Wellington, New Zealand
Board the Hammonds Wellington City Tour and discover Wellington City and our rugged coastline through the eyes of a local on this tour.
Experience the best attractions and must-see landmarks and get off the tourist trail. Take in a beautiful 360° view of Wellington from Mount Victoria, experience the rugged South Coast and explore quaint villages throughout the city. Take a ride on the famous Cable Car and sit back and enjoy Wellington City at its finest!
Oriental Parade may be dubbed the Riviera of the south and is a hot spot for Wellingtonians when the sun comes out, but it wasn’t always that way; in fact it There was also another undesirable element to Oriental Bay; the area was used by the whalers for boiling or rendering down whale blubber into oil; the smell of which was reported as constantly unpleasantly pungent. Continuing along Oriental Parade and through the seaside settlements of Greta Point and Evans Bay, the tour then reaches the Miramar Peninsular, home of Weta Workshop that came to worldwide prominence with director Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, producing sets, costumes, armour, weapons, creatures and miniatures. Continuing to the eastern side of the Miramar Peninsula, we are nearing the Wahine monument dedicated to the infamous shipping disaster that happened here in Wellington in 1968; the sinking of the Interislander ferry, the Wahine. The Wahine was the largest ship of its kind in the world when completed in 1966. In fact it was regarded as the “World’s finest drive on overnight passenger vehicle”. As it departed from Lyttelton at on the evening of 9 April, there were 734 passengers and crew on board. Storm warnings had been issued, but rough seas were nothing new in Cook Strait. As it turned out, the Wahine was about to sail into one of the worst storms ever recorded in New Zealand.