Well hello winter

In New Zealand, 1st June marks the first day of winter. Ironically, we celebrate this with a long weekend for the Queen's Birthday. We took the opportunity to have a very quiet one to recharge the batteries, but did decide to head out to Wright's Hill Fortress, an old WWII gun station in Karori. It's only open four times a year so we thought we'd better take the opportunity.

Most of it is a series of cold, damp tunnels linking the three gun stations...

The Fortress was built to protect the Kiwi capital from Japanese invasion. However the guns were never fired in anger as it was only finished in 1944! And the Japanese never made it this far. The guns were tested though in 1946 and promptly shattered many of the windows around the Fortress!

However today, it is probably best visited for the views it provides of the harbour and even Makara Wind Farm.

 As you can see though, not bad weather for the start of winter. Don't mind if we have a few more winter days like this one!

The centre of the universe!

While in Nelson it seemed rude not to visit the so-called Centre of NZ. It is so-called because it is the location of the country's first trig point. The actual geographic centre is figured to be about 55kms south west of here!

The stiff climb up certainly helped to work off breakfast!

But the views are worthy of the title of the Centre of the country. With the sight of the Tasman Bay, Boulder Bank, the Port and Nelson itself. Not so much Middle Earth, but possibly the Centre of it ;-)