Breaker Bay

The second stop on my drive around Miramar Peninsula was Breaker Bay. Breaker Bay is located at the very southern end of the Miramar Peninsular and is therefore exposed to the [often] ferocious southerlies that hit Wellington. You'll see that the result is a rugged coastline - must like the coastline in some of my earlier posts.

Scorching Bay

I went for a drive today around Miramar Peninsula, stopping off at a couple of places for photos. The first set comes from Scorching Bay. You can see here a fairly typical "beach" for Wellington - a little bit of sand surrounded by rocks :-)

The three photos are arranged left-to-right as you face out into the harbour entrance area.

New Zealand's Parliament Buildings

It has been another nice day [albeit a bit cooler than last weekend] in Wellington, so I popped down the road for a few minutes at lunchtime to take these pictures of two of the main buildings in the Parliamentary complex - The Executive Wing [aka The Beehive] and Parliament House.

The Beehive was designed in 1964 and built in stages between 1969 and 1979. Details from the official parliamentary website are here. Parliament House replaced the original building which burned down in the early 1900's. Click here for more information.

Finally, New Zealand would have to be one of the few countries where we still have the freedom to walk up to Parliament without hindrance [they do tours as well]!

Welcome to Wellington: Te Kopahou Reserve

Te Kopahou Reserve is about as far south/ west as you can get in Wellington in anything other than a 4x4, motorbike or by foot. The reserve is located at the sight of a long-disused rock quarry and until fairly recently was nothing more than a flat [well, sort of flat] patch of gravel that you could park on. It seems the in the last year or so the City Council has taken to laying a formed road, designated parking and putting a building there. A bit of a shame, but I guess it doesn't detract from the views too much.

I've included a number of photos in this batch - the obligatory across the rocks to the water shots, but also, across the bay to the old quarry, and also a look across Cooks Strait - the body of water separating New Zealand's North and South islands [you can see a ferry making the crossing, and in the far distance, the snow covered tops of the Kaikoura Ranges - click on the images to get larger versions].

I hope that you've enjoyed these images! Feel free to leave a comment with encouragement and suggestions - I'm very much an amateur at this whole photography gig, but I do seem to enjoy this and I'm perhaps [very??!] slowly getting better at it!

Welcome to Wellington: Island Bay and Owhiro Bay

All around the Wellington coastline are small suburbs seemingly molded on to the rocks and in to the crevices. Two of these are Island Bay and Owhiro Bay. Despite these two places being popular places to live, as you'll see in the photos, they still look quite unspoilt. In fact, there's a marine reserve in this area [the name of it escapes me right now] which helps with the "underwater bits" as well.

Island Bay is most recognisable for the small island just a 100 meters or so off shore - Owhiro Bay has a comparatively sheltered area - popular with boaties and swimmers [in summer at least]. Even in winter/ spring [as it is now down this part of the world] these can be spectacular places to visit.

Welcome to Wellington: Lyall Bay

Kia ora/ gidday/ hello!

In this first series post in my new blog, I wanted to introduce you to some of the local natural sights of my adopted hometown of Wellington, New Zealand before I head overseas.

Wellington is a fantastic place... the weather can be interesting at times, there's a saying - you can't beat Wellington on a nice day! I think that these pictures start to show this.

Last weekend was an absolute stunner, and so I got out and about with my new camera [a Canon EOS 450d], put on the 18-55 IS [image stabilised] lens and started snapping. Here are some of the photos I took.

These two pictures are on the south-western corner of Lyall Bay. Lyall Bay itself is right next to Wellington International Airport and only about 15 minutes from the CBD. The first picture looks out across the southern approach to the Wellington harbour entrance - the hills in the distance are the southern part of Rimutaka Ranges. The second looks towards the south. Lyall Bay itself [to the left of these pictures] is quite a sandy beach, although that is perhaps a-typical with most of Wellington's coastline being quite rugged as shown in these pictures.

I hope you enjoy these pictures - feel free to leave a comment is you want to!

Welcome to Rodney's World Travels and Other Grandiose Stuff!

OK, so the title is a bit grandiose, but I wanted a blog for my upcoming trip to England and Europe that would be separate from my main blog, Rodney's Aviation Ramblings! I'll also use this blog for anything else that is "not aviation", and to avoid the risk of diluting the aviation brand.

The first big trip is during September 2009, and the plan is for updates to occur as the trip progresses. Any aviation related is likely to remain on Rodney's Aviation Ramblings, so I'd suggest you keep a look out in both places!