As Resident Friends, we don’t have to commute to our job — but in our recent travels around NZ we have found some interesting ways that others commute. The most unexpected was a public elevator in Whanganui, on the west coast of the North Island.
The city of Whanganui, as seen from the bluff on the east side of the Whanganui river.
The town sits on the west side of a large bend of the Whanganui river. On the east side of the river, on the high bluff, sits the suburb of Durie Hill. In 1910, when Durie Hill became part of the city of Whanganui, there was a demand for public transport between the two areas — something more than the 191 steps up the bluff! In 1916, the city opened the first (and only) public underground elevator in New Zealand.
When we headed across the bridge to experience the elevator, we didn’t know what to expect. What we hadn’t realized is that to get to the elevator, you have to walk down a lovely little path with Maori-style carvings, and then walk into the hill through a tunnel that is just over 200 meters long. At the end — you finally get to the elevator!
Turns out the tunnel has incredible acoustics — check out our hoots and hollers here.
When we finally made it to the elevator and paid our $2 per person fee, we noticed a small rack yellow tickets on the wall. When we asked about them, the woman operating the elevator said they were commuter passes for the people who still have to get from the bluffs to the river or vice versa. When we asked how long she had been taking commuters up and down she simply said “a long time.” When we pushed for more detail, she finally admitted that it was her 48th year of working the elevator! (I later confirmed this from a news article.)
Once you get to the top, there are incredible views of Whanganui, as well as the opportunity to go even higher by climbing the 176 steps of the World War I memorial that dominates the skyline of this bluff. So up we went, and then back down. And then decided to walk down the 191 steps to the river. Getting our knees back in training!
A week after our visit to Friends in Whanganui, we made it to Wellington, where we are substituting as Resident Friends for 10 days. (The Wellington RFs are up in Auckland, substituting for us!)
We’ve already experienced two new ways of commuting on public transit: The first was a $5, 5-minute ride on a cable car that rises on an 18% incline from near the city center to the suburb of Kelburn at the top of the hills surrounding the harbor (a rise of about 120 meters of 600 meters of track). The second was a $12, 20-minute ferry ride across the harbor to Day’s Bay. Again, it turns out that these methods of commuting to and from the suburbs have been around for more than a century — the cable car started in 1902 and the ferries became part of the public transport system in 1913!
Wonder what our next new method of public transport will be?
Green Edges 