‘Touch the Water’
Mayor Kerry Prendergast’s welcome
2005
“I love this city, the hills, the harbour, the wind that blasts through it.” Patricia Grace, the Wellington novelist who penned these lines, is a kindred spirit.
Wellington’s beauty is mostly a secret. People in other places usually hear nothing about us except our wind and our weather. So when visitors come here, and they stand on the City-to-Sea bridge, the sun is shining, and there’s snow on the Rimutakas, and the harbour is like polished emerald, they’re stunned by the sheer unexpectedness of it all.
They turn to you, and say, heartfelt, “I had no idea”.
Wellington’s amphitheatre of harbour and hills is exceptional. Its intimate scale means you can take it in at a glance; the effect is complete. No matter how you arrive — by ferry, by plane or by car — there’s always that moment when you sweep round the bend and the harbour just opens out in front of you. The setting is unique. You can’t imagine anything more beautiful anywhere.
Those of us who live here cherish the cosmopolitan city-village scale of Wellington, and the fact that the city is built contiguous to the water’s edge its entire length— unlike so many harbour cities that resolutely turn their backs to the water.
In years to come, Wellington’s waterfront promenade — so easily accessible from all points of the city – will extend far beyond what it does today, making it a very special place indeed.
Touch the Water has been produced by Wellington City Council to celebrate the story of Wellington’s evolving waterfront, and how the city is progressively reshaping the industrial remnants of what was once a busy working port into a sophisticated, world-class — yet distinctly New Zealand — amenity.
As Bruce Mason, another local writer celebrated in the recently installed Wellington Writers Walk, said: This is a place “where magic can be made and miracles occur.”
Shout it from the rooftops! This should be our secret no more.