Newtown Festival

Yesterday was another pearler of a day in Wellington. As we head into autumn, there are still plenty of events and festivals going on in and around the city. I missed the Jackson Street Fiesta on Saturday night as we had a girls' night out instead.

After a short sleep-in, I started the day by checking out the new coastal ecology lab opened by Victoria University of Wellington. Island Bay is an ecologically unique part of the world, with numerous indigenous species of marine life. (I forget the stats.) The new marine lab is a stunning building, complete with diving facilities, wet labs, and research spaces. The open day gave us a sneak peak before the official opening is this Thursday 12 March.

The Newtown Fair was also happening yesterday. Part of the Newtown Festival, it's estimated that about 70,000 people packed the streets on this beautiful sunny day. I stopped by the main stage to see a friend of mine was dancing in one of the salsa performances, where the group tried to teach the crowd a simple salsa routine. I'm not sure how successful they were!

Afterwards, we wandered up the busy street to the Wellington Hospital open day. The hospital was officially opened on Friday after many years of planning and construction. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of being part of the public health system and ending up at the old Wellington Hospital will know how overdue these new buildings are. The main corridors are adorned with a photographic history of all the hospital sites in Wellington, dating back to the original hospital in 1847. It makes for fascinating reading and is almost quite scary to realise just how piecemeal developments in the public hospital system have been during this past century and a half. We got to go inside the new ICU, operating theatres, recovery room, and radiology unit; it's not so scary without all the sick people. These sparkling new facilities can only be an improvement on the buildings they have replaced.