It's been a year

A year ago yesterday, I had just started my new job back here in Wellington after being away for two years. Man does time fly or what! Although I'm well and truly settled into my job and my life in Hawke's Bay/Wairarapa seems a lifetime ago, I still can't believe it's been a year since I came back. It came around so quick. It's been quite a year though. I've moved in with the love of my life, got engaged to the love of my life, written an entire novel, started a bunch of other writing projects, started planning an overseas trip and a wedding and a future.

What I love about being back:
♥Being able to plan a solid future with Joshua
♥Reconnecting with old girlfriends and realising that no matter how little you see each other and how much you've neglected them by being away, they still welcome you back with open arms
♥Having a place to call home
♥Becoming real grownups who buy appliances and stuff - we bought a brand new fridge and we're so excited about it!
♥Rediscovering my hometown/city and appreciating how amazing it is more than I used to

And the year ahead? Oh lordy it's going to be a biggie. The list is approximately a mile long, but it's an exciting list that I can't yet fully share because nothing is set in stone just yet.
It's exhilarating, and a little scary when you have a fair idea of where you're going to be in a year's time and you know it's going to be completely different to what your life is like now. I'm excited! Bring it on life!

Have a lovely weekend peeps xo

Down by the river

What is it about water that makes us feel so at peace? Why do thousands of Kiwi's flock to rivers, oceans, lakes, on every sunny day?

On Friday, New Zealand - Wellington especially - got some big news. The ten day weather forecast showed nothing but sun, sun, and more sun. No cloud, no rain, not even wind. For a whole ten days in a row. This may sound silly to some of you living in predicable, consistent climates, but for us it's a miracle. Often our weather looks like all four seasons in one day, no lie.

So on Saturday morning, instead of staying inside doing the boring domestic things I normally do, I put my book and a picnic blanket in my bag and headed down the road to the river.

Although there's a motorway running alongside it., the sound of cars turns into a dim murmur as you sit by the river and listen to the water flowing by and the light breeze rustling the trees above you. I wish I could capture on camera the way the water sparkles.

Maybe it's the sheer strength of water that has us all in awe of it, or maybe it's as simple as this: it cools you down. But the sense of calm you get just hearing the water flowing, that's more than just relief, that's peace. Hope you're all having a good week whatever weather you're having. xo

A quiet Saturday night out

Through a nondescript door and up a nondescript stairway that is more suited to a hospital than the way to a bar, and through another, more colourful door that looks like a door full of books, is a place that feels like home to both the book lover and those in search of a quiet drink: The Library.

It's dim and it's a little cramped with separate rooms, all featuring shelves upon shelves of books. We enter and my brother heads straight for an old lazy boy chair, and us girls sit on a well worn, soft, velvety couch. I don't get comfortable because I'm getting the drinks in, so I take their orders and get up, but I'm stopped by one of the staff, who tell us, no no, don't get up, we do table service here. Since the bar is way over the other side and requires weaving through a crowd, I gratefully take a seat and we order our drinks. We look around us at the seventies formica coffee tables, the paintings like those that used to hang on the walls of our nana's house, the dim lamps, the wooden blinds on the windows, and, oddly, the claw foot bath in the middle of the back room. It's a far cry from the "Let's see how much we can drink before we pass out" hens parties bar hopping below us.

When our drinks arrive, we sit back, take in the atmosphere, have a browse at some books, talk about our plans for the future, our dreams, our ideas, and feel like we're a world away from the busy city...

You just can't beat it

"I have heard of it blowing a gale, and half a gale, but if ever it blew a gale and a half it is doing so at the present moment." - Lieutenent Best.

Let me tell you a little something about my city: Wellington, New Zealand.

Because of the funnel effect created by the close proximity of the north and south island's mountain ranges, or what the Maori once called the "river of wind", Wellington is notorious for its wind. Every now and then, that wind is a southerly that makes its way up the country with remnants of Antarctica on its tail. Sometimes it rains, and we all know the city is often not the nicest place to be when it rains, let alone when that rain is travelling sideways, lashing your entire body, no matter how hard you try and cover up with jackets and boots and scarves - and don't even bother with an umbrella.

The wind actually nearly prevented Wellington from becoming a city at all. Before the early nineteenth century, people found it extremely hard to put down roots here, and it wasn't until British sailing ships found sanctury in its harbour that it became an attractive option for colonial settlement.

"Yet even as the raw township grew into a thriving metropolis, there was always that sense of living on a fault-line, of frail wooden houses clinging to hillsides that might throw them off any minute." - Wellington: Biography of a City by Redmer Yska

However, us Wellingtonians have a little saying that gets us through the harsh winter winds and sideways rain: "You can't beat Wellington on a good day."

And you really can't. I would challenge anyone not to smile when the sun is out in this amazing city.

And although today we've had some pretty intense wind, grey skies and a bit of rain, this is what it looked like this time last week, on the last day of winter:

Visually inspired

A few months ago, a picture store called Moana Road Art was having a closing down sale. As it was down the road from where I work, I walked past it every day and always admired these two photos on canvas, so when they went on sale for $29 each, I jumped at the chance and bought them, not caring that I didn't really have room to hang them (as I was living with the parents at the time) and that I would have to carry them in the wind for 20 minutes down to the train station, take up an extra seat on the train at rush hour, then carefully put them in the back on my car and drive them home. But I'm so glad I did!
They were taken sometime in the 1930s, and for those of you who don't know Wellington, the streets pictured are Cuba St (left) and Willis St, two of the city's most iconic streets. Today, buses repalce the trams, which I always thought was a shame, and after showing my aunty and uncle the pictures a few weeks ago, I think it's even more of a shame because of the dreamy looks and ear-to-ear smiles they had on their faces when they talked about how the trams sounded like they were in a canyon because of how narrow the streets were - the sound reverberrated off the buildings and you always knew if a tram was coming because of the roar - and then you would hear the chime of the bells. My dad and my aunty, his big sister, remember standing on James Smith's Corner waving little flags as they watched the Christmas parade go past, and would dash out onto the road to grab the lollies that were thrown to them. Whenever dad tells me that story it always makes me smile.
Today, Willis Street is lined with a mixture of banks, shops and cafes, and is constantly busy with commuters. Cuba Street is a bit of an "indie/hippie/bohemian" part of town - one of my favourite parts of town, with its vintage shops, record shops and cozy cute, often shabby-in-a-cool-kind-of-way cafes, and you're always guaranteed to walk past a busker, a homeless person, or someone with dreadlocks.
After hearing my aunty, uncle, and dad's stories, I lay on my bed and thought about how little Wellington has changed if you look closely. If you look up, most of the buildings that were there in the 30s are still there, only overshadowed by new buuildings. But what I've always loved about Wellington is the fact that we don't like to tear down a building to make way for a new one - we would rather preserve that building and work with it and around it. So although there are a lot of high-rises; a lot of glass and straight lines; if we take the time to look, the curves and the carvings and the masonry - the art, in fact, is still there, keeping secrets and telling stories.
As I looked up at my pictures, I could hear the roar of the trams and the chime of the bells clear as day and Arthur, Molly, Sophia, Duncan and Maria, characters in my novel-in-progress Missing Since Tuesday, became even more real to me as I pictured them on those streets running from trouble, falling in love, downing a pint in the pub before the six'o'clock swill...
Now those pictures have pride of place on the lounge wall in our new apartment - I see them every day, which keeps me inspired, giving me no excuse not to write.

Patriotism through fiction

Recently I read an article on Stuff.co.nz called What's so wrong with NZ fiction?. It basically explains (through a bunch of statistics) that New Zealanders love and support New Zealand fiction, but not many of us actually read it.
This article has come about at the most appropriate time for me because I've recently become obsessed with Katherine Mansfield, one of New Zealand's greatest ever writers, and I've also decided that all the books I read next year, for the entire year, are going to be New Zealand fiction.
Why? Because I am one of these statistics. I love and support our fiction, but for the life of me I cannot think of one kiwi novel I've read, and I'm ashamed of myself for that. I figure that if I'm going to strive to become one of the great kiwi writers, I need to know who my predecessors are - I was going to say "what I'm up against" but that sounds like I have a lack of respect for other kiwi writers and I want to be humble and accept that people like Katherine Mansfield were and probably always will be the best.
The article got a lot of comments, and a main theme I noticed was that people think New Zealand fiction is too much about New Zealand and most of them say things like "When I read I want to escape, I don't want to read about places I know, places I can drive down the road and see".
It's the same with young people going travelling and moving to Australia - people that think the grass is greener elsewhere. Sure, travelling when you're young is something kiwi's do - it's a rite of passage and something that I'll be doing myself soon. But, we have a strange culture... we are a loyal and supportive nation when it comes to things like sporting events, tragedies, and triumphs, but when it comes to the quality of life debate, people start complaining, when really, compared to most countries, we live in one of the best places in the world. Yet people still take off in search of greener pastures. Maybe it's because we're a young nation and we struggle with our identity a bit, or maybe it's because we're so far away from everywhere that we have this great amount of curiosity in us.
I understand where those "When I read I want to escape" people are coming from, but I think there is a lot of merit in learning about your own country, even if it is through fiction.
On the other hand, a few months ago I decided to go browsing through the Whitcoulls New Zealand section to see what I had to live up to with my own novel that is set in Wellington, and, first of all, I think our fiction should take pride of place at the front of the store where it can't be missed (some of our bookstores don't even have a New Zealand section!) instead of being squished on a small shelf in between trashy romance and sci-fi. Second of all, I noticed that every single novel I picked up had some sort of international influence attached to it - whether it was written by a kiwi writer and set overseas, or the characters were here from overseas, having immigrated from England or Scotland or Ireland.
And I thought, how sad that is, that New Zealand writers feel they have to draw on outside influences in order to write an interesting story.
In a way, it was a good thing for me, because I'm writing a story with all New Zealand characters (excluding a couple of minor American characters - soldiers who were in Wellington during WWII) set in Wellington during the present day and during the first and second world wars.
We say we are a loyal and proud country, but reading those comments made me question that a little bit - are we really? Do we actually practice what we preach? I know I do and I know a lot of people who do, but it would be nice if more kiwis did.

Would you read this book?

Missing Since Tuesday
by Sarah Hardie

It's the year 2009 in Wellington, New Zealand, where orphans Duncan and Sophia Grant live quiet, often lonely lives. He studies history; she struggles through a thankless government job.
Duncan meets a chatty, popular girl named Maria who is drawn to him just as he is drawn to her, despite their polar opposite personalities. Their fragile partnership is doomed from the start, and is shattered one day at Wellington's rugged south coast where Maria slips and falls into the violent sea - or so they think.

On his death bed, Duncan's grandfather tells him the secret of the rocks - they have the power to send people back in time and, determined to save the love of his life, a frantic Duncan, who is slowly losing his sense of reality, finds himself in the midst of World War Two.

Worried for her brother, Sophia follows and begins her own love story with Arthur, a railway worker who has also lost the love of his life, though to murder, not accident, and once their paths cross, powerful secrets are revealed that will test their relationship and their individual lives, which are changed forever as they all chase love through time in a world turned upside down by war, racing against the clock to bring everyone back to where they belong.

This is the blurb to my first novel-in-progress... what do you think? Would you read it?

Travelling through time

If you could time travel to any era, where would you go, what would you do? I’m sure most of us have answered that questions many times, because for some reason, those things that are impossibly out of reach are the things we often want the most.
For everyone there is something in history they wish they could have witnessed, or, better yet, been a part of. For me, it’s always been the sixties. The year 1969 to be specific. On a farm in outback New York. Sound familiar? Yes, as a teenager, disappointed with what modern music had to offer, I turned to the classics; to the songs that caused such social upheaval and started revolutions, songs that created the teenager.

I longed to put on my long Indian-inspired orange skirt paired with a bell-sleeved top, topped off with bangles and headbands and hop into a convey van with a bunch of like-minded friends to drive the miles and miles it would have taken to reach Woodstock (never mind the fact that I live in New Zealand and if I time travelled I would end up in sixties New Zealand... minor detail).

I would get caught in the massive traffic jam that stretched for miles and my friends and I would abandon our van and walk, in bare feet of course, to the farm, drawn in by the strumming of guitars, microphone feedback, the thump of the drums and most importantly, the hum of half a million excited revellers come to enjoy this free concert that was never supposed to be free.
And when the rain started, my friends and I would let it come down on us and soak us to the skin. We would slide down the banks and then jump in the lake, all the while people that would go down in history as some of the greatest musicians of all time played on.

If my novel ever gets published, I know people will ask me “What inspired you to write about 1940’s Wellington?” To be honest, I don’t know. I started writing a novel based in 1960s America when I was about 20 and, although I may pursue it again someday, those files lie dormant on my computer. I can’t remember when I decided to base my book in the forties, it kind of just happened that way.

I let the story take me where it wanted and I ended up in the city I grew up in, but it is different. The masonry that, in my time, has been preserved, yet overtaken by high-rises, is now clearly visible and clean.
As I walk through the city, I am surrounded by a sea of hat-wearing people. Men in suits no matter what their profession and ladies in tailored suits and dresses with felt hats on their heads. There is a scattering of soldiers, their presence reminding people there is a war going on. Trams carry the people from A to B.

With the arrival of the Americans in 1942 comes both good and bad. Jealousy reigns among the New Zealand soldiers as their kiwi women become enamoured by the Americans, a brawl now famously known as The Battle of Manners Street erupts as an insult is flung from an American to a Maori, and a group of American soldiers drown at Paekakariki during a training exercise. However, their arrival also makes the city come alive with the opening of coffee bars, the organising of balls, a new sound of music, and hope that there is light at the end of the war.
And in amongst all of this are fretting mothers with sons away at war, exhausted fathers trying to scrape together a living, and young people who should be enjoying the innocence of young love but are instead mixed up in the turmoil and forced to think like adults.

It was not one thing, but all of this that has kept me stuck on the 1940s. The amazing amount of events, tragedies and social changes that occurred during that time is hard to ignore, as are my instincts – those instincts that drive me to find out more, to dig deeper, to find out the story behind the story. Those instincts are driving me deeper into Wellington’s history, with my novel pushing me on, urging me to go this way and that, shaping the story around me so much that, while it’s not the way I expected, I feel like I am travelling through time just like I always dreamed.
So, if you could travel to any era, where would you go, what would you do, and why?

The Agfa experiment

I have a bit of a thing for cameras... My count is currently up to eight vintage, new, near-new, film, manual, digital, polaroid cameras. One of my favourites is my Agfa, simply because a) It looks awesome, and b) it takes beautiful grainy photos that make things look like they're 100 years old.
So this is my first experiment with the Agfa... not the best photos in the world, but I like them anyway because they're of Wellington and I love black and white/vintage photography. And there's nothing quite like taking care when you take a photo because you don't want to waste film and then waiting a week before you can make the trip across town to one of the only places in the city that develops film, then waiting another week for it to be developed, then going back in, choosing the good ones to get printed, then waiting another week before going back to collect your prints. Just like the old days :).

Happy Friday! Have a fabulous weekend :)

A beautiful day to be in Wellington

On April 1st, the Royal New Zealand Airforce celebrated it's 75th anniversary and yesterday, it treated Wellington to a brilliant show of Red Checkers which flew around the harbour and over the city at lunchtime. And it just happened to be one of those rare "you can't beat Wellington on a good day" days - no wind, brilliant blue sky, and hot sunshine. Simply gorgeous.

Time to write

So, as most of my lovely loyal followers will know, I'm working on my first novel. But at the moment, I'm finding it quite stressful, as my head is near explosion, so full of ideas as it is; my emails that I write to myself from work when I'm seized by inspiration and have to write something down are piling up; and bits of paper are littering my desk at home, full of bits of chapters, sentences, character ideas, plot ideas, and about five different prologues.
And I have NO TIME to organise it all! All I want to do is write - I want a little Organisation Fairy to come into my study, log into my computer and organise all my mess, and then I want to pack up my laptop and a bag, jump in my car and take off to a cabin in the wilderness so I can just write.
Isn't it crazy how you try and try to live life in the slow lane but somehow your life just is not meant to be that way. I thought making the move away from journalism - which swallowed up my time, my conscience, and my soul - to move back closer to my family and friends would allow me to slow it down a bit, but it seems to have become even more frantic. Sure, I'm not driving over the hill every weekend and living out of an overnight bag, which was very exhausting, but now that I'm back, and in the big city, there is just so much to do, so many opportunities, so much to experience. And there are so many people to see.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm not. I like that my life is busy, but sometimes we all just need time out from everything and everyone and in a perfect world, we would like to do it without upsetting anyone.
For me, all I want is to make a dent in my novel - I want to feel like I've made some progress, and I want to be able to show someone the first few chapters and have them tell me what they think of it.
So I'm thinking, in the spring maybe, of taking a week off to write. Even though that's a few months away, I'm content to wait.
So I Googled "Writers' Retreats NZ" (in an ideal world, I would be Googling "Writers' Retreats Italy", but money doesn't grow on trees people) and was surprised to find that there are a few good retreats around these parts, so I thought I would share some with you in case you are having the same troubles and are dreaming of escape. I also stumbled across a great blog called Shameless Words by fellow New Zealander Seamus Kearney, who is also working on his first novel, so I'm extending some blog love thataways, make sure you have a peek!

Haurata High Country Retreat - Gisborne

New Pacific Studio - Wairarapa

Tauhara - Lake Taupo

The Writers' Retreat - Kerikeri

If all else fails, I might just hire my uncle's beach house up the coast, or hole myself up in the local library for a week... do you think they would let me sleep there? haha. Where would be your ideal place to retreat to? Have you had or are you having the same problem as me? Any advice on how to organise your life and get motivated?

Sarah xo

Happy Monday :)

The sun is shining and it's set to be a beautiful week here in Wellington, so Happy Monday people, hope your week is off to a good start. :)

“If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew, just go right along and you'll start happening too.”

- Dr. Seuss

(This photo is part of a wee adventure we had in Wellington on the weekend which I shall tell you about later in the week:)

Books that changed my life

Was it a childhood favourite that helped you discover the full power of your imagination? Was it an inspirational true story that taught you not to take life for granted? Was it a self help book that made you realise you were not living your life to the full? Or was it a novel in your adult years that taught you about love?

For me, two books have changed my life - one in my childhood, and one on the cusp of adulthood.

In the newspaper on the weekend, I read a great feature where eight well-known Wellingtonians - writers, politicians, a broadcaster, a sportsman and a comedian were asked what book changed their life, so I thought I would share mine with you.
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

I was delighted to discover that Bill Manhire - writer and the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University - and I share a life-changing book: The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

Being a shy, quiet child who preferred reading to sport, I read a lot of books in my childhood and Enid Blyton was there through it all. I read as many of the Famous Five books as  could get my hands on, and then discovered her foray into fantasy which I struggled to put down and read over and over again.

I will admit that I don't remember much of the story, but I do remember how it opened up my imagination and made me believe in another world, another reality that is closer than you think. It sticks with me today, and I even think it influences how I write - not shying away from magic, other worlds, and the possibility of a force, a sort of electricity around us that we can neither see, nor touch, nor understand, that would explain things like spirits and demons and people that don't quite make sense in this world.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

At the tender age of fourteen, I went to my local library after getting frustrated with the lack of mature fiction in my school library. I was bored with every book I read, so I asked the librarian if she would point me towards something a little different, something exciting. And that's when my obsession with Jamie and Claire Fraser began.

You've all heard me talk about Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series - I seem to find a way to slip it into every post I write about books - but it's just so GOOD!

Looking back now, I do wonder if it was appropriate for a fourteen year old girl to be reading a book so full of very, very detailed sex scenes. But in a way, I'm grateful because it taught me that sex is not just physical - it's the most intimate thing you can do with another person and when you love them more than life itself, you bear your soul to that person. And Diana Gabaldon herself taught me that the intense, all-consuming, impassioned love that exists between Jamie and Claire is possible in the real world - because she experiences it herself.

And then there's the time travel. I LOVE time travel stories, and this book started me on the road to writing my own novel - which I've dreamed about doing all my life - which also has a time travel element to it.

Again, it was not just the book, but the author who influenced me here. She came to Wellington a few years ago promoting the seventh book in the series, An Echo in the Bone, and spoke to a packed audience about her books.
At the end during question time, someone asked "What advice to you have for aspiring writers?" And she said, "Just start writing".
Then someone asked, "How do you find the time?" and she said, "How many hours a day do you spend watching television?"
Simple, I know. I mean, of course all you have to do to start writing a book is to "Just start writing", but so often we have this perception of an author having a degree in English Literature and a masters and a PHD to top it off - oh, and you have to be graying around the edges.
But - although Diana Gabaldon has three degrees in science: Zoology, Marine Biology, and Quantitative Behavioral Ecology - she was just a woman who wanted to write a book, so she just started writing - in her thirties while raising three young children.
So that's how Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton changed my life.

What book, or books, changed your life?

A shipwreck and the magical musical clock

It’s my favourite building in the whole of Wellington, one I walk past every day on my way to work, and one I have always admired, yet, even though I have been inside before, I never truly appreciated it’s beauty until Tuesday afternoon.
Usually when I see a great old building, I’m often disapointed with the pictures that come out of it because while it may look pretty on the outside, the inside is most often a stock-standard building full of the same old shops or offices. But it was almost impossible to pick which photos to put on here. When you’re not shopping and you’re just looking, taking it all in, that building has got to be one of the most interesting I have ever been in.

So I Googled it the day before I went and found out some fascinating facts about a shipwreck, a musical clock, and a man named John Plimmer, who I will tell you about in my next post.

My rush to get there (a great day to break in new heels) was less due to the fact that I had a short lunch break, and more to do with getting there at 1pm on the dot. Why? A golden ball-shaped clock hangs from the ceiling of the arcade, and on the hour, every hour, it opens to the sound of music to reveal a series of scenes depicting old Wellington and, when you go upstairs to get a closer look at the scenes, one of those wise old museum voices tells you a bit of history.

I didn’t get my hopes up that it would still be there because, like the trams that used to run through the city, it sounded like one of those classic things that would have become lost in the twenty-first century. But, as I stood pinned up against a wall trying to avoid the lunchtime rush and probably looking like a far-too-eager tourist, I held my camera at the ready and at 1pm sharp, the music started and it opened! Realising I couldn’t see it from below, I ran upstairs and there it was. Classic, timeless, beautiful.

A woman appeared next to me, who I have a feeling had seen me gazing intently at the clock and then rush up the stairs, so followed me to see what the fuss was about, and she asked, “how often does that happen?”. I replied, “Every hour on the hour apparently”, and she looked stunned and said how she had lived in Wellington for years and never knew it was there. I told her I had lived in Wellington all my life and even I didn’t know!

Another interesting feature of the Old Bank is the shipwreck buried underneath the reclaimed land.

The remains of the 1848 Inconstant were discovered not so long ago, in 1997 when the sadly neglected building was given new life and restored. In 1849, it set sail from Plymouth bound for South Australia with 209 Irish female migrants on board. Bound for Callao, Peru, with a cargo of tea and animal skins, it never made it to it’s destination. As it entered Wellington harbour in October 1849 to replenish the ship’s supplies, it hit rocks at Pencarrow Heads and was stranded.

The Royal Navy helped the crew haul the stricken ship off the rocks and towed it to Te Aro. No one had the money to make the Inconstant seaworthy. Shipwright William McKenzie bought the vessel at auction and sold it to John Plimmer in 1850 for £80. Plimmer gained Governor Grey's approval to locate the vessel on the foreshore at Lambton Quay. He then had to haul the Inconstant from Te Aro.

"...when the tide was down they fastened empty oil barrels and hogsheads all round her, and laid out a large anchor away in deep water... ...at high water began to haul on to ropes with about forty men... And all the people passing came to lend a hand and in Barrett's Hotel she was christened the Noah's Ark..."

When the ship was in place, Plimmer had the bilges filled with spoil, a pitched roof was added to the midsection of the hull, and the upper works of the bow section were cut away. The lower part of the ship formed a basement and a small bridge provided access to the Ark from Lambton Quay.

In January 1855, the largest earthquake ever recorded in New Zealand, measuring 8.2, struck Wellington and lifted the shoreline at least a metre, tipping over the ark. Although the ark was righted, the water level around the hull was too shallow for vessels to dock at.

The ark was demolished in 1883 and the ship’s ribs were cut down to ground level to make way for the building of the National Mutual Life Association head office.

In 1899 the hull was exposed again during excavations for the new Bank of New Zealand head office and in July 1997, during excavations for the modification of the Bank of New Zealand buildings, the remains of the Inconstant's hull were uncovered, a discovery which led to an archaeological investigation of the site.

I didn’t want to leave, but time was short. So I left wearing a huge grin, tempted to take a ride on the cable car, walk to Karori Cemetery, visit the Alexander Turnbull Library and Katherine Mansfield's birthplace - all at the same time, if only it were possible. But we shall save that for another day. Stay tuned.

"Not possible. Maria had looked at those buildings thousands of times. The dates carved into the masonry were supposed to be old and worn, barely readable to those who had no interest in looking.

But they were new and pristine.

She stood, leaning against what she new as the Old Bank Arcade but was now actually a bank and the only one that, in her time, was not crammed in between high rises. It gave her a sense of comfort to lean against this building she had leaned against, walked through, shopped in, and had coffee in many times before, yet at the same time a sense of dread was slowly creeping in, settling itself in the pit of her stomach.

Maria was definitely still in Wellington, but she was a long way from home."

- Missing Since Tuesday, by Sarah Hardie

Resources:
http://www.inconstant.wellington.net.nz/index.htm
http://www.oldbank.co.nz/