Waipiro Stream
Waipiro Stream (sometimes spelt as Wai Piro or Waipirau)[1] is a culverted urban stream in Wellington, New Zealand. The stream once ran beneath what is now Parliament House, alongside a second stream to its south, Tutaenui, which ran alongside what is now The Beehive.[2][3][4]: 122
History
[edit]
Prior to culverting and land reclamations following the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake,[5] Waipiro and Tutaenui both entered Wellington Harbour where the Wellington Cenotaph now stands, on the corner of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street.[6][4]: 122 Following its culverting, Waipiro now runs down beneath Bowen Street, before crossing Lambton Quay and Whitmore Street out to the harbour.[7] Both Waipiro and Tutaenui are fed by sources from Te Ahumairangi Hill in Thorndon.[8]
The Waipiro once flowed from Honeyman's Gully in the Wellington Botanic Garden down to Sydney Street and out to the harbour.[9] In 1931–34, under the supervision of John Gretton Mackenzie, a ridge was demolished and the Waipiro Stream piped so that a gully could be filled in for the expansion of Anderson Park.[10] In 1960, the Lady Norwood Rose Garden opened on the site of the former gully.[11][12]
In 2022, in a report commissioned by Let's Get Wellington Moving, urban design consultancy firm Gehl Architects proposed daylighting the stream outside Wellington railway station as part of an urban renewal project.[13]
In 2023, Wellington City Council collaborated with Taranaki Whānui to roll out a series of blue whāriki ('woven mat') designs, painted along cycleways where they crossed paths with the city's buried waterways; three whāriki are painted along the Bowen Street cycleway where it intersects the Waipiro, Tutaenui, and Pipitea streams.[14][15]
Walk the Line
[edit]
In 2015, an art installation by Joe Sheehan, called Walk the Line, was installed by the Wellington Sculpture Trust at the Wellington Cenotaph, marking the Waipiro Stream's original path by installing 231 pounamu and nephrite discs across the footpath,[7] along with in-ground speakers playing stream sounds recorded at its source on Te Ahumairangi.[16][17] The artwork was installed as part of a redevelopment of the precinct to commemorate the 100th anniversary of New Zealand's involvement in World War I.[7]
During the 2022 Wellington protest, nine of the artwork's speakers were destroyed by anti-Government protesters who mistook them for "some form of Government-run listening device[s]".[7]
Etymology
[edit]The name of the stream translates literally to "putrid, stinking water",[3] from the Māori wai ('water') and piro ('putrid/stinking/stagnant').[18] The name came from a small pool of stagnant water that used to form on the beach at the stream's mouth.[4]: 97
The name of the nearby Tutaenui Stream translates from Māori as "great amounts of excrement".[3]
References
[edit]- ↑ "Creeks That Sang". The Evening Post. Vol. CXX, no. 1. 1 July 1935. p. 14. Retrieved 19 August 2026 – via PapersPast.
- ↑ "Parliamentary precinct set to grow". Architecture Now. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 Smith, Phil (19 April 2026). "The House: Victorian Parliament amid slum, disease, fires and illegal demolition". Radio New Zealand. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 Adkin, George Leslie (1959). The Great Harbour of Tara. Whitcombe & Tombs. Retrieved 8 September 2026 – via Wellington City Libraries.
- ↑ Thomson, Rebecca (23 May 2012), "Streetwise History: Lambton Quay", The Dominion Post, Stuff, retrieved 8 September 2026
- ↑ "Forgotten Streams". The Dominion. Vol. 38, no. 81. 30 December 1944. p. 6. Retrieved 8 September 2026 – via PapersPast.
- 1 2 3 4 Elliott, Sue (28 January 2023). "Joe Sheehan walks the line with elegant simplicity". Stuff. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- ↑ Buchanan, Rachel (14 September 2012). "The king of Wellington's hills". The Dominion Post. Stuff. Archived from the original on 9 September 2026. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- ↑ Best, Elsdon (1919). The Land of Tara. The Polynesian Society. p. 97. Retrieved 9 September 2026 – via Wellington City Libraries.
- ↑ "John Gretton MacKenzie". Wellington City Council. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- ↑ "Honeyman's Gully, Thorndon, Wellington". Alexander Turnbull Library. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- ↑ "History of the Begonia House". Wellington City Council. 22 November 2024. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- ↑ Strang, Ben (11 March 2022). "New report for Let's Get Wellington Moving urges capital to ditch traffic, plant trees". The Dominion Post. Stuff. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- ↑ "We're rolling out the woven mat and revealing significant sites along the way", Wellington City Council, 16 March 2023, retrieved 8 September 2026
- ↑ "Botanic Garden ki Paekākā to the waterfront", Wellington City Council, 27 February 2025, retrieved 9 September 2026
- ↑ "Sculpture News" (PDF). Wellington Sculpture Trust. December 2014. Retrieved 9 September 2026.
- ↑ Amery, Mark (12 January 2021), "Walking on water through the streets as Wellington's hidden art revealed", Stuff, retrieved 9 September 2026
- ↑ "piro - Te Aka Māori Dictionary". Te Aka Māori Dictionary. Retrieved 9 September 2026.