Kilbirnie

Kilbirnie is perfect for young families and older couples, sited close to the city yet with all the advantages of the suburbs.  It has a library, plenty of sports clubs, playing fields and parks, and it’s home to the Wellington Region Aquatic Centre (with its Olympic-sized 50m pool).  It has one of Wellington’s best suburban shopping areas with several large supermarkets, cafés, ethnic restaurants, and family shopping.  Specialty shops include Commonsense Organics and the well-established Children’s Bookshop that draws people from miles.

Kilbirnie has plenty of schools: Rongotai College (for boys) which opened in 1928 to cope with the overspill from Wellington College, Evans Bay Intermediate School, two Roman Catholic secondary schools (St Catherine’s College for girls and St Patrick’s College for boys), plus St Patrick’s Primary School. 

It’s named after Kilbirnie in Ayrshire, Scotland, which, in turn, is named after St Birinus who converted the West Saxons to Christianity; ‘Cil’ (pronounced ‘Kil’) is Celtic for saint.  It’s one of Wellington’s oldest suburbs; Kilbirnie Park used to be the holding paddock for livestock driven to and from Miramar.

The topography is unusually flat for Wellington; it was raised by an earthquake in 1460, and then lifted again in the 1855 earthquake.