Barefoot Walks series: 1st January, 2022

Note: This is archived material from my old blog.

On this beautiful sunny day, the first day of 2022, we went for a #barefoot walk through the Botanical Gardens again — where better to go than our first walk?

This time, everything was open, so we popped into the Cable Car Museum.

Did you know the Cable Car company sponsored the development of Victoria College (later to become Victoria University of Wellington), requesting that the college be built in Kelburn so as to generate traffic for the cable car?

Some people might call that an interesting historical titbit.

I call it a damned racket.

In the museum, you can see the old cable cars that were retired in the 70s. After someone got injured, safety checks were done; it was decided that it would be better if they had brakes. New cars were commissioned.

There a replica of an even older design of cable car in the lower part of the museum, next to which is a non-functional wheel-house (which drove the old cable cars up and down). They’d given the statue of the old man some tinsel, so I couldn’t resist getting him in the shot.

A technical goof: my singlet kept untucking from my shorts. It looks like my belly hanging out. The irony of looking even more overweight when trying to show off my exercise endeavours!

Nevertheless, Wellington was looking gorgeous, so I can’t skip out on this photo.

Clear blue skies. Lush greenery. It’s such a rare sight in Wellington, normally so dull and grey.

We took a route we’d never taken before, the Sculpture Path. There were a few edifices but we only photographed a couple.

This is Dennis O’Connor’s Rudderstone, erected in 1997. The shape is supposed to evoke a rudderstone, the part at the back of a boat to steer it.

It’s supposed to symbolically memorialise the migrant cultures that make Aotearoa.

I think an aeroplane tail would’ve made as much sense. The majority of people we passed looked as though they or their heritage came from Asia, more likely by air than by sea.

On arrive en Nouvelle-Zélande par avion.

I’m not sure whether to call this sculpture “simpler” or not. On the one hand, it’s a pile of stones. On the other, it’s more than a huge rectangle with a bit missing.

It’s Peacemaker by Chris Booth. The stones come from Northland, near Kerikeri. It’s meant to evoke the shape of the Metservice building’s antennae.

To be honest, this kind of art baffles me. A gigantic tombstone with a section missing … a pile of stones from the other end of the island … if these are supposed to be telling a story, I don’t hear them.

I just see huge rocks.

But I know what I hate.

And I don’t hate this.

Instead of heading through to Bolton Street cemetery, as per our first walk through the gardens, we decided to exit via Bolton Terrace (behind the sportsground). Before we went there, we checked in on the Peace Flame in the Peace Garden.

It’s a picturesque little pond, I think artificial, with a waterfall whose flow surrounds a small torch.

The torch, that you can see next to my right arm, is supposed to bear a flame presented to the city by the Japan Society of New Zealand in 1975.

Apparently, a flame was taken from fires in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities bombed by atomic bombs, and brought to Wellington in 1994 as a gift of appreciation for going nuclear-free.

I’m not entirely if the flame is the same one — the day we went (and on our last visit), the flame seemed to be out. We even went through in the dark, once, and didn’t see it.

Worldwide, peace flames aren’t supposed to go out until all nations agree to nuclear disarmament.

I’m fairly certain we’ve not reached that situation yet.

Still, I wasn’t disappointed. There were some cute ducks in the pond.

On our way down from Bolton Terrace, we ducked into Tokyo Lane (because the ground was too hot; it was burning my feet!). That lead down to the Clifton Street platform for the Cable Car.

It just happened to go past as we walked through, so Fezz hurriedly snapped a few pics. This is my favourite one as it shows off the council’s Christmas iconography — the same as the murals I’ve seen around town.

I was surprised by how empty it looked. The terminal at the top had quite a lot of people, all buying ice creams and enjoying the view. Perhaps, sneakily, they all drove up there?

To be fair, we caught the bus up to Kelburn and walked down.

I’m not at the point where I can walk up to Kelburn and still have the energy to bother walking back down.

But I will be.

And I’ll take photos of that!