Wellington Harbour Architecture, Photos, Buildings, Designs, Pictures

Wellington Harbour Buildings

Waterfront Architectural Developments in the North Island of New Zealand

15 Aug 2007

Wellington Harbour Building

Photos from August 2007 by architect Adrian Welch:

Wellington Harbour is the large natural harbour at the southern tip of New Zealand’s North Island.

New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, is on the western side of Wellington Harbour. The harbour was officially named Port Nicholson until it assumed its current name in the 1980s.

In Māori the harbour is Te Whanganui-a-Tara (the great harbour of Tara). A Māori name for Wellington is Pōneke.

Wellington Harbour is an arm of Cook Strait, covering 70 square kilometres (27 square miles), with an entrance 2 km (1.2 miles) wide at its southern end between Pencarrow Head and the Miramar Peninsula.

The harbour is of tectonic origin, and a major earthquake fault, the Wellington Fault, lies along its western shore. At the northern end of the harbour is the narrow triangular plain of the Hutt River.

The central city suburbs spread around the hills overlooking the west and south-west of Wellington Harbour and its two large bays: Lambton Harbour and Evans Bay. Lambton Harbour is surrounded by the reclaimed land of Wellington’s central business district and contains the majority of the city’s port facilities.

Evans Bay is an inlet between Mt Victoria and the Miramar Peninsula on the flight path to Wellington Airport.

Three small islands are in the harbour. To the south, close to Eastbourne, is Makaro/Ward Island. Further north, close to the centre of the harbour, is the larger Matiu/Somes Island, to the north of which is the tiny Mokopuna Island.

During the early years of European colonisation, Port Nicholson became a focus for the settlement of British immigrants.

Source: wikipedia