Day 6 – Te Papa Tongarewa
Wellington in the Rain: Te Papa and the Weight of Gallipoli
Wellington greeted the last day of the year much as it had the ones before it — wet, restless, and wind-stirred. Not hostile, exactly, but insistent. The kind of weather that encourages you to turn inward rather than press on.
So we did.
After breakfast, we decided that the day belonged indoors, and there was only one place it could belong to: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The Walk There
On the way, Mon ducked into Daiso to pick up a raincoat and umbrella — a practical Wellington purchase if ever there was one. Along the street were shops that felt distinctly local: an anime-focused store, idiosyncratic and earnest, and remnants of older retail worlds — coin and stamp dealers — survivors of a time when money was physical and collecting required patience. Many such shops elsewhere have disappeared. Here, traces remain.
We passed through Opera Lane, beside the Opera House — a narrow corridor layered with murals. Some were bold, strange, and expressive; others had been partially obscured by graffiti, the tension between sanctioned art and unsolicited mark-making playing out on the same walls. It felt very Wellington: creative, messy, unresolved.
From there, the museum appeared — broad, grounded, quietly monumental.
Inside Te Papa — Choosing What to Carry
There were paid exhibitions on offer — Breed among them — but we passed them by. Te Papa’s permanent collections are vast enough to demand a day of their own. We were drawn almost instinctively to Gallipoli.
The Gallipoli Campaign exhibition is not something you drift through. It slows you. It asks you to stand still.
What strikes first is scale — not of the rooms, but of the figures. Life-sized sculptures, created with extraordinary precision, anchor the space. These are not symbolic representations; they are individuals, rendered in exacting detail.
The first is Spencer Westmacott.
His story unfolds gently and devastatingly. A young man with artistic talent, he lost his right arm during the campaign. Rather than surrender that part of himself, he learned to draw with his left hand. His early life, his creative instincts, his military service — all are presented not as heroics, but as continuity. A life interrupted, then reshaped.
Beyond him, the exhibition reconstructs 25 April 1915 — the landing day. A three-dimensional terrain model fills the room, lit and animated to show movement, elevation, and impossibility. The cliffs of Gallipoli rise abruptly. The vulnerability of the landing becomes immediately clear. Strategy gives way to geography.
The timeline advances, and with it the stories.
A towering figure of Percival Fenwick, a surgeon, stands amid scenes of medical improvisation and exhaustion. His work, like that of many, existed in conditions that defied anything he had been trained for. Surgery without adequate supplies. Decisions made under fire. Care delivered in chaos.
There are sections devoted to daily life — or what passed for it. Trenches and dugouts reconstructed in painstaking detail. Rations displayed in quantities that make hunger tangible. Weapons positioned not for spectacle, but to show how bodies were held in place for months at a time.
The stalemate is given its own space — eight months of waiting, advancing, retreating, and holding. Machine-gun posts are shown in action. The struggle for Chunuk Bair is explained through interactive displays that make clear just how contested and costly every metre was.
One of the most confronting elements is the way violence is explained. Interactive demonstrations show how shrapnel and grenades behave once inside the body — not sensationalised, but educational, almost clinical. The effect is sobering rather than shocking.
Then there is Charlotte (Lottie) Le Gallais, a nurse whose story brings care and endurance into focus. Her presence broadens the narrative beyond combat, reminding you that suffering radiated outward, touching those tasked with mending what could not always be repaired.
The exhibition closes with Cecil Malthus and the legacy that followed — remembrance, ritual, and ANZAC Day itself.
The Day the Fighting Stopped — Briefly
One moment lingers more than most.
A section describes the temporary ceasefire — when both sides laid down arms to retrieve and bury the dead. A white flag raised. Whistles blown. Enemies working side by side in silence. Then, later, the signal to return to trenches. To resume killing.
The presentation is restrained. It doesn’t need emphasis. The absurdity and humanity coexist without commentary.
At the very end, Te Papa offers something rare: permission to let go. A Māori ritual gesture invites visitors to sprinkle water on themselves — a symbolic cleansing, a way to release the emotional weight before stepping back into the world.
It felt necessary.
We emerged quieter than we had entered.
And there was still more of the museum to see.
Memory, Land, and a Quiet Turn into the New Year
After Gallipoli, we needed to slow down.
That exhibition leaves a residue — not shock exactly, but weight. We paused, sat for a while, let the stories settle. Only then did we move on, aware that the museum still had an entire country waiting inside it.
Nature as the Next Chapter
On the same level, Te Papa opens out into the natural history of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the shift is deliberate. From human conflict, you move into deep time.
Birdlife takes centre stage — and here New Zealand’s strangeness becomes obvious. This is a land shaped by long isolation, where birds evolved without mammalian predators. You see:
- Albatross, built for endless ocean travel
- Kea, the alpine parrot — famously intelligent, curious, and borderline kleptomaniac, known to steal shiny objects and dismantle cars
- Kiwi, flightless, nocturnal, with nostrils at the tip of its beak
- Moa and other extinct giants, represented through skeletal reconstructions that make their absence tangible
The exhibition makes clear how vulnerable this ecosystem has always been — and how dramatically it changed with human arrival.
At the centre of the hall rises a giant vertical digital screen, animated with birds, coastlines, and landscapes. In front of it stands a Māori-style carved form with tactile elements. Children cover different touch points, and in response, birds appear and move across the screen — playful, embodied learning rather than passive viewing.
Nearby, an interactive wall responds to movement, gradually revealing New Zealand’s coastline and terrain as you walk along it. Sea life fills another section — reminding you that this country’s story is as much ocean as land.
Then there is the colossal squid. Preserved, immense, faintly unreal. Its size alone resets your sense of scale.
A Land That Moves
Te Papa doesn’t shy away from instability. Another major section explains how New Zealand was formed — volcanism, tectonics, rupture. Rotorua’s geothermal activity appears here again, contextualised within a much larger system.
Three recurring natural forces are explored in detail:
- Volcanoes
- Earthquakes
- Tsunamis
Each has an interactive component. There is an earthquake house you can sit inside to feel simulated shaking. A wave tank demonstrates how tsunamis amplify and travel. Volcanic displays show magma movement, pressure, and eruption cycles.
It’s educational without being sensational — the message is clear: this land is alive, and always has been.
Te Hono ki Hawaiki — The Māori Heart
We then moved up to Level 4, into the Māori galleries — a space that feels fundamentally different in tone.
At the entrance stands Te Hono ki Hawaiki, meaning “the link with the ancestral homelands.” The carvings are extraordinary — dense, layered, alive with meaning. This is not decoration; it is genealogy rendered in wood.
The gateway, known as Tatau, depicts the legs of Tāne pushing upward, separating Ranginui (Sky Father) from Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) — the act that brings light and space into the world.
Inside, the carvings unfold in three symbolic layers:
- At the base: conflict between Māori and Pākehā
- In the middle: shared struggle, including fighting side by side at Gallipoli
- At the top: peace — represented by white doves concealed within closed panels
Photography is restricted here, and rightly so. The space asks for presence, not capture.
Beyond this are waka (canoes), storehouses for grain, and beautifully crafted artefacts. Interactive displays show how Māori navigated vast distances using stars, currents, and memory — an embodied science passed through generations.
Treaty, Migration, and Uneasy Truths
One of the most affecting sections explores the Treaty of Waitangi.
Over 500 Māori chiefs signed the Treaty in 1840 — but the Māori and English versions were not the same. Where the English text asserted sovereignty, the Māori version spoke of governance. The difference is not semantic; it shaped a nation.
The original text is displayed, enlarged, fragile, surrounded by interpretation, flags, and voices. It’s impossible not to sit with it for a while.
Nearby, immigration stories unfold — waves of people arriving during the gold rush, through war, through opportunity. First-person accounts play softly, overlapping, human.
We passed briefly through an art exhibition by Leslie Atkins, a farmer-photographer whose images were quiet and grounded. There was more art on Level 5, but by then fatigue had arrived. Te Papa rewards stamina, but also humility in knowing when to stop.
Walking Back Through the City
We walked back toward the hotel, passing once again through Te Aro and the theatre district. Near St. James Theatre, we stopped to look at a powerful mural:
I Walk Backward Into the Future With My Eye Fixed on My Past
by Kerry Ann Lee, Zangah Delamore, and Tina Rae Carter.
The title alone felt like a summary of the day.
We rested back at the apartment, conserving energy for the night.
New Year’s Eve — Wellington Welcomes 2026
Around 10pm, we headed to the waterfront. As we arrived, the Wellington Orchestra was already playing — familiar, generous choices: Purple Rain, ABBA hits, Annie Lennox’s Diva. Music people could move to. Music that didn’t demand attention, but invited it.
For once, the weather behaved. No rain. Less wind. The harbour felt calm.
At midnight, fireworks lifted into the sky. The opening rounds were lovely — clean, celebratory. Smoke built quickly, though, and the display wrapped up within four or five minutes. It was modest by Brisbane or Sydney standards, especially compared to Riverfire, but it felt honest.
What surprised us most was the absence of visible crowd control — no obvious police presence, no heavy choreography. People managed themselves. It felt… trusting.
We walked back through the city quietly.
And just like that, 2026 arrived.
Not with spectacle, but with music, memory, and a harbour holding its breath.
Happy New Year.
