This article was first published in Tararua Tramper in month 2025
Zealandia perimeter fence
EM - Sunday 25 January
Six of us met outside the Salty Pidgin Café in Brooklyn with a little trepidation about the weather for that day. The forecasts had oscillated between moderate showers from early afternoon to just hot sunny weather in the northeast airstream. We favoured utilising side bush tracks for shade, at the expense of increasing the length of our walk by an hour or two to just under six hours!
We began by accessing the Brooklyn War Memorial via Helen St/Sugarloaf Road then took the short cut off Mitchell St to Karepa St to drop down to Transient in the upper part of Waimapihi Reserve. This is a particularly pleasant section of the undulating track, with views of the valley below. It connects the Highbury Fling, Ashton Fitchett Drive, and the Sawmill Track to some brightly painted water storage tanks and the Brooklyn army bunkers and the perimeter fence. There is a further junction with the Car Parts mountain bike bush track which then winds its way along the southern slopes below the Hawkins Hill Road.
We then chose to skip back up another access track to the wind turbine for the views and the perimeter fence. The perimeter fence drops steeply down to a low point before climbing back up again and moving away from the fence to another track which takes you to the Wrights Hill Fortress, lookout and gun emplacements, and one of the best views of Wellington city, Whanganui a Tara and Karori. Another track takes you down through a reserve area with regenerating bush fill of tūī and pīwakawaka bird song past the Karori Scout Hall and finally to Waiapu Road and Zealandia. After a refreshing break at the Rata Café we climbed back to rejoin the fence line, along the Highbury Fling to Ashton Fitchett Drive and down to Brooklyn.
Paul Bruce (leader and scribe), Alan and Stephen Graham, Annie Van Herck, Liz Martin, Jill Wild