I said a little while ago that I would showcase non-aviation photos on this blog. And then I didn’t. Not because I didn’t have any such photos to show, but because I forgot to post about them. I just remembered. Anyway, enough addled ramblings.

This post will perhaps appeal most to non-Wellingtonians. Locals will for the most part be familiar with what I describe below.

One weekend whilst out with the boys, we decided to pop up to the top of Mount Victoria – one of the best vantage points from which to appreciate Wellington Harbour and City. Here are a couple of shots of the city.

The first is taken from the summit lookout, showing the CBD, adjacent to the leftmost elbow of the water, across to the Westpac Stadium in the middle right of the picture. It was a very humid, cold day.

The second shot was taken from a little below the summit and focusses on the central city area. The three bright red Wellington Harbour Board tugboats point toward the brown brick Wellington Railway Station, opened in 1937 in its very central location as part of a major upgrade of the rail network at the time. To the left of there, you are almost looking directly along Whitmore Street which crosses from the waterfront to Parliament – the circular Beehive building just visible poking up from behind the rather more ugly central post office building. It also shows just how surrounded by hills the city is.

Then another weekend I was out at Wellington Airport waiting for Jetstar and there were some nice waves crashing into Lyall Bay.

The big ones were most spectacular as they crashed over the breakwater at the end of the runway.

And on yet another weekend out, I took a couple of shots portraying something of the context of Wellington in the larger sense.

First, a compact view from Southgate, above Island Bay, looking east. You see the houses of Southgate perched atop the hill, behind which is the mouth of Lyall Bay, Moa Point – easily accessible but sparsely populated, the harbour mouth (Cook Strait is to the right) and finally the sparse and difficult to access coastline toward Sinclair Head and ultimately the southern most point of the North Island, Cape Palliser.

The other shot swings the view to the southwest to take in the snow-capped Kaikoura Ranges which are near the top of the South Island, with Cook Strait in between. The distance from camera to the highest mountain peak is roughly 130km (80M). Also in the foreground note the end of the housing. Very little of Wellington’s south coast is populated.

That’s all I have for you. Nothing photographically stunning, but hopefully of interest to some out-of-towners. Most of the photos are best appreciated at larger sizes than shown here, so click on any of them to go to their Flickr page, where you can then click on “All Sizes” above the photo.