A Fine Expanse of Water

BEAUTY AND COMMERCE

On the 20th September 1839, the English ship Tory passed through what is now known as the Tory Channel into Wellington Harbour, as the vanguard of what first became a stream and then a flood of settlers landing from the literal ends of the earth.

But it was fortunate for the imperious immigrants that there was already a rough and ready 'Pakeha' available to guide the first colonists past treacherous reefs into the harbour. All landed safely thanks to the renegade Geordie whaler-trader Dicky Barrett.

Charles Heaphy, an altogether more refined Englishman who was artist, draughtsman and later explorer to the expedition, wrote of the intrusion:

‘As we worked our way up the anchorage, the noble expanse of water, surrounded by a country of the most picturesque character formed a scene of almost indescribable beauty – certainly far surpassing that of our English lakes’.

Colonel Wakefield, the leader of the frock-coated freebooters, was more prosaic and saw instead:

‘a fine expanse of water over the whole of which is anchorage ground and where no inconvenience could arise to any vessel taking the usual precautions’, and he predicted that it would become ‘a great Emporium of trade’.

So the continuing stoushes between Wellington City Council’s Development organization ‘Wellington Waterfront’ and the citizens’ watchdog Waterfront Watch on the trade-offs between profit and public space could have been foreseen even 170 years ago.

But the recent re-emergence of Wellington Harbour’s beauty is something that is in its own way quite remarkable. Changes in commercial patterns and imperatives have allowed the landscape to recover – and have turned what had become an industrial eyesore in a Dirty Old Town into a jewel.

Interesting though to look back to see what things used to be like.