone involved agreed) for me to escape and do something else. Back in January 2009 I’d been for a walk out to one of the lakes shortly after hopping off a plane, and I thought I might go and do it properly.

Date: 27th July, 2009
Location: East Harbour Regional Park.
People: Just me.
Route: Walk along the coast to Pencarrow Head, walk clock-wise around both lakes, then back along the coast to the car-park.
[Photos]

Pencarrow Head, with the older
lighthouse in the top left.

The only down side of the East Harbour Lakes Block is that there’s a good 90 minutes of walking along a long, flat, coastal road on the eastern side of Wellington Harbour, almost to the Pencarrow Head Lighthouses. There have been two lighthouses since 1906, when a second was built lower to the ground after it was noticed that the original 1858 lighthouse would sometimes be obscured by fog. Due to the long hard road, it’s probably nicer in some ways on a mountain bike than walking, or the getting there at least. Once actually to the lighthouse, the ground gets softer and the terrain more diverse, and the walking’s fascinating. Many people stop at the lighthouses, however, and make it a walk to the lighthouses and back. If you’re up early, though, there’s a wonderful walk around the Parangarahu Lakes Area of East Harbour Regional Park.

Wetlands at the northern end
of Lake Kopangapiripiri.

Lake Kopangapiripiri on the western side, and Lake Kohangatera on the eastern side, are both low to sea level but lakes in their own right. They’re the main features of one of the few remaining wetlands left in New Zealand that’s still quite accessible. There’s a lot of bird and insect life evident all around.

Looking up Gollans Stream, the wetland
that flows into the top of Lake Kohangatera.

The area’s well tracked, and in some places this is necessary due to the swampy regions where it’s necessary to cross. For most of the time I was thinking it’d been pointless to’ve had gaiters, but I finally appreciated them for short stints on the eastern side of lake Kohangatera, where it became fairly muddy in places. To get around both lakes at a casual to reasonable pace, it took me about 3.5 hours, though not including the 1.5 hour walk along the coast on either end.

The southern end of Lake Kopangapiripiri.

A south island alpine back-drop.

The lower lighthouse, built on the rocks in 1906 when the old lighthouse at a higher altitude was sometimes obscured by fog.

The Inter-Island Ferry passes in front of Barret Reef, exiting Wellington Harbour.

More photos are here.

I’ve been on call at work in the past few days, which means I wasn’t supposed to wander too far from civilisation last weekend just in case the building burned down and somebody needed to trundle into town and validate the parking of the fire trucks, or something like that. Sunday was otherwise boring so I ended up going for a wander along the Skyline Walkway, which I figure should be okay because it’s relatively civilised and there are many exit points in case I needed to get back to a road or anything. Here are some photos (biased towards the Kaukau end of the walk), and here’s the map of the day:

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I put on my number three pair of boots, which tend to get used if I think I might need to walk on some road, and headed down the hill. Having left home at around 11.30am after hanging out the washing. This began with a walk down into Otari Wilton’s Bush, not far from where I currently live, then straight up the other side of the valley up to the ridge-line where the Skyline Walkway is situated.

There was quite a lot of wind, I think from a northerly, and until I reached it I was concerned it might be impossible to get past the dip in the ridge just after the Chartwell exit and within an hour of Mt Kaukau, which tends to be one of the most forceful wind channels of the entire ridge. On this day it turned out to be unfounded, however, and although rather strong there was nothing at all dangerous. I noticed my ears were getting a pounding, though, and after a short while remembered I had a balaclava stashed away inside my backpack. For the next half hour I may have looked unusual to the several people sitting in the sheltered areas as I walked past them wearing my short sleeve shirt, balaclava and sun-hat, but it worked a treat.

Wellington is littered with great visible green space all over for walking in without having to go too far, and I think the photo below, taken from just below Mt Kaukau on the western side, shows it off quite well.

Within this frame, the line of hills down the right side is the front side of the Skyline Ridge, whereas the pokey ridge thing just to the upper left of the centre is the Tinakori Hill. (I live on the near side of it, and the CBD’s on the far side.) It’s bigger than I think it looks in this photo, and just on its own it’d be possible to wander around in the bush for the better part of a day. The hills at the back of the photo are Te Kopahou Reserve, lying behind the suburbs of Karori and Brooklyn, and also have lots of walking that leads to high points overlooking Cook Straight. If you click through to a larger version of the photo, there’s a small white dot on the centre of the ridge which is the Hawkins Hill Radar Dome. The barely visible green space at the back and far left of the photo is another part of the Town Belt, leading from Oriental Bay over Mt Victoria and back to the coast at Island Bay, basically the length of the Southern Walkway. It’s walkable in a few hours, but makes a nice full day walk at a slower pace.

And that’s only within the frame, not showing the wind farm walks around Makara further to the right, the hills towards Colonial Knob in the Porirua direction, the large Belmont Regional Park between Porirua and the Hutt Valley, the hills that run from Pencarrow Head over Eastbourne and between the Hutt Valley and Wainuiomata, the Rimutaka Range (a popular tramping haunt) that overlooks Wellington from the east, the Akatarawas that lie west of Upper Hutt, or (obviously) the Tararua Range to the north. There’s so much really nice space to walk in and it’s very accessible to a large number of people. Wellington’s great.

I’d earlier thought I’d go straight past Kaukau and hop directly down to Johnsonville to buy some lunch, but somehow at the time I decided to go a different way, down the Northern Walkway, which I hadn’t been down for a long time and for some reason assumed could be almost as direct. The northern walkway at the Mt Kaukau end is a very well graded walkway, and nice to walk along. I left it in favour of one of the side tracks before too long, though, as I really didn’t want to go back to Wellington through the suburbs, and it started heading that way fairly quickly. What eventuated was a confused sidle on tracks down the side of Mt Kaukau, then 3/4 of the way back to the top of Mt Kaukau, and eventually getting me to Truscott Avenue at about 2pm, which is the road I’d been quite keen to get out of earlier. Now I’m more educated for next time.

About 6 months ago, the local city council built a new well graded track (it even has a handrail) that switches up the end of the spur at one end of the valley. It switches so much that it takes longer, but it’s less steep. The original route, which I still try to use because of its directness, gradually becomes overgrown as time goes on. It will probably be inaccessible within a year or two if it’s not properly cleared, but meanwhile I’m continuing to use it. Earlier tonight, I must have disturbed about 50 small birds as I walked up, which never happened in the past, and it occurred that the high grass and scrub growth is becoming a haven for them as the bush takes over once again.

I enjoy seeing birds in the nearby bush, because it’s a sign that the efforts to revive their habitats are succeeding, even in the presence of population expansion. Despite living in a well populated suburb bordered by more well populated suburbs, Wellington City Council maintains large sections of native bush both up the hill and down the hill. We often hear Moreporks overnight from inside the house. Moreporks are nocturnal birds, but just a few days ago I was walking through the bush of the Tinakori Hill, and had my attention diverted by the noisy flapping of a Morepork landing on a branch a metre above me. I don’t know why it was awake and flying around during the mid-afternoon, but it was just happy to be curious about me and it studied me constantly with its giant nocturnal eyes. We had a staring contest for about 5 minutes before I got bored and left. The Morepork won.

Kereru, also known as New Zealand Pigeons, are another popular bird that flaps around here. They’re big, very noisy fliers, and often sit on branches that look far too small and thin to support them. All the lurching and swaying of their branch as they land doesn’t seem to phase them, though. They can apparently judge exactly which branches can support their weight, without bending 90 degrees towards the ground, well before they land. Kereru typically sit on tree branches, and I most easily notice them when I get to close and there’s a sudden noisy flapping as they leap to another branch further from whatever track I happen to be on. As I walked to work this morning, I saw a kereru perched on a power line out in the open above the road, for the first time ever. Power lines probably are about the same thickness as the branches that Kereru like to grip.

Kaka, one of my favourite New Zealand native birds, made it into this morning’s Dominion Post on the superficial premise that a few Wellington suburbanites people are annoyed about the new inhabitants damaging their trees. The fact that this has become an issue shows what a triumph the breeding programme of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, now branded Zealandia, which is a predator-fenced sanctuary operated by a trust very near central Wellington. The sanctuary as a whole, however, is only the most intensively protected part of the entire native bush design of the surrounding region and Wellington’s town belt, which is very accessible to a substantial population and scattered all over with public walkways, and people who use them. Even then, they’re starting to venture even further. Yesterday morning I saw a Kaka flap past my 6th floor window in Wellington’s central business district.

The Karori Sanctuary Kaka are easily identifiable from a distance, at least at the moment. Kaka usually have a screechey call, but the Karori Sanctuary have a rather unique call which sounds very much like a wolf whistle. The story is that early on in the life of the sanctuary, one of the staff decided it’d be fun to teach a Kaka to wolf-whistle. It caught on, other learned it, they young ones pick it up, and so it’s been that for several evenings last year I walked home through the streets of the Northland suburb of Wellington with gangs of four or five Kaka circling above, seemingly making sure that everyone knew it was their territory by calling some very loud wolf whistles at nearby pedestrians. Perhaps one day, as generations of these Kaka spread throughout the forests of the North Island, the wolf whistle call that marks the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary will also spread.

I try to get out and do a lot of tramping, but I also really enjoy how I don’t have to get out to enjoy such experiences. I also like that people don’t always have to get out into the wilderness to enjoy some of it. None of these places I’ve mentioned are in any way remote, but they’re thriving with native wildlife.

I found a new way into Belmont Regional Park that I’d previously not known about, heading up through Granada North where there’s a new sub-division going in, then just following the roads until they fade away. In hindsight I think I might have accidentally crossed about 50 metres of private land (hopefully no more), which I realised upon emerging at the end of someone’s driveway, so I’m not 100% sure if there’s a complete public access corridor going through there.

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I decided about half way through the day that I’d like to get to Whitby, which is the suburb in which I grew up. It would have been nice to have been able to follow Duck Creek from Belmont Regional Park all the way, but unfortunately it’s blocked off as more private land and so I had to divert back into suburbia and walk around the streets.

It was strange walking around Whitby. I haven’t lived there for 17 years, but there are memories everywhere, and much of it doesn’t seem to have changed so much. Other things have, though. Everything seems so much more condensed. Great hills that I remember as taking much effort to climb feel unusually shallow. Walking through my old school in which I spent my entire primary and intermediate career, all of the buildings feel smaller. It’s hard to imagine how we spent so much time running around here without constantly hitting the walls. I guess people grow up.

The property developers have taken over some of the great areas of recreation. I have wonderful memories of flying kites through the area that’s now a fenced off retirement village. It was always going to happen, and despite having been very sad to leave in 1992, I’m not sure I could go back to live there again, at least with the same expectations.

It was late in the day, in any case, and I resumed my plan of aiming for the 6.34pm train from Paremata back home again… more of a challenge than I expected given how my feet were starting to give up. There was still enough summer daylight left to make the walk around Pauatahanui Inlet worthwhile, and when I arrived at the train station at exactly 6.34pm, it was only a shame the train was running 20 minutes late.

I guess what had turned into a 43 km walk was quite a shock to the system when it’d been a while, and my right knee now seems to be playing up. Hopefully things will improve in the next week or two, though.

Late last month, a petition was opened on the Wellington City Council’s e-petition page titled Ban on smoking along the city’s “Golden Mile”, with the idea being that smoking on the main central Wellington streets should be completely banned — so far, the only CBD street in which a by-law prevents smoking is Cable Car Lane. As I write this, it has 550 signatures. To add to all of this, however, another e-petition titled Continue to allow smoking along Wellington’s Golden Mile was created by another local today, intending to show support for an opposing view that smoking shouldn’t be banned.

I’m generally skeptical of petitions for various reasons including how they’re sometimes used to claim and campaign for things that don’t match the wording under which people signed. Even in this case I’m still unsure whether I agree with the exact wording. I put my name against the first petition after some days of thought and the lengthy consideration, however, mostly because I think it’s a great issue to actually be discussed.

Restaurant and cafe owners on the main strip probably wouldn’t support such a bylaw, since (as proposed) it’d make it illegal for them to cater to smoking customers when it might not be so for competitors just around a corner. I’m also not personally certain a complete ban on smoking is the best answer, despite liking the idea of strongly encouraging and better facilitating people who want to smoke to give better consideration to those around them without alienating smokers into a reject hole.

Ultimately, I’m simply glad that this issue is being brought up and seems to be arousing interest in the community. Irrespective of whether new by-laws are needed, or just better facilities for and communication about the problems, it needs to be discussed out loud. Presently, I sometimes feel as if I can only get a breath of fresh air by stick my head into the middle of the road because today’s cars seem so much cleaner than today’s cigarettes (albeit not a scientifically-derived assertion on my part). Some people would probably say I’m just overly sensitive, but I don’t think I’m too far out of line to feel a little miffed at the current state of things. I’ll be keen to see what kind of discussions and viewpoints come out of this.

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It’s probably just as well I didn’t go tramping in the Tararuas, though. At times it still felt as if I was only using 2/3 of my lungs. The last time I went tramping with a cold like that I had a rather bad time (also because of silly decisions I made about what to wear at critical times, to be fair), and it wouldn’t have been good for anyone in the group given the yucky weather on Saturday and all the bush-bashing in that region. Now two weeks later I can still notice the effects, and I hate the way the remnants of colds can just hang around sometimes, but I think it’s dissipating now.

In unrelated news, Stacey and I are about to head overseas to South-East Asia for 3.5 weeks. (Specifically Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.) It’s the first proper holiday we’ve had for a couple of years and it’ll be fantastic to get away for a while. I suspect there’s not a lot of Wellington-based tramping in that part of the world, however, so I’m unsure how much I’ll update this blog during the coming month. When we return in mid-November I’m expecting one potentially stressful week and weekend at work, and after that I’m certain I’ll want to get out for a tramp or two.

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Along the ridge-top of the Skyline Walkway, the wind was really starting to blow — not to a leaning-against-it level, but certainly enough to cause the odd stumbling. It also wasn’t enough for the turbines over at the Makara Wind Farm to be switched off. The area’s full of high-tension power lines, and they make a major racket when the wind’s blowing through them to that extent.

Funnily enough, I notice that Erick Brenstrum recently wrote a short piece over on the Met Service Blog about ridge top winds, and how they operate.

I met the odd person coming down, but the presence of other people evaporated as I moved along the ridge. I eventually ended up at the junction to turn down to Chartwell Drive, and had to sit down behind a big rock for some relief by that point — seriously. Having just experienced some quite extreme wind, without even having crossed what is usually the windiest part of the ridge (ie. the saddle area between there and Bells’ Track), I decided that right now was the time to get down. I think the last time I’ve felt wind that strong was on the tops in the Ruahines a couple of years ago (despite them being about 4-5 times the elevation), and it wasn’t pleasant then either. It probably would have been possible to get over to Bells’ Track and get down that way without a serious incident, but in this particular case I’m using the word “probably” in its most literal sense and it didn’t seem worth the gamble. And so I followed the track down to the top of Chartwell Drive, with a violent wild tail-wind pushing me along for the first hundred metres or so before I was properly into sheltered space, after which everything returned to normality — the most fierce wind now being channelled some distance above.

It was a worthwhile couple of hours’ walk, in the end, albeit very windy in places. I even managed to stop to grab a few groceries on the way home, which seems to’ve shown up in the map since I’m slack about removing these details.

I’ve already written about the Skyline Walkway at least a couple of times [1, 2], so I’ll focus more on the parts around Makara Peak.

Date: 15th August, 2009
Location: Makara Peak and Skyline Walkway, Wellington.
Route: Walk up to Makara Peak from South Karori Road, down via Zac’s Track, then along the Skyline Walkway to Mt Kaukau, and Johnsonville via Old Coach Road. (Also see the map at the end of this post.)
[Photos]
[Download GPX] [Show map] [Display in new window]

Makara Peak is a dedicated Mountain Bike park, choca-full of mountain bike tracks that are maintained by the community. This is the second time I’ve been there. The first time (before I was really writing things down), I wandered into a few areas that caused me to be really worried that a speedy bicycle pilot would come careening around a blind corner and run me over. It didn’t feel quite the same this time, though, possibly because I had a better idea of wanting to stay to the wider tracks, and perhaps because there seemed to be less people around.

I live in Northland (the Wellington suburb), and started late (about midday) by walking through the Karori Shops (collecting lunch along the way) to the end of the Karori Park bus route, then up South Karori Road to the main car-park area after about an hour or so. There’s an information board under a small shelter which I went up to take a look at, but it didn’t have much in the way of maps so I turned to leave, and promptly walked straight into a post holding up the shelter’s roof. Ouch. All good, though.

The number of cars had me concerned that there might be lots of people riding around on bikes, but it didn’t eventuate into a problem. I nearly always find people on bikes to be careful, cheerful and considerate in off-road areas both to other bikies and to poor impoverished pedestrians alike, even when they’re in their own playground. Sometimes accidents can still happen though, so the possibility of lots of bikes around had me concerned for a little while. I didn’t meet many people though. I followed my nose upwards until I reached Makara Peak, where a couple of guys with bikes were sitting down staring at the view.

Dormant turbines.

Once again the Makara Wind Farm (aka Project West Wind) dominates the skyline from the top of Makara Peak, which shouldn’t be surprising. The building of the wind farm should be nearly finished now, but what’s there is already operating. Even though it was overcast with some recurring very light rain, the air was still and most of the turbines were barely moving, if at all. Maybe this is why there weren’t as many people obviously riding around, or perhaps I’d only been frequenting the boring places since I’d made sure about half my route up was on the fairly wide servicing road to the top.

The transmitter at the
top of Makara Peak.

There’s another servicing road leading down to the Skyline Carpark, which is my made-up name for the carpark opposite the start of the Skyline Walkway on Makara Road, because I don’t know what bikies call it. As there as almost nobody at the top, though, I thought it would probably also be reasonably okay to walk along Zac’s Track, also noting a big sign that warned bikies that people might be walking on Zac’s Track. It goes to roughly the same place as the road, and the only two people I saw along here were a couple of guys with a bike, a dog, and a bucket of dirt, who were doing some track maintenance. That track ends half way down the road, at which point it’s possible to cross the road and head down another track (with lots of switches) called Varley’s Track… or alternatively down one called Vertigo, which had a big warning sign announcing it should only ever be attempted by expert bikies in good weather. Despite walking, I didn’t think I should check that one out just yet.

Cattle stops for walkers are everywhere.

Some time after 2pm, I was back down at Makara Road, and commenced walking the Skyline Walkway, which was noticeably vacant of the flocks of people who might often have been walking along it. Perhaps this was because the day wasn’t one of brilliant sunshine. The Skyline Walkway’s undergone some maintenance since I last walked it. Every farm-gate along the track has been improved to have pedestrian cattle stops alongside them. With so many people walking the route, the council probably got sick of people leaving gates open, or perhaps just having them wear out with so much opening and closing, and the consequence is a much smoother walk around all the gates without having to walk through them.

I went on a detour up Johnston Hill, which I usually do when walking the Skyline Walkway, and for some reason I became very confused. I’m unsure if the ongoing maintenance has caused the routes up Johnston Hill to be altered, but I was just walking up happily when I suddenly noticed all of Wellington City was on the opposite side from what I expected, and I was walking the wrong way. It was really weird to have an orientation flip like that, and despite completely recognising the top, being able to see Mt Kaukau in the distance, it took some careful thinking to convince myself to walk towards it because my brain really wanted to do something different.

It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago (Inner Navigation by Erik Jonsson), which is full of anecdotes about this kind of thing. Eventually I had to back-track the way I’d come to a point I properly recognised as being the right way around. That probably added about 500 metres to my route, but it was all in good fun. Weird.

It took about 2 hours to reach Mt Kaukau this time. Having left the Skyline Walkway Carpark at Makara Road at around 2.15pm or so, I walked up to the giant television transmitter, without which Wellingtonians wouldn’t be able to enjoy quality free-to-air television like Survivor and the “We’re not going to tell you what shocking thing happened until you watch our commercials” prime time television news. On arriving at this point, which is where all the dog-walking tracks converge and where the lookout platform is, I did something I believe I’ve never done before. I walked to the actual peak of Mt Kaukau.

Mt Kaukau Trig.

The actual peak is about 300 metres to the north of the television transmitter. There’s even a giant trig sitting on it which is visible from many places, but it’s not easily visible from the lookout platform area since it’s behind a big clump of trees. There’s a servicing road up to the transmitter from this side that passes to one side of the trees I mentioned earlier. I can only presume there’s not been much problem with people walking the final 300 metres to the actual top of Kaukau. The most obvious visible way back is to first go down to this road, and it seemed a little strange when I found myself separated by a barbed wire fence from the trees I’d recently freely walked through. Why have a barbed wire fence when anyone can just walk around the end? The road led into a maintenance parking area around the transmitter which felt more and more as if I wasn’t supposed to be there, and in the end (because I couldn’t bothered back-tracking), I had to climb a small fence to get to where I wanted to be.

Looking west at sunset.

By now it was around 4.40pm, and the sun would be setting in less than an hour. From here, as I was still going in quite good time, I thought I might walk around the Old Coach Road way to get to Johnsonville before hopping onto a train to get home. The track down this way is well signposted, but it splits off to several other streets that have entrances to Mt Kaukau, and I did the same thing that I’ve done three times now, which was to walk straight past a major track junction and find myself approaching a street called Woodmancote Road. Of course, by the time this becomes obvious I’ve walked into a deep hole, and so have to turn around and walk all the way up again, around 600 metres back to the junction which is well sign-posted and very obvious for people coming from this direction. The good news is that this time I was tracking my entire day’s walk with a GPS receiver, and I’ll keep the GPX file so that I’ll be able to follow the same track and make the same mistake every single time I do this from now on.

The Old Coach Road route is a nice way to finish this walk. It’s over farmland, and despite being very accessible, it sidles along hills on the inside of the valleys, which gives the impression that the track is more isolated than it really is. I finally exited at McLintock Street, and from here it’s very easy to simply follow the down-hill roads which lead back to Johnsonville, almost straight to the railway station. All good.

From Cannons’ Head down to Stratton Street.

I had some free time during rather nice weather on Sunday, and decided to drive out to Petone and spend it doing exactly this. With the opportunity, I also decided to do some red lining and take a look around a few areas of Belmont Regional Park where I haven’t yet been.

Date: 19th July, 2009
Location: Belmont Regional Park, from Cornish Street.
Route: A clockwise loop up to Belmont Trig via Bridleway, over to Cannons’ Head, down to Stratton Street and back to Cornish Street via Korokoro Dam.
[Photos]

I began in a place where I’ve entered the park many times before, at the end of Cornish Street in Petone. Cornish Street is an industrial street and although there’s a modest amount of public parking at the end, near the entrance to the park, it doesn’t have much other space where public parking is legal. This is, at least, what I discovered for the first time yesterday having turned up shortly after what I think were people from a tramping club milling around their cars, though I didn’t ask which one. The street is incredibly wide and quiet, but it wasn’t until I had to find somewhere else to park that I discovered virtually the entire length of the street is made up of industrial driveways and access points to private parking spaces. I did manage to find a legal area about 100 metres away, though, and left at about 9.30am or thereabouts.

My usual way in from here is to walk up to Belmont Trig via the main ridge track up from Baked Beans Bend, but this time I thought I might try to red line some of the parts I hadn’t been to before. For this reason, I decided to head up to Belmont Trig via the Bridleway track, which (from the Korokoro side) coasts around the back of Belmont Peak before climbing up the far side.

The main track from Korokoro continues along under the trees past the Korokoro Dam and it’s a really good track shared with runners and mountain bikers. Before that point though, about half an hour after leaving, a major track junction leads off to the left and up towards Belmont Trig. Only a short distance towards the trig, the track begins to criss-cross a stream which, especially if it’s raining, would make it difficult to get through without getting wet feet. (Anyone really determined might find rocks to hop over if they look hard enough, though.)

Where the track first splits up
towards the Bridleway spur.

Baked Beans Bend is about 15 minutes further up the track. There’s an ad-hoc camp-site here (though I’m not sure the regional council would appreciate someone having a campfire as has obviously happened), and it’s here where the route begins to climb. It’s also very soon after this bend that the main Belmont Trig track splits from the Bridleway Track. The Trig track climbs more or less evenly up its spur, but the Bridleway track hovers in the depths of the valley for a while, undulating up and down a few times. The R27 Wellington LINZ map from the 260 Map Series (published 2006) then indicates that the Bridleway track climbs sharply up a spur further further around, shortly after it splits again with the other option heading out to Horokiwi. This is what I initially thought I was going up when the track very obviously split, and it definitely climbs steeply. It turns out there’s another spur between the Trig Track spur and the Bridleway Spur, though. Half way up, I saw a pole further around to the hill-side, and after some checking of my map I figured out I was on a track the map hadn’t marked. The two spurs joined each other, though, so I ended up in the same place where the Bridleway Track emerges not far below Belmont Trig.

The main ridge leading up to Belmont
Trig from Baked Beans Bend.

On a nice day in Belmont, it’s unusual to go without seeing many people, and I expected to encounter others by the time I reached the trig. There was nobody. The morning was sunny, virtually no wind, and there was nobody.

At 457 metres above sea-level, Belmont Trig is the highest point in the centre of the Wellington Region. It’s not above any natural bush-line, but the park is a farm park and there comes a point where one emerges from the native bush into council-operated publicly accessible farm-land, and there’s a similar sentiment to reaching the tops in New Zealand’s more mountainous back-country.

Looking towards Porirua Harbour.

I sat under the trig, spent a couple of minutes strapping my feet, hoping to ward off blisters from only the second outing of my new Scarpas, then I found a grassy patch slightly down the side of the hill and stared towards the Tararuas which were basking inside some grey cloud. Colonial Knob behind Porirua, and on the edge, is slightly higher than this, but to be well above Belmont Trig without flying, it’d be necessary to be in the Rimutaka Range to the east on the far side of the harbour (the Mt Matthews high point in the distance is a little over twice the height), or in the Tararua Range to the north where Mitre Peak is more than three times the height of Belmont Trig. From here, though, the Tararuas were still a cloud-covered smudge in the far distance.

Say what you might about high tension power cables being strung over regional parks, they make it much easier to identify locations on topo maps. As I sat on the northern slope of Belmont Peak with the map unfolded in front of me, it was easy to pick out the upcoming route around Cannons’ Head, down a spur to the Stratton Street park entrance that I’d visit before continuing back to the Korokoro Dam.

After 15 minutes of sitting on the grass-covered slope, I eventually heard the chatter of a group of people approaching up the main ridge from Baked Beans Bend, and with the peak about to be overrun by the next group of day-walkers it was time to carry on.

The Tararuas from Cannons’ Head.

It took about 40 minutes to reach Cannons’ Head, during which time I passed one enthusiastic mountain runner and nobody else — surprising given the weather so far. Cannons’ Head shares a name with Cannons’ Creek, visible below, which is one of the fore-mentioned locations in which lots of state housing was built during the mid-20th century. In the past the area has had a reputation of one of the highest crime rates in the country and admittedly it was an area I tended to avoid when I was growing up nearby, but I’ve walked through it several times in the last few years when approaching Belmont Regional Park from the other side, and I’m actually really impressed with how it doesn’t feel anything like as run-down as it used to. It’s possible to walk down the street as a stranger and smile at someone, and get a smile back. Perhaps there’s more pride in living there than there used to be, or maybe I’m just imagining a difference where the only difference has been inside my head. Either way it’s really neat.

Not being in any kind of rush, I once again managed to find a nice place in the grass near Cannons’ Head where I could sit for another 10 minutes and gaze towards the Tararuas. By now they had emerged from the grey clouds and were showing some snow-covered peaks. Perhaps another day.

Leaving Stratton Street towards Belmont Trig.

The walk from Cannons’ Head down to the Stratton Street entrance took about 25 minutes down a spur, and there’s a picnic area that seems quite nice in the sunshine. Not having left a vehicle here, though, I followed the signposted track back up towards Belmont Peak. After only 10 minutes, the track splits off with one branch heading further up open farmland towards Belmont Trig, and the other directed into the bush in the direction of the Korokoro Dam.

Even though it’s a direct route between nearby entrances, this track is actually really steep by regional park recreational walking standards, and I expect it could be quite slippery when wet. Before reaching the Oakleigh Street entrance, the track around here also criss-crosses a stream in a way that was fine with tramping boots, but it’d be a challenge to keep dry feet if attempting to walk the track with regular shoes (and a dry-feet attitude). This section of track along here is very accessible, and from this point on there were many more people out for casual walks in t-shirts and with handbags and such.

Korokoro Dam.

Nobody was at the Korokoro Dam when I reached it 40 minutes after leaving Stratton Street, and I sat for five minutes to study a couple of ducks that very slowly made their way over the artificial lake behind the dam. From the dam, it was a 45 minute casual walk back to Cornish Street. All good.

What surprised me as I walked back towards town was the number of bottle caps washed up on that part of the beach around there. There were barely any plastic bottles, but there were thousands of bottle caps. They were typically the variety that comes from soft drinks and bottled water, the latter of which I think is a bizarre, inefficient and pointless thing in New Zealand, but perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

I suppose the bottles must separate and be carried somewhere else with a different make-up and density, but apparently thousands of bottle caps end up right here. Putting thoughts about lazy thoughtless polluters and the hypocrisy of New Zealand aside, I’d love to know more about the physics of what’s happening here.

The Makara turbines of Project West Wind.

It’s hard to talk about the Makara Beach Loop these days without talking about Project West Wind — the initiative of Meridian Energy to build a giant wind farm on Wellington’s south coast. It took years to get through the consent process, and my most vivid memory of this was one of the few meetings I attended of the Tararua Tramping Club back in 2007. The meeting involved a representative of Meridian who described the wind farm proposal with a slide-show decorated by a large photo of a cute and happy dog basking in the wind, many noisy people whom I was later informed were not regular attendees of TTC meetings, and a lot of angry heckling.

Date: 14th June, 2009
Location: Makara Loop Walk, from Makara Beach.
Route: Just doing the loop clockwise starting from the beach.
[Photos and Videos]

The wind farm has been controversial to say the least, especially for some residents of the small settlement of Makara separated from Wellington by the hills, who have been very concerned about the visual and audial impact the wind turbines would have on their community. When the Environment Court approved the project in 2007, Meridian wasted no time in starting construction, and the hills in that area are now dotted with turbines. I hadn’t thought they’d be quite so obvious so close to Wellington, and so I was surprised just how obvious it was even a few minutes drive up the hill from Karori. The things are huge. The wind farm isn’t fully completed until the end of 2009, but it’s been operating in part since April.

Makara Beach.

I started at Makara Beach at about 11.20, walked the loop in a clock-wise direction (over the hill to Opau Bay, then back along the beach), took lots of photos, stopped to look at lots of views, and arrived back at the car at around 1.30pm.

Hovering all on its own.

The loop doesn’t split until after a few minutes of walking, at which point the track leads straight up over farmland, and up and up. It’s not long before there’s some nice scenery out to sea. The South Island was only murkily visible today, but both Mana Island and Kapiti Island behind it stood out very impressively. From the beginning of the track, the only clear evidence that there’s a wind farm nearby is the single closest turbine, which the route spends much of its time weaving around. At the point that the higher track diverts up the hill, the full blades of this shiny white turbine are visible between the shoulders of the hills on either side. The walkway climbs up to the height of the base of this turbine, but for now it’s just a giant in the distance and with the perspective it’s difficult to gauge the height. I’d be very interested to see this massive thing operating simply to see how noisy it is, as noise has been one of the posted concerns of the lobby groups.

Mana Island (closer) and Kapiti Island (behind).

It’s a nice coastal hill to walk along and with the direct exposure to the north, south and the west along the top, I bet it’s devastatingly impressive to wander around when it’s windy, but the air today was calm and still. The track goes up and up as it hugs the top of the shallow cliff-face above the sea, more or less until it starts going down. I already had blisters in my new boots by now, but that was okay because I wasn’t really in any rush.

At about midday I reached the two WW2 gun emplacements. It’s about this time, walking around to the far side of the bunkers, that the scale of Project West Wind becomes clear. Suddenly the farm-land over the hills is covered in turbines. With my imperfect eyesight I counted at least 39 although they continue back into the distance towards the south coast and the total size of the farm is slated to be 62, which is a compromised down-scaling from the original plan before the lobby groups expressed their concerns. They’re all massive, each with a total 82 metre blade radius sidding on top of 67 metre towers!

A very populated skyline.

It’s a novelty for me to walk around near a wind farm, and I stood for a while just gaping at the scale of it, waiting for a couple of noisy people whose voices were carrying to approach and overtake me. Then in the relative silence with the noises of birds and the coastal sounds of the sea below, I watched several turbines in the distance as they lazily expressed their angular momentum obtained from what must have been a barely detectable breeze in terms of what would be the norm.

Even at this lack-luster pace as one of those blades took 12 seconds for a full revolution of 258 metres (see the short movie), the tip was by my calculations moving at roughly 21 metres per second. That’s around twice the average speed of 10.36 metres per second of Usain Bolt, the current world record holder in the 200 metre dash (averaged faster than the 100m dash). There’s a lot of force in those blades, even when they appear to be drifting slowly.

Despite concerns I have about the environmental effects that such wind farms can have in some places, my current personal opinion is that in the big scheme of things the Makara farm is a good design if wind turbines have to go somewhere. I guess putting them here in an area that’s already being used for farming and industry, high tension power lines and productivity certainly beats the prospect of changing the character of wilderness areas, forest parks and national parks.

It’s shortly after the WW2 bunkers that the track curves around to the base of one of the nearest turbines. The road is gated off preventing access, but I snuck off the track by about 100 metres to a small point higher up where it looked as if many people had already been, and took a few photos of the turbine with Mana and Kapiti Islands in the background. It’s a nice spot, and soon after the track becomes a deteriorating asphalt road that leads down to Opau Bay on the coast. I reached the coast at about 12.30pm, and from here it’s a nice coastal walk back to Makara Beach.

Arriving at Opua Bay.

Looking back towards Opua Bay.

And yeah, my boots went okay but I definitely have a couple of blisters on the back of my heels that I’ll need to deal with now. I probably should have taken some band-aids with me, but I wasn’t thinking so intelligently when I left home this morning. Hopefully with two or three more short walks like this, my new boots will be good for something more demanding.

Stacey and I went for a walk down into the central city, 20-50 minutes away depending on urgency, and the view over the harbour was iconic of these kinds of days. Much of the mist would have evaporated by the time we saw it at 11.30am, but with the Orongorongas highlighted by their contrast in the background behind the city and the harbour as they lead towards the southern extent of the Tararuas, it’s a good sight all the same.

It was an expensive day. I’ve had a busy week at work for various reasons, and a certain amount of stress has been compounded my the loss of my miniature Silva L4 head-torch (like this one). It’s not the losing of the torch that irked me, but that being in mid-winter without a torch has meant I haven’t been able to take the much more scenic and through-the-forested-town-belt route on my walk home from work every night. It was the original head-torch that I bought for tramping several years ago, easily durable enough to have been through the washing machine a couple of times without a scratch. When I had more time for amateur astronomy, the red LED doubled as an excellent light for reading of star maps and fiddling with observing tools in the dark with minimal interruption of night vision.

The only thing I disliked about the Silva L4 was changing the batteries. Even in full daylight, at home and armed with a full selection of kitchen implements, I’ve never been able to get the thing open to change the batteries in less than 10 minutes. I dreaded the day that I might be trapped in the dark having to fight with it, and this was part of the reason I ultimately replaced it. The other reason I replaced it was that as great as it is for short range light, there’s not a very strong beam and so it wasn’t ideally suited for tramping at night, which is something I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Since I retired it from tramping in favour of a Black Diamond Icon, which I like for different reasons, the L4 has experienced its retirement as a handy light-weight torch that I’d simply carry everywhere I went, and was thus very handy any time I decided I wanted to walk home in the dark via the scenic routes.

I’d been looking around the house for 2 weeks, searching everywhere I could think of. With no success whatsoever, I finally decided this morning to accept it was gone, and buy a new one. After some brief research, I decided that a Black Diamond Gizmo was about what I wanted, and it was also the price I was prepared to pay (roughly $40). Literally 20 minutes later, Stacey and I were sitting on a bench in Courtenay Place, I had my back-pack on my lap, and I found my old Silva L4 lodged in a gap between the outside of my daypack and its harness. I walk that daypack to work and back every day and it must have been lodged there for a good 2 weeks. Irony abound. So now I have two quite nice torches for walking home with. I think I might try the Gizmo for a while and see how I like it for coming over the hill at night.

The torch wasn’t my most costly purchase of the day. As of a couple of weeks ago, I’ve needed new boots. I’ve been using some relatively light-weight Zamberlans for non-alpine tramping for a while and they’ve been going well, but after a couple of weeks ago I decided they were just too worn out. It doesn’t seem to matter which boots I get or how carefully I look after them between going tramping, they only ever seem to last 2 years. I guess they get thrashed to an extent when I use them (especially rivers, mud and scree), but I’ve more or less decided that when I’m out enjoying myself, I’m not going to sacrifice that enjoyment or safety to look after gear. I’ll do whatever I need to to look after gear when it’s at home, but I very rarely rock-hop over rivers to prevent water getting in, for instance, because I’m not personally very comfortable balancing on rocks when I find can feel more secure wedging my foot on something underwater and just let my feet get wet.

I’ve been looking at what’s available for a couple of weeks, and unfortunately the selection of stocked tramping boots in Wellington retailers is quite feeble right now. I eventually narrowed it down to a pair of Scarpa Trek boots, though. These are about the simplest boots that Scarpa makes, and to be honest it’s part of the appeal. Maybe I’m not careful enough, but I’ve had all kinds of frustrating problems with boots in the past. It’s usually related to bits and pieces such as boot-lace eyelets popping off, things bending and poking holes through my gaiters, seams coming un-glued then catching on things and tearing off even worse. The list goes on. Plus, I’m really sick of Gore-Tex lined boots. It’s very difficult in tramping shops to get boots that aren’t Gore-Tex lined, even though they take the better part of a week to properly dry out once they’re saturated, and it’s typical in New Zealand to walk in rivers and get boots saturated inside and out when tramping.

If I followed the advice of a tramping friend, I’d give up on the flashy branded imports and excepting alpine conditions, run around the Tararuas and Ruahines in something from Para Rubber (which he does and he’s been at it for 20+ years), but I haven’t quite evolved to that level of thinking yet. I’m hoping the Scarpas will prove to be reliable and less likely to break, and I guess we’ll see. They have a good reputation for that kind of thing, at least. At a glance the construction seams reasonably sturdy, there aren’t many obvious seams that might come apart and catch on things (one of the first things I checked), and they’re not Gore-Tex lined. I guess I’ll need to wear them in over a day or two of walking in them, then I’ll see how they go. It’s strange in a way — I never thought I’d own more than a couple of pairs of shoes. Now I own six. Five are directly connected with walking or tramping and the last pair I only own because I needed to attend a job interview.

I dropped into work for a couple of hours this afternoon to tidy up a few things that I couldn’t do during the week, said hello to a few others working on the weekend, and then noticed that the Tinakori Hill was enshrouded in a wonderful cloud. How quaint. So now armed with two head torches in my day-pack, I made my way up and over the Tinakori Hill for the first time in several weeks. It was fun and I’m glad of it. Standing on the top of the hill and looking down over the stillness of the cloud covering Wellington City, faint shapes were still visible in the distance and despite it being a 20 minute grind to get up here from the city side and adding 10-15 minutes to my walk home, it reminded me of why I enjoy it so much irrespective of the weather or the time of day or night. Plus, it was dark enough under the trees for me to be able to try out my torch on the other side. All in all a good day.

It’s the first Kaka I’ve seen since one about 6 months ago around Cone in the Tararuas (not counting a visit to Kapiti Island), and only the second that I’ve spotted near Central Wellington. It’s one of the great effects of having the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary just down the road.

I’ve never lived in Auckland and it’s not a place I know much about, but I was very surprised to discover that it’s not actually legal to walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. After all, if it’s illegal to cross the bridge without a vehicle then it seems like a very long way to walk between St Mary’s Bay and Northcote Point. Google Maps tells me that it turns a 7.1 km walk straight over the bridge into an estimated 12.5 hour 60.8 km walk, complete with warnings from Google Maps about possibly not having adequate footpaths along the way! Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of Auckland could confirm if this is accurate? It seems very strange, though. Several other bridges that come to my mind all have free walking routes — these being the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in Sydney), the Brooklyn Bridge (in New York), and the Manhatten Bridge (also in New York). Not having something similar for an iconic bridge in a place such as Auckland seems to be a confounding oversight!

The whole thing reminds me of a few years ago. The day after I finished writing up my Masters’ Thesis I had nothing else to do at university except turn up to my office and stare blankly at the wall for 16 hours, but instead I decided to just start walking towards the Hutt Valley for as long as I could before either getting bored or exhausted. This went well until I neared Petone, walking along the cycle lane that’s embedded in a thin strip between State Highway 2 and the railway line, and therefore I think many Wellington cyclists would be familiar with this area. After about 6 km of straight walking between Ngauranga towards Petone, the barrier between the cycle way and the road disappeared and final 400 metres of this cycle-way was fully open to high speed traffic, and not at all well conditioned for walking on.

I suppose cyclists are used to this kind of thing, but I certainly wasn’t and standing on the edge of a crash barrier with nowhere to run if a high speed vehicle gets too close is very unnerving. I certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk all the way back to Wellington, though. I managed to cross the barrier in the middle of State Highway 2 and caught an old lady turning out of Horokiwi Road, who neglected to ask me what I was doing but happily offered to give me a ride to wherever I was going. She didn’t seem to understand the concept of me only wanting to get a ride for the 400 metres which I couldn’t comfortably walk, so I just told her I was on my way to Petone.

Straight after that incident, the whole thing just felt wrong to me. There shouldn’t be places where it’s possible to drive but not safely walk. The only feasible way I can think of to walk to Petone without walking along that road would be to head out towards Johnsonville or Newlands and somehow get through Belmont Regional Park, which is ridiculous when there’s such a direct route. It’s a double tragedy that the stretch of coast between Ngauranga and Petone would make a truly awesome walkway if it were able to be developed as such. It’d be one of those walkways that’s fantastically sunny in good weather and would get fantastically thrashed by exciting waves in bad weather. Presently, however, it’s nothing more than a metropolitan railway line and commuter highway to shunt workers between Lower Hutt and Central Wellington.

Another area in Wellington which I think could be vastly improved for walking is the coast-line along-side Pauatahanui Inlet.

I grew up near here, and every so often I end up in the area. A couple of years ago I came out of Belmont Regional Park on provincial SH58, walked around to Pauatahanui, spent half an hour browsing through the Wildlife Reserve, then began to make my way back towards Paremata to hop on a train home as it got dark. The problem, which I hadn’t expected, was that the coastal road around Pauatahanui Inlet is nothing more than a road, and there’s virtually zero space for walking between the open road and a steep drop-off into the harbour. Despite having a reasonable torch, I spent more than an hour crawling along the edge of the road, hugging the crash barrier and often clinging to the harbour side of it for protection every time a car sped around a corner. As soon as I found an opportunity, I ducked into Whitby and walked triple the distance simply to get away from such an awful un-walkable road. It’s a shame, because this could be an awesome walk around a beautifully scenic part of Porirua Harbour. As it is, it’s an uneasy potential death-trap for anyone who chooses not to shield themselves in a vehicle.

I generally think of the Wellington region as being extremely walkable and for that I’m proud of it, especially compared with some of the alternatives in New Zealand and around the world. It still has its share of places that could be improved, however. As for people who like walking and cycling in Auckland, well if the situation is as it seems then I hope they eventually get their access route over the harbour bridge. Being required to own and use a car simply to access the most obvious and shortest-by-an-order-of-magnitude route from A to B is really sucky.

I haven’t been tramping for over 2 months thanks to some logistics, and it feels like ages. I hoping to get away to the Ruahines next weekend, and that’ll be nice. Meanwhile however, I had reason to drop Stacey off at Seatoun near Wellington’s south coast and next to the harbour entrance, and I thought that I might go for a walk around there rather than heading straight home. It was really only a 2 hour walk, but I’ll label it here as a daywalk because it could consume a day for someone who wanted it to do so.

Seatoun is a Wellington suburb out past the airport. It lies on the eastern edge of the peninsula jutting into Wellington Harbour. It’s very accessible to the coast, and there are a few walking tracks nearby which provide a really good experience of interaction with the sea both from beach-level and from the hills above, especially during a strong southerly where the wind comes directly over the sea from Antarctica and thrashes the coast. There was something of a southerly today but not a strong one and it was rather pleasant wind mixed with the sunshine and high cloud. My basic plan was to go for a wander around Point Dorset somehow, then come back along the coast to Tarakena Bay near the Wahine Memorial, and back to where I started (Seatoun) via what Wellington’s city council calls the Eastern Walkway.

Date: 14th March, 2009
Location: Wellington’s south coast.
People: Just me.
Route: Looping clockwise around Point Dorset starting from the Pass of Branda, then looping clockwise around the coast and up over the Eastern Walkway.
[Photos and Videos]

I’d driven to Seatoun and parked the car near the “Pass of Branda”, which is the thin slit of a road that cuts through the hill from Seatoun to the southern coast. It’s easy to catch a Seatoun bus which runs 7 days a week, however, and it’s not far to walk from the end of the route.

From the Pass of Branda it’s possible to follow tracks up either side (east or west). I started by climbing up the eastern track, which leads over the hills above Point Dorset, with the intention of walking along the hilltops, coming down to the beach, walking back around to where I started and then carrying on to the west. By itself, this is a nice dog-walking route or afternoon stroll for locals, and it can be completed in anything from about 20 to 90 minutes depending on various factors.

Breaker Bay from above.

The main track starts towards the east for about 500 metres, then veers north following the edge of the coast from high above. It’s mostly sheltered from a southerly behind trees and the top of the ridge, but along the way there are several short side-tracks that wander off to overlook the beach below, including one that looks directly over Point Dorset, just before the main track heads north before dropping down to the beach within another 500 metres.

Looking straight down Point Dorset
towards Pencarrow Head.

This whole area is the eastern-most point of the peninsula that juts into Wellington Harbour, bordering the narrow harbour entrance, and thus it’s about the closest that it’s possible to get to the far side without actually swimming or driving the entire way around — the opposing coast is about 1.5 kilometres away, but it’s about a 40 kilometre drive all the way around the harbour, with a further hour of walking to reach the lighthouses. Having been to Pencarrow Head on the far side quite recently, I think this was the first time I really actually looked at the Pencarrow lighthouses from here with some perspective.

Waves coming into Breaker Bay.

The beach on the inside of the eastern side of Point Dorset, inside the harbour, was fairly calm, but on turning the corner around the point to the beach of Breaker Bay, which faces south, the sea was notably far more active. With nobody else around, I stood there for quite some time just appreciating the sea. At the far end of the beach, about 5 people were having a go at some surfing. I don’t know a lot about surfing but I suspect the conditions were quite good.

Back at the Pass of Branda after about 45 minutes of walking around a the Point Dorset loop, I kept walking along the coast, now heading almost directly south. The road joins the coast from the pass and there’s a cemented footpath along most of the inside of the road, but it’s still possible to walk along the rocky out-croppings on the sea-ward side. There’s also a lot of bird life, which I’m still learning to identify. I saw a pair of what I think were Variable Oystercatchers. One was completely black, and I understand you don’t get that with more common Pied Oystercatchers. There were also a few White-Faced Herons walking and flying around, and seagulls of course.

Within about 30 minutes of leaving the Pass of Branda, I was at one of the Wahine Memorials, which commemorates the deaths of about 50 people when what was the equivalent of the Interisland Ferry struck Barrett Reef and foundered in the harbour entrance in 1968. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most of the casualties washed up on the Pencarrow side of the harbour, but many of the survivors came to this particular coastline between Palmer Head Point Dorset. The memorial at Palmer Head consists of a plaque, and one of the Wahine’s manoeuvring propellers.

Tarakena Bay.

Just past the memorial is Tarakena Bay, and it’s from here that a track begins to climb up the hillside to the ridges above the coastline along which I’d just walked. This walkway is officially referred to the “Eastern Walkway”, in the same way that the city council maintains a Northern Walkway and a Southern Walkway and a City-to-Sea walkway. Of all of them it’s easily the shortest as it’s only about 2 kilometres in length. Much of it isn’t clearly signposted as the Eastern Walkway, but it’s difficult to get lost if you simply follow whichever track-splits stay closer to the coast, and whichever signposts point to the Pass of Branda.

The Ataturk Memorial.

Straight after climbing up the hill from Tarakena Bay, the walkway passes the Ataturk Memorial. The memorial commemorates troops who died during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, and it was built as part of an agreement between the New Zealand, Australian and Turkish governments which also resulted in part of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey being renamed as ANZAC cove. Apparently the site on Wellington’s south coast was partly chosen because of its resemblance to the steep and rocky terrain of the Gallipoli Peninsula that the ANZAC troops attempted to attack.

Views of Barrett Reef.

The Eastern Walkway continues south above the coast, and I think the most striking view from here — at least with the conditions we had, was of Barrett Reef in the middle of the harbour. I don’t spend a lot of time walking in this area, and it was the first time the reef with its breaking waves in the middle of the harbour entrance had stood out quite so clearly. It really makes it obvious just how narrow the harbour entrance is. I spent some time simply watching a couple of ships come in, and manoeuvre their way between the reef and the Pencarrow coast.

A little over an hour after I’d left the Pass of Branda for the second time, I was back there again, and that concluded a nice short walk.

I did get out for a walk in the rain this afternoon, however, starting in Otari Wilton’s Bush (a 10 minute walk from our current residence), and walking up towards the Skyline Walkway. The Kaiwharawhara Stream was as full as I’ve ever seen it — probably still safely crossable (not that there’s a need with all the bridges), but much higher and faster than its usually tame appearance. Walking along it for a few hundred metres was a telling experience, every so often seeing another temporary ad-hoc creek racing down the hillside and crashing into the stream valley at the end, making a lot of noise.

I didn’t expect to see anyone, considering the volume of precipitation in the air, but I actually saw several people outside with similar ideas to myself. The first was a group of about 6 or 7 people and a dog. I imagine they were from a tramping club. From my own experience, it’d be unlikely to see a group that size out for a walk in such weather, and two of them were wearing Oringi Raincoats, which in general tend to be an artefact of people who spend time outdoors as a serious hobby rather than casually.

I walked up to the flax clearing half way up the western side of the valley. I’ve been there many times before, but this was the first time in such consistently pelting rain, so I stood there for about 5 minutes just to watch and listen to the different kinds of things that come out in such different weather. As I was about to leave it, a chap came climbing up the hill in shorts and a t-shirt, which was a contrast to my own shorts and long-cut raincoat. He was completely saturated but I doubt he minded, and he gave me a smirky grin as I waved, and turned back into the trees to continue up towards the ridge.

Within a few minutes the trees cleared, and the region was once again directly exposed to the rain. Not that it really made a difference by now because I was about as wet as I was going to get, and I kept going for another 10 minutes to the top of the ridge along where the Skyline Walkway passes. The wind began to play its part by now, but not in a way that was unbearable so I walked along the ridge for a few minutes, watching the misty curtains of rain blowing in waves across the hilltops. I like the rain.

It was time to turn around, and so I happily made my way back the way I’d come, off the ridge and into the trees and back to the Kaiwharawhara Stream, stopping to read a few more pages of my book under a shelter before climbing up the other side. It was a nice afternoon walk.

Lake Kohangapiripiri.

I arrived back in New Zealand from the USA at 8am Tuesday morning and it was an awesome day for blue sky and sunshine. As I’d already decided not to go to work, I thought I might try and go out for a walk instead rather than just sit around at home and try to sleep off any possible jet-lag. I’m very glad I did, because I think I needed the recovery time after being trapped in a concrete jungle for so long. I like coming home.

I think it’d be possible to catch a bus to Eastbourne and do the entire thing with public transport, but I drove there on this occasion. The legal part of the road ends a few hundred metres south of Point Arthur, at a gate called Burdans Gate. From here it’s necessary to get permission from the Hutt City Council to drive any further, but it makes more sense just to park a car and start walking.

Date: 17th February, 2009
Location: East Harbour Regional Park, Wellington.
People: Just me.
Route: Along the coast to the Pencarrow Lighthouse, around Lake Kohangapiripiri, and back the same way along the coast.
[Photos]

Pencarrow Head is in part known for its 2 lighthouses marking the eastern entrance to Wellington Harbour, only one of which is still operational. Lighthouses have existed in some form since 1841, and their construction and operation forms a significant part of the area’s history. Until now I’d only known them as an interesting light on the far side of the harbour, which would often be annoying when I’m trying to do astronomy things from the beach near Seatoun, so it’s nice to come out to see them up close. There are also two very nice lakes in the area, known as Lake Kohangapiripiri and Lake Kohangatera. I only reached the former on this particular walk, so I’ll set aside time to check out the latter in the future.

The Pencarrow coastline,
looking south.

The coastline up to Pencarrow Head is also littered with shipwrecks, most of which occurred in the early days before the harbour entrance was well mapped and before navigational instruments were as reliable. It’s also known, however, as the coastline where many of the survivors and nearly all of the 53 dead washed up when the New Zealand inter-island passenger ferry Wahine struck Barrett Reef and sank in 1968, which although before my own time is an event still strong in the memories of many people who live in Wellington. It’s for this reason that a rock at the car-park contains a memorial plaque that remembers the disaster, complemented by an additional memorial at Palmer Head on the western side of the harbour entrance where many more survivors were rescued.

I started walking from the parking area at about 12.45pm, along what is almost entirely a flat, coastal un-sealed road. The whole area is very well signposted. From the parking area, the signposted time to the Pencarrow Head lighthouses is around 3.5 hours return, or probably 1 hour 40 minutes to get there if you allow some time to actually stop for a moment. I found that it’s very do-able in about an hour, although this is at a relatively brisk walk with occasional stops to look at things.

The old lighthouse (higher) and
the new lighthouse (lower).

The coastal road continues all the way around to the newer (1906) Pencarrow Head lighthouse, which is built on the beach once it was realised that fog issues often made it difficult to see the original lighthouse at a higher altitude. Shortly before this, though, a track separates and climbs the side of the ridge up to the old lighthouse. It’s a reasonably steep climb, but it doesn’t last for long. The old lighthouse still looks to be in remarkably good condition for something that’s no longer in use. All along this short section, signs have been put in place with interesting historical notes about the history of the area, the lighthouses and the people who operated it, and the way they had to live early on when the area was far more remote than it is now.

Climbing to the old lighthouse.

From near the old lighthouse, a short track leads to the lookout area on the top of Bluff Point. It’s a dead-end track, but the view’s very nice on a clear day, which was certainly today. Looking to the south-east towards Baring Head further around the coast, the Baring Head lighthouse was clearly visible about 5 kilometres away.

Swans on Lake Kohangapiripiri.

After 2pm there was still lots of time left in the day, so rather than walk straight back, I decided to follow another signposted track down to Lake Kohangapiripiri, which I reached at abou 2.20pm. Along with the neighbouring Lake Kohangatera, this lake has a reputation as one of the few remaining undisturbed wet-lands left in New Zealand. It’s clear why this is the case when approaching the lake, and the bird life present is impressive. I think I could quite easily sit here for a long time and just watch the birds. There are swans everywhere, swimming around with baby swans following, and what might be an Australian Coot or an Scaup, but I don’t know my birds well enough to be sure either way.

20 minutes after having started on the Lake Kohangapiripiri Track, I reached a small valley fenced off to one side, but there’s a pink marker tied to a tree, and an ad-hoc track through the grass and a gap in the fence. It’s not clear if this is a marker for a track, or possibly it’s a way up to a ridge along to Mt Cameron to the north, but I didn’t find out on this trip.

Cicadas are deafening by now, and simply walking around the lake is triggering another 10 or 15 cicadas to leap into the air and flutter away every few seconds, although one is stuck fluttering in a spider’s web. Every couple of minutes I walk within 15 metres of another bird hidden in the reeds, and it noisily flutters into the air to circle high above. They’re very cautious about letting people get close. I think next time I visit, I’ll bring a bird identification handbook, because there’s so much variety and it’d be a good place for learning.

Crossing the Cameron Creek
wetland (on a boardwalk).

A couple of hundred metres from the mystery tree marker, a boardwalk leads straight through the swamp, with nearby signs warning that the water may be deep and is a drowning hazard. This swamp is the wetland that leads up Cameron Creek, and once the track climbs above it to the ridge on the south, it looks impressive from above. The day is bright and sunny, and I can’t help thinking that I’d love to come back during a time when the weather is more overcast and raining. It’d be a completely different atmosphere once again.

Looking over Lake Kahangapiripiri towards Wellington Harbour.
The old lighthouse is visible to the left on the ridge in the middle
of the field.

At 3pm I arrive at what I think is about spot-height 108 to the east of the Pencarrow Lighthouse, and I can confirm this with a quick compass bearing. There are lots of signs around here pointing to various routes towards the Lake Kohangatera Lookout (over the second lake), down to Lake Kohangatera, and to the Gollans Stream Wetland, which is the swampy area that drains into the second lake from the north. Unfortunately I don’t really have time to go that way this time, so I just follow the Lake Kohangapiripiri Track back down to the coast. Being back at the lake level again 10 minutes later is a great feeling and the colours today are expressively discrete. From here it’s a short distance to the coast road, and after a few minutes it’s possible to walk back to the lake-edge and finish circumnavigating it completely. The wet-land birds here are very cautious of people, and still won’t let me get close, but there are many of them.

Protect the sheep!

One small irony, visible just before I head back up over the saddle past the lighthouse and back to the coast, is the Wildlife Protection Area sign placed in front of the lake. Directly behind it, at least 7 sheep are grazing. This isn’t a new thing, as to my understanding the area has been grazed historically as part of the Pencarrow Station right back to the time when it helped to sustain the lighthouse keepers. It still seems quite amusing, though. Back on the saddle near the old lighthouse at 3.40pm, all that remains is to return to the parking area along the coastal road. The sunshine and the glittering colours on the harbour from here are just magnificent. As the Interislander Ferry enters the harbour, it’s a reminder of just how close ships have to be to the shore, and in the back of my mind it’s a reminder of exactly how narrow this channel into the harbour actually is.

After an hour of walking, I reach where I parked the car at Burdan’s Gate at about 4.45pm, regrettably having collected a few pieces of rubbish along the way. What a rewarding day!

For a while now, I’ve been keeping an eye out for a new pack to replace my disintegrating Macpac Glissade. It’s not really disintegrating, but I’ve patched it up with tape in a couple of places despite it only being a couple of years old. The major problem I’ve been having is that if and when I replace it, I want to make sure I’m getting something that I really want, and honestly there’s not a lot of selection in Wellington retailers right now as far as packs go. Just about everything is the same basic design, with pockets and openings all over the place. This is unfortunate because in essence I’m looking for a simple, relatively light single-access-point tramping pack without lots of zippers (which add weight unnecessarily) and without lots of bits hanging off it (which add more weight, and get caught on things).

Yesterday, I was wandering through Bivouac in Wellington and noticed that they’re actually stocking a Deep Winter pack from Cactus Climbing. It’s marketed as an alpine pack, but it’s about the right size for what I want and for a large pack, it’s quite lightweight (1.75 kg). It’s intentionally designed without a frame, though, which is an interesting idea but also makes me more cautious about it without trying it or talking to other people first. Actually seeing it caught me by surprise because, especially with the demise of brand-independent outdoor retailers in Wellington over the last couple of years, it’s become difficult to find a lot of brands on shelves. I was almost thinking about buying it for a couple of minutes, but in the end decided not to.

Cactus Climbing, based in Christchurch, is a company that makes more simple packs of the sort that I’m actually interested. Unfortunately, because the packs aren’t very adjustable (that would add extra weight which is ultimately pointless if the owner will only ever use the harness on one setting), it’s important to get one that definitely fits from the start, and I’m not sure I want to make that decision without actually using it. With some great initial enthusiasm, I managed to borrow someone’s Hector pack some time ago, filled it with 15 kg and walked around the Tinakori Hill for a couple of hours, and it was only after that that I was able to tell the particular harness wasn’t really fitting me very well, especially once I started walking on different angles and sidling around trees and such. It was disappointing, but I’m glad I didn’t fork out several hundred dollars for something that wouldn’t have fit. A DeepWinter pack might be different, or an alternative harness size might be different, but I’m not sure I really want to make that choice on a non-adjustable harness without actually having an opportunity to try it.

Today (being Sunday) I went shopping for Spinach, which Stacey wanted for some reason relating to an idea for dinner, and through some kind of abstract thought process I decided it’d be a good excuse for me to check out the track that leads up from the flax clearing at the back of Otari Wilton’s Bush to the Skyline Walkway. I’d never been up via that route before, and I discovered that after a nice and short bush-walk, it joins on half-way up the Chartwell Drive entrance to (or exit from) the Skyline Walkway. I guess I’ll remember that for future reference. There were lots of flies around in the hot weather, but I noticed that for some reason they seem to congregate around rocky out-croppings. I tested this several times once I had a suspicion, approaching and walking away from a variety of different rocky areas several times, and each time I was buzzed by a small horde of flies as soon as I stood on the rocks, which promptly disappeared when I returned to grassy farmland. Weird — I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe the rocks absorb more heat than the grass and they like sitting on them more.

I kept walking to Mt Kaukau and eventually down to Johnsonville via the Old Coach Road, which I’ve only walked along once before. Coincidentally I met Alistair and Sarah along this stretch (from the Tongue & Meats tramping club), who were wandering up Bell’s Track onto the Skyline Walkway just as I got there, so that turned into a fun natter as usual. Today was one of those days when the views from Mt Kaukau and surrounding areas were exceedingly clear, including towards the northern parts of the South Island, and also with a very clear view of the snow-capped Mount Tapuaenuku, often known as Tappy and probably most famous because it was Ed Hillary’s first mountain. I sat down for a couple of hours near the top of Kaukau to read more of my book.

The only disappointment of the day was that once I reached Johnsonville, the Countdown supermarket in the Johnsonville shopping mall didn’t actually have any spinach, at least that I could find. This ruined my plans to ask the people at the mall’s free gift-wrapping counter to wrap up the spinach as my girlfriend’s christmas present. Maybe next year.

What a great day.

In summary, the press release claims that the adopted policies are a beneficial improvement over the old policies, and that the “majority” of tracks around Wellington will now be shared for walking and cycling. Although I’m not personally involved in cycling, this sounds like a sensible idea to me, certainly as far as off-street tracks are concerned. People already ride mountain bikes in many places where they haven’t officially been supposed to according to local rules that (I think) are out of date, and it works out quite well, at least as far as I’ve seen.

I meet a lot of cyclists out and about around Wellington tracks, and without many exceptions they’ve nearly always been happy and smiley and polite and very respectful to other track users. Furthermore, mountain bike enthusiasts in particular often tend to help with keeping some of the less popular walking tracks walkable… both actively and simply through using uncommon tracks more frequently. This includes a few that I like walking myself and would probably be overgrown with gorse much more quickly if they didn’t have the odd bike pushing through.

The actual policies aren’t yet available for objective review because the changes are still being inserted and formatted and prepared for public view, and so on, but they should be available in due course. It’ll be worth taking a proper look at them when they’re available.

The Kaiwharawhara Stream is one of the main water catchments flowing into Wellington Harbour, and it’s named after the suburb of Kaiwharawhara, where it finally exits into Wellington Harbour. It collects most of its water from around Karori and (especially after joining with the Korimako Stream) from many of the western suburbs of Wellington below Mt Kaukau. Its path through that part of Wellington is quite diverse. Some parts of the stream have a mildly remote feel to them, whereas others are heavily affected by built-up areas and the engineering projects that have caused it to be diverted and re-routed. Walking along it is a joining-the-dots exercise that I’ve wanted to do for a few months, and I’ve been waiting for a convenient time. Ultimately I found several places where it was impossible to follow because it was piped underground for long distances. In several places the stream had no formed track, and I gave up on following it directly once it seemed unlikely that it’d go anywhere except into another underground tunnel.

Date: 22nd November, 2008
Location: Wellington’s Western Suburbs, from Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to Kaiwharawhara.
People: Just me.
[Photos]

The main part of the catchment starts well up within the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. There’s a charge to get into the sanctuary, and I’m also not 100% certain how accessible the stream is, so I instead decided to begin from just outside the sanctuary where the stream enters the free world. Note that I’ve put a lot more photos directly in this article than I usually do, because I think the photos tell much of the story of the changes in the stream from beginning to end.

The Sanctuary Fence Track
crossing of Waiapu Road.

The easiest way to the stream from near the front of the sanctuary on Waiapu Road is via the Sanctuary Fence track, which crosses Waiapu Road and heads straight down to the stream. The track itself meanders for a few metres, but then heads straight up the other side of the valley. I tried following the stream itself for about 100 metres, but it soon became clear that this was a place where not many people went, and I didn’t really want to keep going on my own, especially with it beingvery likely that the streem would reach a tunnel underneath a steep bank, and I’d have no recourse except to re-trace my steps and climb back to the road where I began. Gaiters would have been very handy in this area. I didn’t quite go back up the path I came down, but instead followed a steep route up the side where it looked as if people had been before, and ended at a miscellaneous-looking manhole cover next to a power pole on the road not far from where I started.

This was about as close as I got
to the front of the
Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

First views of the Kaiwharawhara Stream

The stream gets more overgrown
as it gets further from the sanctuary.

Where I emerged after crawling back
up the bank to Waiapu Road.

Wandering back to Birdwood Street, which crosses the valley through which the Kaiwharawhara River flows, I looked for any sign of a stream below, but I couldn’t see any. Turning around, appeared as if the stream must be getting piped for quite some distance because standing at the lowest point in the valley, all that was around was a grassy field. Judging by the surrounding hills, if the stream was visible it would have carried on down into a valley between Chaytor Street (the main route up to Karori) and Curtis Street (towards Wilton). There are houses in the valley but there wasn’t any obvious way down via any public route to look for a stream after a reasonable look on both sides.

From previous experience I knew that the Kaiwharawhara Stream flows through Otari Wilton’s Bush, on the far side of Ian Galloway Park, so I made my way towards there in the hope that I might be able to back-trace the stream when I found it. For the entire length of Ian Galloway Park, no stream was visible although I thought for a moment that there might have been a waterway in a ditch between the sports fields and the Karori Cemetary, which reaches right down the hill to the edge of the park. At best there were only marginally damp swampy areas though, which might act as some kind of minor waterway when it’s raining.

I think the stream is directed somewhere
deep underneath all this grass…

…and then under all this asphalt, next to
the Karori Garden Centre…

…before being routed underneath a
rather large sports field…

…and deep below the lower reaches of the
historic and extensive Karori Cemetary…

…before finally emerging at the
edge of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

Otari Wilton’s Bush begins on the northern end of Ian Galloway Park, and it begins with a further descent down to the stream. I finally heard the stream to the left of the track after a drop of about 20 vertical metres, and pushed through the trees to find it finally coming out of the tunnel. I guess the stream has been piped deep underground for that entire distance, which must be on the order of about 1.5 kilometres.

Now that it’s emerged from underground, the Kaiwharawhara Stream follows an open route along the length of Otari Wilton’s Bush. The path along this section is wide and flat and and easy to walk, although it’s possible to walk up the hill to Churchill Drive in Wilton, or otherwise to cross the stream and follow some of the less graded tracks up the hill on the other side which eventually lead to such interesting places as the Skyline Walkway. Being specifically interested in the Kaiwharawhara Stream on this occasion, though, I continued to follow it out the other end of Otari Wilton’s Bush to the parking area opposite a street called Blackbridge Road. It’s at this point that the Kaiwharawhara Stream once again heads into a pipe, although this time it’s only to go underneath the road.

Typical walking along the base
of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

More typical walking along the base
of Otari Wilton’s Bush.

The main barbecue area alongside the
Kaiwharawhara River.

Vanishing opposite Blackbridge Road.

…and it comes out somewhere
down there.

Unfortunately, there’s not much on the other side of that road in the way of nicely graded walking tracks. It’s possible to push through long grass and climb down to the place where the stream once again emerges, and for a while I considered trying to follow the stream-bed in its north-eastish direction. The stream-bed is quite overgrown and its full of slippery brown rocks. If it were a regular tramping trip it’d probably be the sort of thing that could be followed easily, but once again I wasn’t really in the mood, especially since I knew it was likely to head straight into another tunnel without much pedestrian access after a few hundred metres.

The Kaiwharawhara Stream emerging
below Blackbridge Road.

So, after climbing back up to the road, going on a quick detour up towards Crofton Downs and deciding it was less and less likely to find a route back down to the river, I walked back and around to the Wilton side where prior experience told me that I could get back down to the Kaiwharawhara Stream via Wellington’s Northern Walkway. Specifically, I followed the road to the end of a street called Hanover Street, and entered the region known as Trelissick Park — the next main area that encompasses the waterway. By this point, the route has crossed the Johnsonville Railway Line (which followed a tunnel somewhere underneath Hanover Street), and somewhere further along, the Kaiwharawhara Stream emerges from another pipe underneath the railway line.

Looking over the Johnsonville Railway
Line from Hanover Street.

Back at the Kaiwharawhara Stream, now
much fuller thanks to the contribution
of the Korimako Stream.

Walking down from Hanover Street, the path very quickly crosses the stream and continues on its true left, but rather than follow it straight away I decided to go back up-stream and locate the point where it emerges from under the railway lines. This doesn’t take long to do, but it involves some reasonably steep climbing because the path diverges from the stream due to it becoming quite gorgey. A sign-post eventually points to a feature called the “fish ladder”. After about a minute of walking down-hill the path reaches the confluence of the Kaiwharawhara Stream (by now a small torrent that rushes out of a tunnel), and the Korimako Stream, which is the other main tributary from here on. A group from the Tararua Tramping Club visited that area last year and followed it up to Mt Kaukau, and briefly wrote about it, including at least one 200 metre torchlight procession through one of the underground sections.

Where the Kaiwharawhara Stream comes out
from under the railway line.

Looking down the Ngaio Gorge from the confluence.

Typical Kaiwharawhara Stream alongside
the Ngaio Gorge Track in Trelissick Park.

Trelissick Park is another very nice walking area, and the path alongside the Kaiwharawhara Stream, which soon becomes a track called the “Ngaio Gorge Track”, is well graded and easy to walk. Along here, the stream itself becomes a slightly deeper and meandering waterway that moves at a slower pace. Among the many people I met, many were walking dogs. The bird-life in the area was populous, and on one occasion I stood underneath two Tuis within a metre of me, who were having a noisy discussion about something for a good two minutes before they fluttered away to find somewhere else. Further along, a mallard duck was trying to coach her ducklings to swim against the current up the stream, but without much success.

Remains of the Kaiwarra Magazines.

A notable feature of this part of the stream is the remains of the Kaiwarra Magazines, which were concrete structures built in 1879 to store ammunition, supposedly so it wouldn’t have to be carted through town which had been becoming a concern. Since the army vacated the premises in the 1920s the buildings have been used for several other businesses including panelbeating and plastics manufacturing. The city council decided to restore one of the Magazines to its former glory in 2000, but near the end of this process it was burned to the ground following a bank robbery, after which the perpetrators used the nearly-restored building to hide and burn their stolen van. What remains are two stone skeletons have a lot of history. This is the last part of the journey where the Kaiwharawhara Stream is enhanced by relatively natural surroundings. From here on, it flows through Kaiwharawhara.

Kaiwharawhara is a reasonably industrial suburb, on the outskirts of Central Wellington. Its most known feature is Hutt Road, which is the main route out of town running parallel to the motorway. Being a long and wide road with lots of space to park cars, Hutt Road is a haven for businesses that don’t rely so much on impulse buying and foot-traffic. I think the most common kinds of shops on Hutt Road are furniture shops and especially bed shops, but there’s also the occasional car tow-away or mechanics business. I walked past at least one place with a sign out the front which proudly proclaimed “boxes sold here”.

The Kaiwharawhara Ditch, as
it enters Kaiwharawhara.

For the rest of its journey through Kaiwharawhara, the stream becomes more of a ditch between Kaiwharawhara Road, which follows into a traffic-light intersection with Hutt Road, and a collection of industrial businesses. It’s channeled under bridged driveways, eventually under Hutt Road between Spotlight and Beaurepaires for Tyres, both of which are reasonably large warehouse-style businesses that don’t provide a lot of space for walking next to the river ditch. The stream then flows underneath the bridged railway tracks and the motorway, and finally out to Wellington Harbour.

The final journey out to sea.

I hoped to find some kind of legal way to follow the stream all the way to the coast, but unfortunately I couldn’t. There’s no clear way over the railway tracks anywhere near the stream. Even if there was, there’s no clear way over the motorway. In a last ditch effort, I walked a kilometer up the road to the ferry terminal in the hope that there might be some way to get back along the harbour coast, but there wasn’t. It was all fenced off.

It’s an anti-climatic and largely uncelebrated ending for a water catchment that’s impressive in the amount of populated area that it covers, but not very well known in its entirety by many of the people who live around it.

Last views of an interesting waterway.

And that explains my walk. It ended up being quite a long day but it wasn’t especially strenuous, which I think is why I was able to handle it even after I didn’t fell up to a summit bagging trip we’d arranged for around Mt Ruapehu. I’ve been to most of these places before where it be in separate walks that crossed Otari Wilton’s Bush, or something like the Northern Walkway which visits Trelissick Park, but this was the first time I’d tried to walk the length of the stream just to see where it goes.

I’m not sure exactly what’s next in relation to this. It might be interesting to have a look in the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to get a better idea of where the Kaiwharawhara Stream begins, and it might also be interesting to follow the Korimako Stream, which makes up a major part of the catchment. Whatever it is, I guess it’ll have to wait until I have another spare day.

Whether it’ll stay as a permanent fixture and become a complete Snowgum outlet, or simply remain a temporary clearance outlet, is an open question. I asked one of the people there and she wasn’t completely sure, but she thought they were testing Wellington at the moment to see how it goes and what sort of reaction there is. Perhaps it’ll help to fill part of the void of outdoor retailers at the moment, which has existed since Mainly Tramping and Tisdalls closed down.

Meanwhile, we’ve been down to Otari-Wilton’s Bush a few times recently, which is within an easy walking distance and has helped to pass the time. It’s a very nice place to wander around. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I enjoy Wellington so much, given that between all the population it’s still easy to find places where it feels as if you’re much further away.

On an unrelated meta note, I’ve been tinkering with the code to make it easier to monitor comments posted to this site, if you happen to be that way inclined. There are now RSS feeds for comments on the entire site (check the upper-right corner of this page), or for individual posts (scroll to the end of any post). Also, if you post a comment, you should now be able to tick a box to receive an email if and when any follow-up comments are posted. Furthermore, there’s now a Preview button which should help to give you some idea of what the comment might look like without having to actually post it.

The other notable technical change has been some of the OpenID-related things. If you have an OpenID, it should now be easier to use it to log in or to leave a comment here without having to create an account, and so on. If you don’t have one, and don’t wish to have one, of course, you should still be able to manually type a name when entering a comment. Please let me know if you happen to notice anything that doesn’t seem to be working properly with any of this.

I spent some of this morning baking bread, for which I’m still trying to get my recipe exact. I’ve increased the amount of yeast I put in over earlier occasions, because wholemeal flour doesn’t seem to like to rise as much as regular flour. I’m also trying to make some bread rolls just by rolling up some well-kneaded bread slop that I mixed together and putting it directly on a baking tray, rather than a nicely shaped bread baking pan. At this point it’s not clear how they’ll come out, but I guess we’ll find out later today. Right now the yeasted slop is enjoying the sunshine. Some time I hope to get a good enough technique to make some nice bread to take tramping. The problem so far is that it usually doesn’t last long enough for it to still be around when I’m packing.

Meanwhile, with a spare day yesterday, I went into town and bought three new maps for the area around Nelson Lakes. On a whim, I also bought a bird identification handbook which I’ve been playing with in the garden on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I’ve discovered we have lots of Tuis, which I already knew, but now I can be certain that they’re Tuis. The postponement of the Kapiti Island trip was probably just as well, because Stacey hurt her knee on Thursday night playing the high-contact sport of Netball, and would have had a lot of trouble on any extended walk.

The other thing I did yesterday, on the way to town in fact, was to explore some more tracks around the Tinakori Hill. I hadn’t had an opportunity to check out some of these areas until now, but now I have a better idea of how they connect up to the routes I already use, and that’s useful knowledge.

The city council (or somebody thoughtful) has recently put some serious effort into clearing many of the more direct (but recently overgrown) routes on the western side of the hill, which has given me some ideas on faster ways to get home from work on a relatively scenic route, or at least one that avoids traffic. Some of the cleared routes still have occasional very thin spaces between gorse, but it’s at least bearable now.

Until recently I’ve found it to be about 10 minutes faster to walk up the steps between Garden Road and Orangi Kaupapa Road than simply walking straight over the ridge track on the hill, but with the new routes that are available I’m starting to wonder, so might have to do some more measurements. I tend to walk home the shorter way up the steps if I’m in a hurry or just don’t feel like taking a longer route.

Oh, and the Tinakori Hill is quite a nice place in the dark, as long as your torch batteries aren’t going flat. But it’s also nice in the rain and in the wind as far as I’m concerned, so go figure. I collected a few photos over the last few months when the opportunity presented itself, and have included a small selection below.

From the ridge track, 18 June 2008.

From the Eastern side between
St Mary Street and the Ridge Track,
25 August 2008.

The consultation covers tracks throughout most of Wellington’s Town Belt such as the Tinakori Hill, parts of the Southern Walkway, parts of the Skyline Walkway, Wrights Hill, Te Kopahou Reserve, and a few others. Actually after a brief scan, at least part of the proposals look to be opening up certain areas to mountain bikes which frequently get used by people on mountain bikes already.

If you’re interested in the tracks around the area, it might be worth your while to have a browse of the draft policy and make a submission, either in support of the proposals or not. Additional related WCC policies that are up for consultation during the same time period are the Draft Walking Policy and the Draft Cycling Policy, which respectively aim to frame the policies around encouraging walking and cycling in Wellington and making them safe.

I haven’t written about the Skyline Walkway before, which runs along the ridges between Karori and Mount Kaukau. This is a shame because on a good day it’s a very nice walk, and very accessible. On a bad day it can be very exposed to strong westerly winds, especially in a couple of saddles towards the northern end. I’ve walked it a few times now, most often starting from the Karori end and once from the Kaukau end. The most recent time was last Sunday when I decided on a whim that I felt like doing something.

Date: 17th August, 2008
Location: Skyline Track, Karori to Mt Kaukau.
People: Me.
[Photos]

The Wellington City Council advises that it’s a “5 hour strenuous walk”, which is certainly true if you’re planning a family trip or an occasional outing. If you’re the sort of person who does a lot of walking and is reasonably fit, however, you could reasonably expect to get from the Karori end to the Kaukau end inside a couple of hours at a reasonably fit pace and if you had nothing better to do (not necessarily including getting down from Kaukau). It’d be feasible to do it quite a bit faster if you’re a crazy mountain runner, which some people are.

Obviously there’s plenty of scope for taking a much longer time and enjoying it if you like that kind of thing. It’s also very popular with mountain bikers, and I’ve always seen a lot of people on bikes around here except for when the weather’s really icky, but at those times there aren’t many people around generally. One of the nice things about the Skyline Walkway is that there are also many exit points to get back down to civilisation if you decide you’d rather not keep going.

Living in Northland is a minor annoyance because it’s not really close to either end, but I decided to head towards the Karori end to get started, as usually seems to happen. (My normal pattern is to start from Karori with the intent of catching a train home from Johnsonville.) It’s possible to jump on a Karori Park bus, but if you have the time and depending on where you start from, it’s not a bad walk through Karori. When I lived in Brooklyn, it was also fairly straightforward to walk up past the wind turbine and head around the Karori Sanctuary Fence, cross the road at Karori and go up the other side. (You’ll want to figure out an exact route on a map before doing this if you don’t know the area well.)

The Skyline Track above
Karori Park.

The Skyline Walkway officially begins from a little way up Makara Road in Karori. With Makara Peak on the southern side of the road, there’s a good signpost at the beginning of the walkway on the northern side, making it fairly hard to miss. If you’ve just walked all the way through Karori and feeling lazy like I was, though, it’s also possible to get up to near the beginning by walking up from the back of the Karori Park sports-field. There’s a small network of tracks back here and it’s not always absolutely clear which track to follow, but I found my way up fairly easily by tending towards the options that look as if they’ve been walked more heavily. Upwards generally seems to win. Going up this way probably reaches the Skyline Track at a point within about a couple of hundred metres of its official beginning (or ending), and from here on there are pole markers to follow.

I reached the main Skyline Track at about 10.30am. There’s about 15 minutes of walking initially (or longer at a slower pace) before reaching the top end of Montgomery Avenue, which is one of the back-streets of Karori and another access-point to the Skyline Track. From here the track continues around below the western side of Johnston Hill. If it’s a nice day it’s often worth taking the detour which heads up to the top of Johnston Hill, which has some nice circular views around much of Wellington and out towards the top of the South Island, to the west. This is what I did, and reached the top a little after 11am.

Mud damage.

Even though it was quite sunny weather on Sunday, there had been a lot of heavy rain during the week. I was expecting a little mud, but hadn’t really considered that the track was already quite torn up thanks to everyone who’d been walking on it during Saturday, which had also been nice weather. Furthermore, much of the Skyline Track is actively used farm-land, and north of Johnston Hill it entered a cow paddock, and that’ll usually mean a very muddy track. For part of this time I’d taken my own little off-track detour along a ridge above the main track which meant better views but also avoided much of the mud as a side-effect. Meanwhile, a family group who’d brought bikes finally decided to turn around down below, because the muddy track was becoming increasingly problematic and there wasn’t any clear sign it’d get better. (Regular mountain bikers wouldn’t have had any issues though, I don’t think, and I passed quite a few people going the other way.) Avoiding spooking the cows that were scattered all over the track was also an issue that required a lot of care.

Typical views towards the
South Island on a sunny day.

At 11.30am I walked past the signpost indicating another exit, this time leading down to Chartwell Drive. From about this point onwards, the Skyline Track stays quite near the high tension power lines that channel through the region, having been routed in from the Cook Straight cables. As with most of the walk, there are still great views in both directions along here, which is one of the nice things being on top of a ridge. Much of the official track runs slightly below the ridge-line, which is a very useful thing on days when it’s windy, but there are plenty of obvious side-routes that people have taken up to walk along the ridge-tops if you’re so inclined.

At 12.15pm I passed the top of Bells Track (also signposted), which leads down to Awarua Street in Ngaio. I’ve been up Bells Track once, which was a couple of years ago when I was in Ngaio and decided I wanted to walk home via the Skyline Track. The main thing I remember was that there was very low cloud and by the time I was half way up there was about 20 metres visibility, and I decided it’d be a bit silly to keep going. Especially when walking back towards Karori, there’s at least one place where it’d be possible to get on the wrong ride and potentially end up at Makara late in the afternoon, which I almost did on one occasion.

A wind-sculpted gully south of
Mount Kaukau. Very cool.

From the top of Bells Track, Mount Kaukau is signposted as about 45 minutes, although at a fit pace it’s do-able in about 15-20 minutes. This is also a stretch which has one or two saddles that are very exposed to strong westerly winds if they’re present, and it’s possible that it may make a lot of sense to turn back or get down early if it’s a very windy day. This wasn’t the case today, though, with almost no wind, and instead I used the time to gaze at some of the sculptures that the strong westerly winds have left in the vegetation. The grass in this region is permanently bent over from west to east, and the low bushes and scrub are visibly streamlined in ways that let the wind flow over them in that direction with minimal resistance. The whole thing looks impressive.

Mount Kaukau — proudly
transmitting rubbish into
Wellington homes 24 hours
a day.

I finally got to Kaukau at about 12.40pm, a little over 2 hours after I left the Karori end and feeling quite hungry for some lunch. There are a lot of ways down from Kaukau, but the way I usually prefer is to come out at Truscott Avenue, after which there’s a fairly straightforward walk down the road to the centre of Johnsonville which has a foodcourt-endowed shopping centre, and a railway station. It’s not well signposted from the very top, but following the signs towards Old Coach Road until Truscott Avenue is signposted seems to be good enough. (It works for me, anyway. I’m sure people who walk around Kaukau a lot would laugh at my reliance on signposts.)

And that’s what I did last Sunday. Lots of fun. The walkway’s definitely worth it if the weather’s nice. If the weather’s windy or overcast it can also be an interesting experience, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it in those circumstances without some decent gear for staying warm and keeping off the wind. There’s also a lot of potential for getting lost or losing the track if there’s low cloud, and that wouldn’t be good either.

A couple of years ago I was walking home from work and noticed a rubbish bin on The Terrace with at least three broken umbrellas crammed in it, which I found rather hilarious. Since then I’ve been trying to remember to pack my camera on days with lots of wind and just too little rain to keep most of the office dwellers inside. Even then, this was the first time I’ve seen anything similar again. It’s a shame there was only one.

I should make a note that I still need to buy myself a good solid tramping umbrella.

The general idea is to just walk through suburbia, keeping reasonably close to bus routes and/or railway lines so it’s easy to bail out and go home whenever it’s convenient. I quite like doing this on occasion because it involves minimal organisation and it’s not necessary to arrange any special gear. Just some contingency money for a bit of food and public transport home is all. It’s also just quite a nice change from walking through the back-country, I think. Suburbia changes quite a lot as you walk through it (at least it does on this route), and I find it interesting wandering along the streets and watching things going on as the day progresses.

Date: 6th July, 2008
Location: Wellington suburbs (Northland, Johnsonville, Tawa, Porirua, Plimmerton).
People: Me.
Intended route: Start at Northland and walk north along suburban streets in the general direction of Kapiti, keeping near public transport.

After some lazing around at home, I left Northland just after 10am… specifically where I live, which is near Chesshire Street. I think it’s important to state the starting point reasonably accurately, because the trip time can probably vary by an hour or two depending on exactly where one might start from. Last time I did this several years ago I began from Kingston, which is on the southern end of central Wellington, and it took about an hour before I even reached where I began from today.

I followed Wilton Road and Churchill Drive, and after an hour’s walking I’d reached what I think was somewhere between about the Simla Crescent and Box Hill Railway Stations. Continuing along Burma Road, I turned off at Fraser Avenue, which is a less popular back road into the Johnsonville Shops. It’s in the district of the quarry above the Ngauranga Gorge, and there’s a reasonably narrow view out towards Matiu Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. I reached the Johnsonville Shops at 11.30am, and stopped for a quick lunch in the food court. After figuring out how to get around the various roads and roundabouts, I was finally walking along Middleton Road at 12pm.

After the last few houses near Johnsonville, there aren’t many landmarks along Middleton Road. About 20 minutes along (I think it was exactly 12.20pm), I reached the point where the Paraparaumu Train Line emerges from its second (and longest) tunnel. After this there was another 20 minutes of walking before Takapu Road Railway Station (12.40pm). There isn’t a pedestrian footpath along this stretch of road, but I generally found there was enough space on the edge for me to walk safely. There was only one short stint where I found myself hugging the crash barrier to let several cars drive past.

The main road through Tawa is just called ‘Main Road’, according to my street map, but I think it’s also called the Old Porirua Road. I was at the Tawa Shopping Mall by around 1pm (3 hours of walking so far, including lunch), and by 1.45pm was briefly sitting down opposite Porirua Railway Station for a quick bit of chocolate. Last time I did this, I found it quite difficult figuring out exactly where to go as a pedestrian to get through Porirua and out the other side. Ultimately it’s necessary to get to the eastern side of the motorway north of Porirua, and there are at least a couple of ways to get there. I think that if one crosses the motorway and railway line via the double-overbridge roundabout to get to the start of Mungavin Avenue, there’s a walking track that follows the road north on the eastern side from there. The way I chose this time, however, was to stick to the western side of the Porirua Stream (which drains into Porirua Harbour) until the northern-most motorway on/off-ramp. This has a cycle lane on the southern side, which can also be walked on (at least nobody tried to stop me), and leads straight into the walkway on the eastern side of the motorway north of Porirua.

By now I was starting to feel the beginnings of some blisters in my feet, which I guess could be a consequence of walking for so long on cemented footpaths, which I don’t do a lot of. I finally reached Plimmerton (ie. Opposite the railway station) at 3.10pm, just in time to see the 3pm train pull out 10 minutes late. For a while I was still considering the idea of continuing to walk around the coast to Pukerua Bay, but eventually decided not to since to do so it’s really necessary to commit to doing it properly given that the coastal track is away from public transport and (potentially) cellphone reception. Being the middle of winter with only a couple of hours of light left and not having given anyone clear indications of precisely where I was going, it seemed like a good idea to avoid the risk of getting stuck there. I consoled myself by buying an ice cream, going for a quick walk along the beach, and hopping on a train back home.

In conclusion it was quite a good walk to fill in some time – roughly 5 hours from Northland (near Wellington) to Plimmerton. I think if I’d wanted to make it to Pukerua Bay, I probably would have needed to leave an hour or two earlier, or otherwise go in the summer when days are longer. Perhaps I’ll try to remember to do that next time, which admittedly might be a few more years away.

This afternoon the hill was looking rather weather-beaten. It wasn’t anywhere near as destroyed as I’ve seen it in the past, but there were certainly a couple of tracks with fallen trees partly blocking them and perhaps it’s a sign of things to come over the next few years. It’s just a reminder that trees fall over, I guess.

We’re off to Cattle Ridge in the Tararuas to do some navigation-like things this weekend, on another club trip, and it looks as if it might rain. I’m not sure exactly where in the vicinity of Cattle Ridge because I haven’t been concerned enough to find out, but I’m sure Sam (who’s organising it) has some ideas and I’ll find out tomorrow evening if not later on. I guess if the shape of the land doesn’t let us easily walk around in circles, he probably has a backup plan for us to walk around in triangles or hexagons or icosagons, or even something non-symmetrical if we’re so daring. It’ll be fun.

Date: 19th April, 2008
Location: Belmont Regional Park, Cornish Street to Dry Creek (Haywards Turnoff).
People: Sarah, Mari, Edwin, Nicole and me.
Intended route: Start at Cornish Street, walk up to Belmont Trig via Baked Beans Bend, continue around Cannons Head and Boulder Hill via the Puke Ariki Track, then exit via Dry Creek at the Haywards turnoff from State Highway 2.
[Photos]

I’d originally had 9 people interested in doing this walk, but as the weekend approached we eventually filtered down to 5, through a combination of flu, weekend work issues, and one person simply not showing up. It was a good trip, albeit a little windy.

We left Wellington on the 8.05am train, wanting to get an early start since nobody had done this particular walk before, the days are getting shorter in the winter, and the Wellington Regional Council flags this trip as about 7 to 8 hours of walking. The weather also didn’t look too hot (literally), with a Southerly coming in and intermittent bursts of rain.

After a short walk from Petone Railway Station, we entered Belmont Regional Park via Cornish Street at roughly 8.45am. It wasn’t freezing at this point, but the walk is also sheltered. It was also during this time that we saw the only three people we’d see for the entire day. All of them were joggers, and they were all in this sheltered zone, probably just jogging from one street in the Hutt Valley to another.

We found the main turnoff to the Trig (via Baked Beans Bend) at around 9.25am, and were at the trig itself a little over an hour later at 10.35am. We were a little exposed to the southerly on the way up, but it was bearable, especially with the tree cover.

Not wanting to spent very long on the exposed peak around Belmont Trig, we quickly went down the north side. One option if the weather had been really horrible had been to simply go back down from here in a short loop walk via the Korokoro Dam, but we decided to press on. After about 10 minutes of walking, however, when we reached the first main gate, Nicole decided she was finding things a bit cold, so she and Edwin resolved to return to the turnoff and get out while there was still a good opportunity.

Sarah, Mari and I continued, however. We quickly discovered that the peaks around Belmont Regional Park were getting absolutely clobbered in the southerly, and the wind was freezing. It was bearable with reasonable gear to stay covered, however,and I was only once nearly blown off my feet (and that was partly because my foot slipped). Nevertheless, we pretty much ended up hoofing it for the rest of the trip and just racing through, rather than spend too much time on the exposed hilltops.

The three of us were at Cannons Head at 11.35am, and we continued around to the shelter of one of the ammunition bunkers, during which time we were hailed on, just after midday to have a quick lunch and rest. We arrived at Boulder Hill by about 1.30pm, and at 2.20pm we caught our first nearby glimpse of State Highway 2 about 5 minutes walk away. At almost exactly the time that we walked out, I received a call from Edwin confirming that he and Nicole had also exited, so all was good.

In hindsight it does seem to make some logical sense that we didn’t see anyone else in the park on a day like today, but I’m really glad we went. As we were discussing for part of the trip, it really helps one to appreciate good weather.

We’ve now lived in Northland for almost a month, and it’s great. Stacey likes it because she can get to the university without having to go downhill and uphill. I like it because I get to walk over the Tinakori Hill twice a day. The lease deal is a lot nicer than the one we had in Brooklyn, and for once we’re not in someone’s run-down investment property.

Wildlife around the Tinakori Hill.

Anyway, I think we’re mostly settled in to life in Northland now which is good. I’ve decided that I’m quite enjoying living here. It’s about the same distance from everywhere important as Brooklyn was, and the walk to work and back is more interesting. There’s less traffic, less people, less concrete, more trees and bush to walk through, more wildlife, and a lot more vertical variation. I went out to survey the Tinakori Hill a couple of days after we moved in, and there are a lot of places to potentially get lost between the network of tracks, on both sides of the hill.

I started off by using the Northern Walkway to get over the hill, but very quickly decided that it switches back and forth so much that it takes donkey’s years to get anywhere. Fortunately there are lots of other tracks, many of which are more direct. The one that I’ve settled on for getting home from work most days begins from a small side-street off Tinakori Road called St Mary Street, over the road from the Botanic Gardens. It begins as an entrance to the Northern Walkway, but within a couple of minutes there’s a sharp turn-off up the hill which probably gets about a quarter of the entire climb out of the way in the space of a couple of minutes. I’ve only been down it once so far, which was very slow because there wasn’t much stable ground, but going up appears to be fine. After getting to the top of this bit, the track is fairly direct up to the ridge-line at the top.

Getting down the Northland side of the hill towards home was an interesting experience, particularly at first. Much of the scrub on the western side is very thick, and on my first attempt I got lost in it for 15 minutes when I thought I’d be smart and try to push a more direct route through. This was kind of embarrassing, given there would have been tracks within 50 metres in all directions — it was just far too thick to get through to it after I’d lost track of where I got in. The main track down to Huntingdon Street, to where I’m usually trying to get, switches a lot on that side. After a week, though, I figured out there are three definite short-cuts which combine to make the route almost direct, and that’s useful. They even seem to have become less overgrown in the last few weeks since I’ve been using them.

As for the new flat, it’s always nice to be able to deal directly with an owner rather than a property manager. In general, owners tend to actually care about the property further than satisfying their legal obligations as landlords. An exception is property managers who’ve decided to buy their own investment properties on the side, and manage them with the same ethics they use in their day-job. A lot of property managers have a tendency to treat tenants as criminals if there’s any doubt whatsoever. This may be justified with some tenants, but it’s frustrating to be grouped in with such tenants because a typical property manager doesn’t spend effort bothering to distinguish the difference. There’s not a lot of incentive for them to do so, either. This can make it really hard to get on with them.

Moving out of the previous place a week after their pipes started profusely leaking exemplified this, and resulted in some quite high tension with the property manager refused to actually check the situation after we’d pleaded to them a week earlier. (They told us that because it was Brooklyn it was an airing issue and we should open the windows, despite Stacey’s urgent claims that the whole thing was dripping.) She then tried to blame us when they turned up for the inspection, and attempted to with-hold the bond. In the end, we were relieved just to get the bond back after proving it was their fault, and didn’t bother trying to re-claim the rent for the last 2 weeks during which the place was uninhabitable.

I think either of us could go on about the apparent incompetence of this particular property manager… including the episode where she claimed that some mould was our fault (outright denying that it was a recurring problem coming from behind the wallpaper). She then proceeded to tell us to use Jif (not to be used on porous surfaces , except for our case apparently!) to get it off before wiping it down with a wet cloth! Really, neither of us could imagine where her mould might have come from if she tells all her tenants to take that sort of care of the places she manages.

I don’t want to demonise all property managers and I’m sure there are good ones out there, but right now we’re just very glad to get away from them. The new place is a million times better than this, and the owners are much more responsive and actually care about the place. They live far enough away to not be a bother, but not too far away for it to feel awkward to invite them over to ask their advice on things, and they both take an active interest in maintaining the place themselves when things break. Yay for us.

Our flat gets good afternoon sun and has an awesome panoramic view of the entire Skyline Walkway from Karori to Kaukau. It’s also a house rather than one of those annoying converted houses that isn’t properly insulated from the neighbours. We no longer have to be concerned about students playing noisy thumping bass below us or above us or through the walls. In short though, I guess I’ve decided that living in Northland is great for a lot of reasons other than just the property.

That’s enough for now, I guess. The next tramping I have planned should hopefully be in the Ruahines a couple of weekends from now.

George’s eclipse projection.

Matt’s eclipse projection
(look at the shadow close up).

Just to comment on something else that happened in the last couple of weeks during times when I haven’t been tramping, Stacey and I caught up with some astronomy friends on Wellington’s South Coast on Thursday just over a week ago. Specifically, we took a look at the 2/3 Solar Eclipse that was visible to some extent over most of New Zealand at the convenient time of 5.30pm’ish on Thursday evening.

I went armed with a solar viewing screen that I’d picked up from an earlier eclipse, but several other people brought along several other methods for viewing it, including everything from filtered telescopes down to pin-hole projectors made from kitchen implements. I haven’t had a chance to do much astronomy stuff in the last couple of years, but it was great to catch up with a few friends again.

Next weekend, a week before we move, I’m planning to be on a club trip lined up in the Kaimanawas, and that should give me something new to write about. It’s over Wellington Anniversary Weekend so we’ll have an extra day to run around and get lost.

I’ve walked from Petone to Porirua a couple of times now, and both times I’ve gotten lost on a farm on the Porirua side and ended up walking down some random farmer’s driveway. This time I thought I might do it in the other direction, so that maybe I could finally figure out where I should have been going.

Date: 1st January, 2008
Location: Belmont Regional Park, Cannons Creek Lake Reserve to Cornish Street.
People: Just me.
Intended route: Start at Cannons Creek, walk up past Cannons Head and Belmont Trig, then down one of the routes near the Korokoro Stream, and out at the Cornish Street exit in Petone.
[Photos]

Belmont Regional Park is one of my favourite places to go walking near Wellington. It’s very accessible for public transport, and it has a nice mixture of native bush, as well as open areas, albeit mostly farmland, from where there are some nice views. The park is owned by the Wellington Regional Council, which recently completed purchasing all of the remaining farmland, but still leases it out to be used as farms at the moment (as I understand it, at least). Most of the farmed area is on the western and nothern side of the park, whereas the native bush tends to be on the Hutt side, particularly around the Korokoro stream. The high point of the park is Belmont Trig (at 457 metres), which has an excellent vantage point for a 360 degree panorama around the entire Wellington region through the Hutt, central Wellington, and out towards Porirua and Plimmerton.

I’ve been there quite a few times, and one of my favourite things to do is to catch a train to somewhere (usually Petone), walk over the hills and come out the other side to catch a train home from somewhere else (usually Porirua or Paremata). This can be done quite comfortably in a day with some good planning, although coming back from Paremata usually means getting out of the park somewhere along State Highway 58, and it can be quite a boring road walk from there around through Pauatahanui and back to the railway station. It can also be quite dangerous getting around the Pauatahanui Inlet if it gets dark, since the traffic races around the road at high speeds and there’s not much space for walking near the side. (One alternative is to go through Whitby, which is probably 3 or 4 times the distance, but a lot safer and probably not much slower than trying to edge around the open road.)

This time, I thought I might start at Porirua, and make my way back to Petone. Until now I’d always done this in the other direction, and ended up getting lost when trying to get out on the Porirua side, and finding my way out over farmland that I probably shouldn’t have been on ideally. Especially since I think I’m supposed to be coordinating a tramping club trip in the area a bit later this year, it seemed like a good idea to remind myself a bit about how long it’d take to get around the place.

I got to Porirua Railway Station at about 9.20am, and from there it was about a 30 minute walk to the Cannons Creek Lake Reserve entrance, which is really well signposted, just past the Cannons Creek shops on Mungavin Avenue. This is the first time I’d been to the lake reserve, and I wasn’t 100% sure there would actually be a track of any sort out the back of it into the rest of the park. The lakes in the reserve are long and thin, and it’s possible to walk along either side of them. It turns out that both tracks converge at the end, and then it does carry on into a definite track into the rest of the park.

The track entrance at the back
of the Cannons Creek Lake
Reserve.

The first park-related sign from here points up the track to both Hill Road and Takapu Road, but it’s possible to get pretty much everywhere by following it. I left the end of the lakes at about 10.15am, but within a couple of minutes, the track split, with a sign pointing in one direction to Hill Road (which comes up from the Hutt side, but further north than I wanted to be), or Takapu Road (which comes into the park from the southern end of Tawa). I didn’t really want to go to either of these places, and as far as I could tell at the time, Belmont Trig was probably about half way between. In the end I pulled out my Wellington topo map and set a compass bearing, and decided that for the first 50 metres at least, the track that was signposted as leading to Takapu Road was going in a much more favourable direction. It turned out that this was the better way, but in hindsight I think I probably could have gone in either direction, although the Hill Road route would have meant a longer day.

Where the track splits, straight
after the sub-station.

One of the track markers for the
Puke Ariki track, over Belmont
Trig.

After 15 minutes I did actually get to Takapu Road, which I hadn’t realised (until now) was actually a road-end entrance into the park. At this point there was a sign clearly pointing to Cannons Head, which I recognised was a peak not far along the ridge from Belmont Trig, so that was very reassuring. The road from here basically went past the power sub-station, but it split immediately afterwards in a three-way intersection. There wasn’t any clear signage about where each road was going, and it looked as if all three directions had track marker poles. This was a bit confusing at first, so I just went with my gut feeling and followed the more straight-ahead route (to the left) which also looked as if it was heading more towards the centre of the regional park. This ended up being a good choice in the end, and 15 minutes further along the road, there was a sign pointing along a track up the hill to Round Knob (another one of the peaks along the same line as Belmont Peak and Cannons Head).

First views of Wellington Harbour.

The track up the hill continues squiggling around the high tension power cables, which is a common theme around this side of the park. By 11.15am, I’d reached the intersection with the main Puke Ariki track, which runs along the top of the park, and turned south towards Cannons Head. Cannons Head was about 10 to 15 minutes away, and it’s the bit of track leading up to it which was the first decent view I had of Wellington Harbour on the far side of the park. The track then continues with some ups and downs and by 11.50am I was crossing the fence which (I think) divides the farm-land from everything else. From here, the track becomes slightly more overgrown with various grasses and more native plants, since I guess there aren’t as many sheep around to munch on it.

Belmont Trig.

After another 10 minutes of walking, I’d reached the intersection of several tracks just below Belmont Trig. There are at least three obvious ways down to Korokoro from the Trig and I hadn’t quite decided which route I wanted to take, but it’s only a 2 minute jaunt up to the top from there in any case, so I wandered up to the trig for a few minutes of looking at the surround scenery of the entire region.

The most direct way down from the trig (I think) is to continue past it and hop over a gate on the southern side along the Ridge Track, which leads down the southern-side ridge past a place called Baked Beans Bend, before it joins the Korokoro stream. I’ve come up that way several times, so wasn’t too keen to go that way. Another track, which I’ve never followed, is called the Bridleway track (or something similar), and goes around the western side of the ridge. I think there’s another road-end or two down that way, but otherwise it follows a stream back towards the Korokoro Stream, before meeting up with the ridge track somewhere just after Baked Beans Bend. The third way is to turn east at Belmont Trig, and head straight to the Korokoro stream, then follow it (along a track) until it exits around Petone. This track isn’t actually signposted as such — instead, the sign points to Stratton Street, which is one of the roads on the Hutt side of the park. There are places to turn off before actually reaching the road, however.

So I followed the sign pointing to Stratton Street, on the assumption that sooner or later I’d find some way to avoid actually reaching Stratton Street. The weather was fantastic, and it was from about here on that I started to meet quite a few family groups wandering up towards the trig from the Hutt side of the park. At about 12.30pm, I reached the first obvious turn-off, which was signposted as pointing to Oakleigh Street. I didn’t exactly want to go there, either, but it looked as if it was heading in a better direction than the main track, so I followed it.

The track I missed, seen
on the way back down.

There was an old possum-bait warning sign very shortly after that junction, and almost immediately the track veered up the hill. This didn’t seem quite right, and although the track was still obvious, it was now more of a trampled-grass track than anything else. I followed it up the hill for about 5 minutes before I decided I must be going the wrong way, and turned around, since it felt like it was almost heading back towards Belmont Ridge. Sure enough, as soon as I descended back down to the possum-bait sign, there was another track obviously visible that curved around the hillside lower down. It even had a track marker pole. By 12.55pm, I’d left the farm land and was now walking through native bush near the beginning of the Korokoro stream.

Korokoro Dam.

According to the signpost I’d seen earlier, this track was still heading towards a place called Oakleigh Street, but at least it was in the area where actually I wanted to be. At 1.10pm, I passed the Oakleigh Street track junction, which was very reassuring, since it meant that the track I was on would probably continue for the length of the stream. From here, the Korokoro Dam was about 10 minutes away, and on reaching it I sat down for another quick snack. It was pretty obvious by now that there wasn’t any hurry, so I stopped in a few places to listen to birds.

This is quite a nice sign.

The Korokoro Track is a very well maintained track (even though it’s thin in places), and there were lots of people out for an afternoon wander by now. By 1.35pm I reached the junction where the Ridge Track (and the Bridleway Track) converge onto the Korokoro Track, after coming down from Belmont Trig. Someone’s very helpfully carved out the word “TRIG” in very large letters in a fallen tree, indicating a direction up that track, so it’s very easy to pick out.

The Korokoro Track, near
the Petone end.

For the rest of the walk out to Korokoro, the track hovers above Korokoro stream as it winds its way through the valley out towards Cornish Street. I stopped in one place about half way along where I found a small side track that led up the hill, but apart from that I pretty much wandered straight out to Petone, since the trains were only running every hour on New Years Day. I reached the Cornish Street road-end at 2.10pm.

As it turned out, it was a neat day with some really nice weather and almost no wind. 4 hours from one side of the park to the other was a little faster than I was expecting, but I did walk reasonably quickly in places and I’m sure that it can be stretched out much longer by walking further north towards the Pauatahanui direction. I’ve done this in the past, but not during a time when I was writing things up.

I also had a few other errands to run. The primary one of these came as a consequence of Wellington finally having had some decent rain a couple of days ago. After a few pathetic attempts at rain over the last couple of weeks, we actually had a persistent downpour for several hours during the middle of the day. This event coincided with my discovery that I seem to have walked through the soles of my work shoes again, and this was the reason for the errand.

Newtown Shoes has been my favourite place to buy regular street shoes for a while now. It’s run by Jimi — a fun Fijian musician guy who knows a lot about shoes. He used to make them back when New Zealand actually had an economy that supported shoe factories. Jimi lectures me every time I walk into his shop with tatty shoes. Today he pointed at the shoes I was wearing and and called them embarrassing, probably because I’d never polished them since I bought them. (They never look as if they need polish after walking through the mud and wet grass; the discolouration only shows up when they’re dry.) They weren’t my favourites anyway, so I’m not to bothered about replacing them.

In any case, I’m really happy that I managed to get some nice, leather shoes that are exactly the same model as what I’d had before my current ones. They’re the Eclipse model in the All Terrain range of Slatters, and personally I think they’re among the most comfortable street shoes I ever had. I can wear them around the office without looking too out of place (they’re brown and leather), and they’ll easily cope with two or three hours every day of walking around streets and through wet grass to and from work in the mornings and evenings. The original soles on the previous ones didn’t last forever (I had the soles replaced twice on my original pair), and some of the stitching came out after a while, but they continued to last for ages and remained very comfortable after I had it repaired. Jimi suggested I should really put some beeswax on them this time to help the leather last a little longer, so I’ll probably sno-seal them over the next few days. First, I need to find someone who can lend me a hair dryer.

Tomorrow morning, hopefully very early, we’re off to Taranaki for a Christmas with Stacey’s family. This will be my first time actually being there during Christmas, since I’ve so far only been there on Boxing Day at the earliest. I’m not expecting to get any tramping in while there, but maybe a daywalk or two depending on how things pan out. It really depends on how much time there is. I guess I should go to bed.

Walking around town is quite the opposite. There are people smoking everywhere. Perhaps it’s just more obvious since the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act was passed in 2003, making it a legal requirement that all workplaces be smoke-free as of December 2004. Naturally this has driven people who like to smoke out into the streets. It probably also means that people’s smoking tends to be more concentrated during the times when they’ll be outside for other reasons, such as during their lunch breaks, and before and after work. These tend to co-incide with the times that everyone else is outside, and as someone who walks around streets a lot, I’ve found the apparently lessened quality of the outdoor air to be off-putting.

For one thing, it’s quite difficult to walk along a crowded street without at least one person blowing stale smoke, at regular intervals, into the faces of people walking up to 15 metres behind. In the past few years, I’ve trained myself to get to the up-wind side of someone who’s smoking along the street. Other tricks have been to cross the road, to synchronise my breathing so as to take a deep breath just as the person in front is about to take a puff from their cigarette, or occasionally to just push ahead of them and hope there’s not another person smoking up ahead. It’s not always possible during peak times when the streets are very crowded, however. A while ago I might have guessed that vehicle emissions would be at least as annoying as cigarette smoke, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. I suppose that over the years, car manufacturers have been regulated into producing engines that convert petroleum into energy more efficiently, whereas tobacco companies have not been regulated into producing cigarettes that pump the toxins into their subject more efficiently. Consequently, the toxins just go everywhere, and that’s what second hand smoke is.

The smoke-free legislation also means that walking through many of the restaurant districts in the city centre, on an otherwise nice afternoon or evening, has become a worse experience than it used to be. Restaurants have been required to push all of their smoking patrons to tables outside, and on any evening when it’s worth sitting outside, the smoke lingers. (So much for smoke-free workplaces for the waiting staff, which was one of the champion claims of the legislation. To be fair, it’s probably much more smoke-free than it used to be.) This lingering effect is not just restricted to restaurants, either. Virtually any entranceway to an office block is likely to have quite stagnant air for most of the day, simply because the people who work inside have to come outside and find somewhere sheltered to have a smoke.

Yesterday, on unrelated occasions during the day, I noticed at least four people throwing their used cigarette butts away onto the footpath. Usually they weren’t completely out. A couple of these people took it upon themselves to trample their cigarette from an orange tube of glowing embers into a flattened powdery smoking mess, just to make sure it wouldn’t set the pavement on fire. They didn’t pick it up and put it in a rubbish bin afterwards, and I’m not sure if I ever remember having seen anyone do that. These were people who I doubt would ever consider littering with any other kind of rubbish, and most of them probably wouldn’t leave old cigarette butts lying on paths around their own property at home. A 15 minute walk around town towards the end of a typical day will easily find hundreds or thousands of old cigarette butts that have been disposed of on the footpath or in the gutter in this way, all from that day.

Wellington’s street-cleaning staff and sweeping machines will collect the majority of the gunk when they go through in the early morning, but I still find it disturbing that it’s tolerated and socially acceptable for people to chuck their cigarettes into the gutter, or onto the footpath, in the first place. One of my theories, which I don’t know how to test reliably, is that much of the permanent chewing-gum-like goo that builds up in clumps on footpaths is a direct result of the chemicals that get trampled and rubbed into the surface with the bottom of people’s shoes. The street-cleaners wouldn’t get it all, and what’s left possibly clumps together on the surface until such time until the footpath is next dug up and completely replaced with a new seal. If anyone can comment on this theory with more authority, I’d love to hear about it.

I can fully appreciate why people do this, even if I don’t agree with it. Realistically, there doesn’t seem to be much choice. In Wellington, at least, there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done with an old cigarette butt. The streets aren’t full of ash trays (perhaps they should be), and binning a used cigarette doesn’t seem very safe. In fact, on two successive days this week, I’ve walked past flaming rubbish bins; both were probably an unfortunate consequence of someone trying to be a tidy kiwi with their cigarette.

I’m ranting at this point, anyway. It’s not my place to criticise people who either choose to smoke or who are simply addicted to it, and I hope this doesn’t come across as if I am. On the other hand, I do think there are some issues that could be addressed more effectively with regard to making it easier for people to smoke without having as many negative effects on everything around them.

In other news, I don’t have any more trips planned until mid-January. Stacey and I are heading up to Taranaki again this Christmas. It seems hard to believe that it was less than a year ago that I ended up with 8 weeks of knee damage from gallivanting around Egmont.

The market has become much more aggressive lately, with several other much larger retailers having pushed their way into the local and national scene. Kathmandu is the obvious one, with an aggressive model of pricing things about twice or thrice what they’re worth, and then having heavily promoted seasonal sales in which prices are heavily reduced. During these seasonal sales, the number of customers in the stores appears to go from almost dwindling-empty to bursting at the seams. Kathmandu doesn’t actually sell dedicated tramping gear in the strict sense, and it’s easy to see when walking through a Kathmandu store on the first few days of a sale that the majority of customers are probably looking for practical, comfortable warm clothes and other gear to use around town. This is fair enough, and it’s similar to what I use most of my own Kathmandu purchases for. What it does specialise in is Kathmandu-branded travel things, comfortable Kathmandu-branded around-town clothes, and flashy catalogues full of Kathmandu logos and dominating photos of people fashionably enjoying themselves in other countries. Kathmandu gets close enough to the market, however, that it’s possible to get things that are usually satisfactory enough for tramping, and that’s all that really matters.

This would still be okay, but I suppose what bothers me is the increase in stores which are very specifically branded. It’s not just in the tramping market, either. For instance, there’s now a Levis shop on the corner of Customhouse Quay and Willeston Street. This is just down the road from the local Sony Style retailer, which will sell you any TV, laptop, camera, or whatever electronic goods you desire, as long as it’s made by Sony. (Interestingly it doesn’t sell Sony-branded music, however.) Telecom and Vodafone sell their network-locked phones and plans through independent retailers, but they also try to out-do each other in terms of who can get the most dedicated branded phone shops within the radius of the CBD. It’s entirely a marketing thing, since they want to make sure people remember to buy a new phone, and that they don’t forget the brand when they’re walking down the street. Somewhere along the line, manufacturers have discovered that rather than go through the proxy of independent retailers, it’s more efficient for them to force their way into the retail front line, market themselves directly in the face of consumers, and pick up retail prices while they’re at it.

Tramping shops probably aren’t quite the same, since they’re more like retailers getting into manufacturing rather than manufactures getting into retail. It seems as if it’s easier for the larger retailers to have their own products made cheaply overseas (possibly in the same factories as the branded stuff), have their own name slapped on it, and then sell it at a higher margin than they would if they’d gone through a manufacturer. These are the likes of Kathmandu, Mountain Designs (which does sell non-MD-branded things, to be fair), and apparently now the new Fairydown retailers which are coming our way. All of these are branded retailers focus on selling their own branded products, and it seems as if the new model is part of what’s been making it harder for independent retailers to survive. They’re also bigger retailers, and that often (but not always) seems to correspond with less experience in the retail staff.

What I guess I find most disturbing is that unlike the smaller independent shops, I don’t really feel as if I can go into any of these places and get an honest opinion about what’s actually right for me. It’s also becoming more difficult to actually see or play with products that don’t fall under a particular retailer’s branding umbrella, because there’s less incentive for a branded retailer to stock products that compete with their own stuff and which might sell at a smaller margin. It’s still possible to get other things by looking around a bit further, and hopefully the market will sort itself out in the longer term. Wellington now has an R&R Sport on Victoria Street. (This is currently a clearance store and I’m not sure if there are plans to change that.) There are also a couple of other Wellington retailers (Bivouac, Gordons, Dwights) which haven’t gone anywhere, and if that’s not enough it’s still possible to travel a bit further afield.

Anyway, food for thought.

New Zealand was the subject of very strong winds for much of today. Roofs were blown off houses, trucks were blown over, trees were blown down, windows and walls were blown out, power lines were wrecked, and roads were closed.

Windy Wellington City meanwhile (as outsiders sometimes call it) had a very calm and sunny day, although I was stuck at work at the time. This didn’t stop TV3 from announcing during its weather bulletin that Wellington’s Mount Kaukau, which I can see from my desk and is an hour’s walk away, recorded the country’s highest gust of wind in the country. It was reportedly somewhere above 150 km/h. I guess it just shows how much contrast there can be within such a short distance depending on which places are sheltered more.

Date: 21st October, 2007 (8.20am to 3.20pm)
Location: Te Kopahou Reserve and Wellington South Coast
People: Just me

It’s very accessible and I’ve been there a few times before, but I think this is the first time I’ve written anything about it. I got around the reserve in about 3 or 4 hours, and spent the rest of the day walking around the coast to Seatoun.

I currently live in Brooklyn, and started from the Brooklyn Shops, walking up to the Karori Sanctuary fence, and following it south to the Brooklyn Wind Turbine. From here I continued to follow the fence for a while until it turned off to the west, then I hopped over to the sealed private road to the wind turbine.

Shortly before the radar dome there’s quite a weirdly-placed castle-style building, and it’s been there for at least as long as I’ve known the area. Today it had an Italian flag flying above it — I’m unsure what the relation is. The other thing about this building is that the highly-fenced property always has at least two very noisy dogs inside, and they bark continuously at anyone and everyone who approaches. They were as noisy as ever today. I’ve never actually seen any people inside that property, but I suppose the dogs don’t feed themselves.

There’s a small out-cropping from the road shortly after this building, about 100 metres before a couple of marked tracks turn off on the left. I climbed up for the view, and spent a couple of minutes checking my map, because there’s a nice looking spur going down from there. After considering it some more though, it looked more and more as if the spur went down to the landfill below, which I didn’t really want to end up at, so I left it and kept going past the Radar Dome.

I think this is only about the second time that I’ve continued past to Te Kopahou, which is a 485 metre peak above the south coast. The first time was a couple of years ago and it was very windy, but this time was a lot calmer. Looking west from the ridge, there was a very clear view of the South Island, including some very snow covered mountains in the Kaikouras. I don’t know the peaks well enough to be able to say which they were, but they were on a bearing of about 230 to 235 degrees from the top of Te Kopahou.

There’s only one clear way down from Te Kopahou that doesn’t involve crossing private land, which is to follow a four-wheeled-motorbike track down a spur to the south, eventually zig-zagging and sidling down about a 400 metre drop to the Waipapa Stream below. Once there, you can either return the way you came (get real), or follow a track up to the top of the ridge on the other side, about another 200-250 metre climb. (Looking at the map, it may also be possible to follow the stream out to Red Rocks on the coast, but I’ve never tried this.) On the way down, it’s possible to turn off on a side-route towards some WW2 bunkers which were used as sighting posts to radio back targeting information to the gunners, should any evil submarines or ships be spotted off the coast during the war. I didn’t bother this time, since last time I visited I remember the track down to the bunkers being very steep and almost scree, and quite tiresome to climb back up on the way back again. It was worth a look once, though.

There are actually a couple of ways up the spur on the eastern side after reaching Waipapa Stream. The first goes almost straight up from the stream, and it’s only necessary to jump over the stream once. What I did though, was to follow the track east along the stream for about another 300 metres, before it climbs up the side of the ridge. It’s quite a nice (but short) stream walk. I managed to keep my feet dry this time, but the last time here I remember being ankle-deep a couple of times, as the track crosses the stream four or five times in those few hundred metres.

The forecast wind for today was a northerly, and as I walked along the ridges I was actually expecting to detect the sweet decomposing scent of the Happy Valley Landfill wafting over the hilltops, which I’ve noticed a few times in the past. This didn’t happen today though, and it might have just been because the wind was so lacking.

I continued north-east along the ridge, and eventually reached a point where the track sidles around the inside of a 292 metre peak. There was a post marker to mark the track changing direction, but it was obvious that there was a less official track going up to the top of a peak. I followed it up, on the assumption that it was just an alternative way of getting to the same place. After a couple of minutes though, it became clearer that it was heading off in a completely different direction to the more official track.

Basically the other track, which is overgrown in places, heads from the unnamed 292 metre peak over a saddle in a south-south-east direction, towards the top of the Owhiro Bay Quarry. I was busy taking a bearing on the radar dome in the distance to verify where I was, and checking my map, when a guy on a mountain bike turned up and asked me if I knew where the track went. He’d seen me in the distance and decided to follow me, and he didn’t have a clue exactly where it went either, but the map indicated that there weren’t many places it could eventually reach besides the Red Rocks parking area, which we could see below us. He was quite confident and kept on riding, and meanwhile I decided that if I came across him pushing his bike back up the hill, I’d just take the hint and turn around.

After a few minutes, the track became more of a bulldozer track. I passed a old danger sign that had been pushed over warning of blasting in the area, although it didn’t look up to date and it didn’t seem likely there would be any such danger today. Eventually as the track descended, it became clearer that it was zig-zagging down the quarry. Within about 20 minutes or so, it reached a level terrace about 3 metres above the main plateau near the sea level, which unfortunately didn’t have any obvious way down. After walking back and forth for about 5 minutes, I eventually found quite a dodgy slope with some relatively stable rock, and managed to lower myself down, ending with a bit of a run down some scree onto the flat. I don’t think I’d want to do that again.

I never figured out where the guy on the mountain bike came down, but I didn’t trip over any corpses so I assumed he found a way. It might have been that the bulldozer track had forked off somewhere else earlier and I hadn’t noticed.

By now I was at the bottom of the quarry, 5 minutes walk from the Red Rocks parking area. It was roughly 12pm, so it’d taken about 3.5 hours to get this far, and for the first time there were lots of people around.

Basically I spent the next 3 hours walking east-ish around the coast… through Owhiro Bay, Island Bay, Te Raekaihau Point, Lyall Bay, past the airport, and then onto the Coastal Walkway around Tarakena Bay, a bunch of other bays, Breaker Bay, Point Dorset, and around the corner to Seatoun. It was interesting in terms of walking along the coast, but generally in involves a lot of road and footpath walking, and wasn’t nearly as eventful.

Seatoun had been about the point that I’d focused on since I left in the morning, and I’d lost the motivation to really go much further. Consequently, I jumped on a bus back to Newtown at 3.20′ish, and walked back to Brooklyn over Bidwill Street. It wasn’t a bad day in the end.

Wellington’s fantastic!

Back to the Ruahines this weekend.

We started out by going to the Thomas King Observatory (next to Carter) for a Wellington Astronomical Society event, where we met up with Vicky, George, Edwin and Nicole, a collection of other members and astronomers, a television news camera operator, a Dominion Post photographer, and a substantial number of people who’d read about the event in the paper. It was a little disappointing that the person with the keys to the TKO was unable to show up, but we didn’t let that spoil the evening. I tried to take a few photos, but they haven’t come out too well so I might just leave the eclipse photos to the experts. (For as much as I enjoy astronomy and tracking down things in telescopes, astrophotography has never been a great interest of mine.)

After watching the Moon creep completely into the Umbra, and totality, the clouds rolled in from the south, and we decided it was about time to get going. Rather than go straight home, though, we drove to the south coast to say hello to Paul, who was running another event. The clouds had actually cleared quite a bit over the south, and we were able to get a much more complete view. The down-side, unfortunately, was that it was very windy and very cold.

So having arrived home, I’m now relaxing on the balcony, which is sheltered, and the sky’s cleared up a lot. It’s a great view. I haven’t really decided how long I’ll sit here, although the Moon should be starting to leave the umbra in about 4 minutes time.

Yesterday I went for a walk around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (again), after the physio actually suggested that I should go for more walks again to get a better idea of how much my knee’s been improving. The weird thing has been that it feels as if it’s very suddenly gotten much better. As in, I can suddenly walk down steps without having to swing down the bannisters after the first few. I wasn’t expecting it to go away quite so suddenly, and I’m a little concerned that it might come back again just as suddenly.

In any case, it did give me an opportunity to get out and go walking again. The part of the fence in this photo is, I think, about the steepest part of the walk. There’s a steeper section near the sanctuary entrance, but it’s blocked off for safety reasons. I didn’t quite get all the way back around to where I started, because I ran into Craig (a friend from ‘varsity), who was walking a couple of dogs, and we ended up changing plans to walk a lot further around the south coast hilltops.

Another up-shot of all of this was that I had another chance to walk in my new tramping boots. I waxed them up this time, and I found a lot of nice mud to walk through. Yay for me. They’re still not quite right, but hopefully they should be okay for the river crossing instruction course I’m planning to go on next weekend.

At first we thought there must be some other kind of event on, but after asking around, it turned out that it was just Comet McNaught. Even as the comet gets fainter, it seems that it’s just getting more and more popular. Perhaps it’s just a word of mouth thing — so many people are suddenly hearing from their friends that this actually is a real thing, and that they actually will see something very bright if they take the time to go and look.

Yay for bright comets.