Farewell to Wellington – The Travels of Mary Anne and Steve

With a few hours to kill before catching the ferry back to the South Island, we decided to ride the cable car to Kelburn then walk back to town through the botanical gardens. It turned into a sunny day and a good time was had by all. Wellington on a fine day is hard to beat.

This is the new way to get up and down the hill. It’s fast, comfortable, and relatively costly.

This is how I got to work back in the day. Imagine young Steve in a black oilskin parka perched on one of the outside seats in a howling rainstorm. The ride was, I believe, five cents.

Notice that the seats are angled. That’s to account for the angle of the climb.

Here begins the roughly one mile downhill walk back to town. The garden includes more than plants. There’s a performance area, a rose garden, an observatory, a shop, and an old cemetery. Probably more that I’m forgetting.

That’s a native bee on that thistle, not just some plain old bee!

The Bolton Street cemetery.. Some “residents” were relocated when the motorway was built.

Harry Holland seems to have decided to spend eternity showing people his bum.

After leaving the cemetery, we walked a few blocks to the parliamentary buildings.

This is “The Beehive”. It houses the Executive wing of the NZ parliament.

We finished our walking tour at Old St. Paul Anglican Church.

I love older New Zealand buildings because of the native hardwoods, kauri and rimu.

St. Cecilia, on the left, is the patron of music. Notice the cute baby pipe organ she’s holding.

Shine the torch up above our beautiful Good Samaritan window (installed in
1897), and you will be able to make out a mysterious face, carved in wood.
Bearing in mind that when work on this part of the church was being undertaken there was no electricity, there would also have been no chance of anyone seeing it.
To this day, we are none the wiser as to who it is!
There are a few possibilities. The first being that it is William Hort Levin (1845-
1893), the man for whom the Good Samaritan window was made. Another possibility is that it could be his wife, Amy Levin. Yet another, is that it is a self-portrait of a mischievous builder.