By the numbers
19,039 steps
14.64 kms
The morning according to the weather was meant to be pretty clear and suynny without any rain. Plus 3 layers of clothing. Once I did leave my room. Wellington was doing its best to be windy. I found some breakfast and I was going to be in the archives, but wanted to fill in some time before I headed to the nearby centre. While at the train station, I accessed my Snapper travel card for Wellington and found I had been refunded for my trip the day before. I found I should have tapped off, although I was unsure since as every place is different. I went walking through Parliament grounds and up Hill street past the British Embassy. I crossed the motorway and went back down towards the National Archives. By that time the place was nearly open. The weather was cold, but I was hot wearing a jumper, but I would be cold without it on, so it was a cross between weird weather and good clothing.
I would get some records as I had ordered them and found the new system wasn’t that great. Before I could order the files online, but now to get a rapid response, I had to talk to the archivists. I found this out after a couple of hours as I was wondering what happened to one set. Turns out one lot of records were missing and unfamiliar to the archive people. I thought it was funny and one of the archivists mentioned having a look at newspapers online specifically Truth as they reported divorces and the occurrences. The time the Archives opened and closed was not long enough to get that many records and I soon found one lot of records was going to be late. The reading room closed at 3pm and I had 20 mins before closing when some records arrived. I was trying to look at everything before leaving, but being rushed I decided with 5 mins to closing that I should leave finishing looking at the records. Throughout the day I was using a feature on my phone that I thought was pretty cool. The scan text feature worked a treat even though there were times where I had to adjust the borders, but I was impressed. It probably slowed me down a little bit, but I did find what I was looking for even though I was rushed at the end with several records I will need once I return to Wellington. The Archive centre I found was going to have a whole new building next to the National library, where you can walk between them and the research area will be different. The whole building will be purpose built even though its partially built across the road.
Once I left, I decided I needed a walk and I was going to head towards Trelissick Park in an area known as Kaiwharawhara. A mouthful and around 10 mins bus ride from Wellington towards Johnsonville. I collected my bag with a bottle of water and other things as I didn’t want things in my pocket. I kept an eye on my map as I wanted to make sure I got off at the correct place. I had to walk to the park, but I was happy to do that. On the track was something that I wanted to see and that was the Kaiwharawhara Powder magazine. Nothing to do with keeping peace with the Maori, but more to do with the Russian scare in the late 1800s. They thought the Russians were going to invade, but that never happened, and was used during World War 1 as well. The building even housed a van that was involved in a bank robbery before it was burnt taking the magazine building with it. For some reason my international roaming had dropped out and would no longer work. I wasn’t that worried as it wasn’t that big a deal as I had wifi in certain locations when I needed it. The track had a fish ladder and while I thought about going it was already around 5pm, it was the dark I was worried about, but the track itself, so I decided to head towards the Northern track that takes me into Wellington.
The Northern track took me to Wadestown and I was going to follow the track up over the area called Ahumairangi as it was part of the town green belt. After walking uphill into Wadestown, I decided to scrap that idea and just walk down the hill instead of walking up more of the steep Wellington hills area. I felt I didn’t have enough daylight time if Iu did this as there were plenty of things I would get to see especially the views that would be impressive and history things. I wasn’t exactly sure where I should be walking and if the direction I was heading in had a footpath. Another thing I had seen on Google maps was a Letterbox village that I had happened to be close to. That turned out to be a good idea as nearby was a road that would take me into the city along the route that I had used earlier that day. The Letterbox village wasn’t what I expected as I thought it was a group of mail boxes, but this was a long line of them with themes like Paddington bear, superheroes and even Snoopy. I basically walked around the base of Ahumairangi thanking my lucky stars that I hadn’t gone up there. On a whim I headed towards the Botanic gardens.
I was going a bit too far heading to the Botanic gardens, but I did stop for dinner on the way in Tinakori where Government house is located, although I couldn’t see what was in there due to the fence and trees. I needed food and then headed to the gardens. It was the route to the hostel voa the Beehive aka New Zealand parliament. I wanted a look at the rose garden and even got asked to take a picture of a lady with the roses. It was starting to get dark as I walked through the Bolton Street cemetery as I had a quick look around. The cemetery that had been divided by the motorway just like Auckland’s main cemetery of the time. Along the way I stopped at the Reserve Bank for New Zealand and looked in the windows. I found they have a museum in there that I didn’t know about before. For some reason I had been thinking of this building as the National mint and couldn’t find it online. Now I know, though looking through the windows and taking photos might get me into trouble. At this time of night the city itself was pretty quiet with everyone not being around the Parliaments area unless you were aimless wandering tourists. By this time I was ready to settle down for the night.
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