Today we jumped on a bus into the city and hoped for a rain-free day! New Zealand Parliament was first on the agenda, where we hopped on a free 1 hour tour of the 3 buildings that make up their seat of Government.
The 3 buildings all have a completely different style of architecture; the most modern building (seen on the left) is an 11 story circular building aptly named the Beehive, which houses the ministers, their staff, and the cabinet room. This is where our tour started, with a quick film about the history of NZ’s government and buildings.
We then headed into the middle building (seen on the right above); made of brick, granite and marble it houses the House of Representatives. Our walk through it took us down into the basement where we were shown how the building had been completely separated from it’s foundations and placed on support ‘cushions’ that would allow the building to move independently to its base during an earthquake. Very impressive to look at, but hard to explain the ‘techy’ bit in words!
The 3rd building was the oldest and built in a Gothic stone style housing the General Assembly Library.
This had perhaps the most stunning interior of the 3, however, it was surprising to hear that it had only recently been fully renovated after a fire destroyed part of the building a couple of decades ago.
Next stop was Old St Paul’s, aptly names because in the 60s they built a ‘new’ St Paul’s, and this one nearly got knocked down!
Now, on getting near to this fantastic totally wooden building we realised why people fought so hard to keep it. It has been named as one of the finest examples of timber Gothic revival architecture in the world.
Designed by Frederick Thatcher, an English ecclesiastical architect and also the vicar from 1861-64, Old St Paul’s was his major architectural work in NZ. The church was constructed in 1866 from a selection of the finest NZ timbers – rimu, totara, matai and kauri. The church interior was beautiful, and very well preserved.
We left Old St Paul’s and walked along one of the many wharfs that make up Wellington’s harbour front. We visited the Museum of Wellington City and Sea, which was housed in an old Bond Store (1892), where goods were held until duty was paid.
It was a fascinating couple of hours spent learning all about the history of Wellington.
We then popped into Te Papa – NZ’s national museum (picture below) to grab a guide to peruse before we return in August with Tracy. Rumour has it you need at least one day to get around all of the interactive displays, so that is why we are leaving it to a later date, as it was 5pm by this point.
After buying seasickness pills for tomorrow we visited Mac’s Brewery for our well deserved pub dinner and freshly brewed pint!
We were most impressed with the arty things around the harbour, below are a few of our favourites!
The above picture is of the main pedestrian bridge from the city to the harbour walkway.
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