Karori

New Zealand’s largest suburb is an epicentre for families and keen gardeners, partly due to its flat land.

Katherine Mansfield, whose family moved there in 1893 from Thorndon, often used colonial Karori in stories.  In those days, the suburb was difficult to reach but the Karori Tunnel (1900) made access easier, and by 1907 trams ran to Nottingham Street.

The area was a traditional hunting ground for Maori; it’s believed the name ‘Karori’ means ‘the rope of bird snares’.  Karori Wildlife Sanctuary (now called ‘Zealandia’) opened in 2000, and incorporates the (now decommissioned) Karori reservoir that provided the city’s first water supply when the Kaiwharawhara stream was damned in 1873.  The Sanctuary is a ‘must do’ for every Wellingtonian (and New Zealander…); its nocturnal tours are often visitors’ first sighting of kiwis in the wild.

Karori has two villages, plus destination stores like Gipps Street Butchery (well-known for its sausages, manuka-smoked hams and bacon), a branch of Arobake plus an excellent swimming pool complex and library.

Karori Normal is one of Wellington’s oldest primary schools (‘normal’ indicates it’s linked to a teachers’ training college), on the site of the city’s first lunatic asylum.  Marsden School was built in 1930 on land donated by the Riddiford family on condition it was run by the Anglican diocese.  St Mary's Anglican Church, a major local landmark, was designed by Frederick de Jersey Clere and built in 1911 with reinforced concrete in the Californian style.  The cemetery, established in 1891, is now being developed into a heritage park.  Wrights Hill has WWII gun emplacements and tunnels; its guns were only ever test-fired and then – ironically – sold to Japan in 1960 as scrap.

Karori Reservoir