10 December 2016 - Petone Working Men’s Club, Wellington Region

Rain fell through the night although had lessened by the time we climbed down out of our luton bed. It stayed away until we had deposited our rubbish in the bins provided and headed out of the park, but recommenced as we headed on down Highway 2, following the flow of the Hutt River. We pulled off the main road at Silverstream and dumped and refilled with water, the rain now falling in earnest, neither driving or torrential, but wetting all the same. 

By the time we arrived at Petone, just less than forty kilometres from our overnight camp, it was evident that the rain was set in for the day. The surrounding hills about Hutt City were hidden from view by low soggy clouds. We detoured to the Pak’n Save and bought up large, loading our booty into the motorhome in the pouring rain, then made our way to the Club. By the time we arrived at the reception desk, we were just bedraggled rats, however the staff were too polite to make comment, took our $30 for the three nights booked and explained where the power boxes were.

After a warming lunch of soup, we decided not to make our way into the city and to Parliament as had been our original plan. Instead we walked down into Petone and went to the cinema. 

This large suburb of Hutt City on the northern edge of the Wellington Harbour was first settled by Europeans in 1840, making it one of the oldest settlements in the Wellington Region. It became a borough in 1888 and merged with Lower Hutt City in 1989. For most of the last century, Petone was a thriving largely working class town and the location of several large industrial sites, including two car assembly plants, a meat processing plant, a wool processing plant, a tobacco processing plant, a soap factory and a toothpaste factory. The majority of these closed in the 1970s and 1980s, causing the suburb to go into decline. It was also where some of New Zealand’s first State Housing was constructed in 1906 and some of the original houses still stand.

The Lighthouse Cinema is located in the Old Labour Hall, built in 1926 and opened by Harry Holland who was the first Labour Member of Parliament. For the first seventy years the hall was used for dances, vaudeville concerts, political meetings and even film shows. It was converted to the cinema it is today, in 2002 and was extended six years later to incorporate the historic bank building next door. It is a fabulously quaint place to view a movie, the cinemas sporting comfortable couches and tasteful interior. 

This visit we enjoyed the debut of “The United Kingdom”, the true story of the King of Botswana, his marrying of a white English woman in 1947 and the resulting social and political controversy. We both enjoyed this enormously although Chris was more critical of the heroine’s acting skills.

Friday turned out to be dry and sunny; a true summer’s day of the kind the young girls in the city celebrated by exposing their bare white arms and smooth legs and moved with a spring in their step.

We set off for the Petone railway station after breakfast and caught the 9.07am train into the capital, taking advantage of Chris’s Gold card and the off-peak fare for his much younger wife. The trip in from Petone into the city is so much more enjoyable than that from Mana up by Plimmerton where we have stayed before; here the line hugs the coastline and stops only once whereas the route south through Porirua stops at least half a dozen times and passes the untidy backyards of suburbia. 

Yesterday we were able to enjoy the sight of the sun glistening on the relatively calm harbour and see clear views of Somes Island which is so often shrouded in sea mist. Somes, or Matiu, Island is the largest of the three islands in the harbour lying three kilometres off the Petone shore. It is now part of the Department of Conservation’s wildlife reserves but has had a varied history including hosting enemy alien internees during wartime and providing quarantine facilities for both animal and human immigrants during the last century. Should we find ourselves sometime in Wellington at a loss of things to do, then I would not mind doing a day trip and seeing the wildlife that is nurtured there. 

But the trip into Wellington from Petone takes a mere quarter of an hour, so our views were shortlived and we emerged at the station, quite wonderful by New Zealand standards. It was built in 1874 and has national architectural significance. Unlike so many more modern buildings in Wellington that are currently branded with red or yellow stickers, this has successfully withstood the recent earthquakes a little to the south. But I do realise, having so recently returned from England, that these comments concerning historical and architectural  significance are all relative.

We walked up to the Houses of Parliament and registered for the 10am tour, keen to explore this fine institution once more. The last time we did such a tour was when our youngest son, Olly, was still at home and had to endure holidaying with his parents. Even if it was when he was fourteen, that was fourteen years ago, and memories fade. But the one thing that amazed me was the fact that I had not known, or recalled, that New Zealand had ever had a bicameral parliamentary system. England, and all the states of Australia except Queensland have this; the two houses, Upper and Lower, masquerading under the titles of House of Lords or the Senate and House of Representatives, and I had never realised that once we had too.

Cabbage trees gracing the Houses of Parliament

Here in New Zealand, the Legislative Council was the Upper House of New Zealand’s Parliament until 1951. Unlike the House of Representatives, Council members were appointed.  The system was initially set up to stall hasty laws being passed. However during the 1860s and 1870s, the Council’s independent actions clashed with the Lower House. From then on it was left with the rather inactive role of revising laws from the House.

In the 1940s, when the Labour Government stacked the Legislative Council with its own supporters, the National Party argued for the Council’s abolition. When National came to power in 1949, it restacked the Council, this time with a “suicide squad”. These members would accept a law to end the Council altogether. In December 1950, the Council members linked arms and sang the National Anthem before leaving Parliament for the last time. On 1 January 1951, the Council was abolished.

Of course I learned much more yesterday and re-appreciated the wonderful interior of the buildings.  Our guide took us up into the Banqueting Hall of the Executive Wing, better known as the Beehive,  the Maori Affairs Committee Room with its ornate carvings and tukutuku, the light and spacious Galleria, the Grand Hall which was all dressed for a special dinner, the Debating Chamber, the Legislative Council Chamber now available for private functions and to the wonderful Parliamentary Library, but not to see the base isolators as we had on our previous visit.

The Alexander Turnbull Parliamentary Library

Both the House and the Library sit on 417 base isolators, designed to protect them from earthquakes. These were installed  during the refurbishment in the 1990s, and support the weight of both buildings and absorb movement from earthquakes measuring up to 7.5 on the Richter scale. The isolators are large bearings that consist of layers of rubber and steel surrounding an inner core of lead. A rather timely business I would say given the recent quakes in this region.

The Parliamentary Library deserves an hour of poking about by oneself, but alas is not open to random visitors. It is an absolutely fabulous building, designed by Thomas Turnbull in Victorian Gothic style and was built in the late 1880s. Iron fire doors thankfully protected it from the inferno that destroyed the first parliament buildings in 1907, however the foyer was severely damaged by fire in 1992 during the refurbishment. It has since been well restored.

After spending  more than an hour with our guide, we headed down to the waterfront in the sunshine, as had so many other folk all thrilled with the better weather. There was little evidence of condemned buildings, damage or any paucity of tourists, however we had our rose coloured spectacles on and were not looking for the cracks. We sat in the shade eating our packed lunch watching the passing crowds and decided that Wellingtonians were thinner than elsewhere, or perhaps that simply was because it was the fit and trim that were out taking the air.

The second destination on our wish list was a very special exhibition at Te Papa, the national museum. When we had called here last, Weta Workshop’s creation “Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War” had just opened and there was a four hour wait in the queue. This was before we headed off to England last and learned the art of queuing and patience, and we were just not willing to do that. So we were keen to call in this time round and see what all the hype had been about.

My husband rather dwarfed by a military surgeon

The exhibition tells the story of the campaign in World War I through the eyes of eight ordinary New Zealanders who found themselves in extraordinay circumstances. Each is frozen in a moment of time on a massive scale, 2.4 times human size. The large-scale sculptures took 24,000 hours to create and countless hours were spent researching their histories. Added to this are 3-D maps, projections, miniatures, models, diaramas and interactive experiences along with plenty of interpretative panels.

One of my grandfathers landed at Gallipoli, not on 25 April 1914, but in the months that followed, so I have always prided myself on having a general understanding of the campaign, having read many accounts, fictions based on fact, so was very pleasantly surprised to find there was so much more to learn here that I had not known. In fact the battle plans and chronology of the whole business is clearly explained in a way that even I, a simple woman who has an abhorence to war and all related business, could understand and appreciate.

Immortalised emancipist Kate Shepherd 

But an hour and a half in that small part of the museum was enough and I retreated to a spot in the first floor foyer, to await my husband who worked his way around in a more delibrate fashion. From my posse I could see out onto the harbour, still bright with sunlight. I was glad when we emerged from Te Papa and found our way out into the warm sunshine and back along the now busy streets to the railway station and so home. 

We had great plans for today; to return to the city and check out the Wellington Museum and the Portrait Gallery to see a fresh collection of works, but the forecast was poor and we were feeling decidedly lazy. Hence our only activity was to walk down into Petone and buy the Weekend Dominion together with a loaf of fresh French bread. Since lunching the rain and accompanying wild winds have arrived but are supposed to ease late this afternoon. I am counting on this because I do not particularly enjoy the ferry crossing at anytime, especially in inclement weather.

This evening we will dine over at the Club, to justify our presence in front of their large televison screen later, or more correctly Chris’s presence. He is looking forward to the Joseph Parker World Heavyweight fight; I shall find pleasure in a good book back in the motorhome.