Wellington, New Zealand (S6.06)

80 Days: An Exploration Podcast

Audio: Wellington

LISTENER SURVEY

In this episode of 80 Days: An Exploration Podcast we’ll be talking about Wellington, New Zealand. Located at the south end of the country’s North Island, Wellington is the third largest city, and capital of New Zealand. Māori oral tradition tells that Kupe discovered and explored the region in about the 10th century, before Maori people settled the country from around 1280, making New Zealand the world’s last major landmass to be occupied by humans. Maori named the natural harbour that forms here named the harbour Te Whanganui-a-Tara. As they tend to do, Europeans eventually showed up and began to colonise, in this case in the 1830s, inevitably coming into conflict with the Maori, and eventually renaming the settlement for Sir Arthur Wellesley, hero of Waterloo. Wellington was declared a city in 1840, and was chosen to be the capital city of New Zealand in 1865, making it the world’s southernmost capital of a sovereign state. Today, Wellington is home to around 420,000 people, giving it a similar population to Oakland, California or Manchester, England. It is well-known for its coffee culture, its natural beauty, its booming film industry and its extreme winds. Wellington is the world’s windiest city, with an average wind speed of 27 km/h (17 mph)

Your hosts, as always, are Luke Kelly @thelukejkelly in Dublin, Ireland, Mark Boyle @markboyle86 in Toronto, Canada, and Joe Byrne @anbeirneach in Dublin, Ireland. Our theme music and other stings come from Thomas O’Boyle @thatthomasfella.

We also had a huge amount of help from Thomas Rillstone for this episode. He’s the legend behind the History of Aotearoa New Zealand Podcast. You should check out his show for far more info on New Zealand than we could ever hope to know, and for much more accurate pronunciations than we could ever manage.

Some further reading material is provided below:

• We referred a number of times in this episode to the official government site on Wellington’s history, which you can find here.
• Another great source is the Wellington Museum. Did we mention there’s a lot written down in this one? The episode was well over three hours before it was edited!
• There’s also an episode of Absolute History all about the history of the city, which touches on some of the points we made and also gives a good tour around the city. Featuring Peter Jackson!
• We also recieved an absolute treasure trove of info from the good people of r/Wellington.
• More info on Te Rauparaha and the Ngāti Toa can be found here.
• The Radio New Zealand Black Sheep Podcast was a fantastic overview of the dastardley Wakefield clan and their misdeeds — check it out.
• Want more on the Treaty of Waitangi? See here.
• The Wakefield Memorial we discussed has its own Wikipedia page. It doesn’t improve the memorial much.
• For more on the Musket Wars, check out Kiwi Codger on YouTube
• Thomas Le Bas’ The Lost History of the Flag of Wellington is available on Medium.
• More info on the Wahine Disaster is available on the official government site, and you can find news coverage from the period on YouTube.
• For anyoen who hasn’t seen the All-Blacks perform the Haka before — check this out.
• The Flat White? Wellington all the way.

Music includes:

• You can find some of the chants we used here and here on YouTube
• The music in the intro ‘Tau Mai e Kapiti’ and is here on YouTube.
• The outro song is ‘You Can’t Beat Wellington on a Good Day‘ by The Datsun Violets

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