WELLINGTON AND CAMPERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1938, Page 10

WELLINGTON AND CAMPERS

As a holiday centre Wellington has never put forward, any extravagant claims, but has erred rather in the direction of the other extreme by being too modest about the city's attractions. These, as all who remember pre-War Wellington have come to realise, have been greatly enhanced in recent years. In fact no other major centre of population in the Dominion has witnessed more marked improvement in the period. The work has been gradual, but unceasing, and the effect is most striking. The planting of trees for nearly a generation past has transformed many vistas of once bare hills and gullies into picturesque wooded ridges and glens deep in verdure. Central Park is perhaps the most conspicuous example, but there are also the newer Botanical Gardens, the slopes of the Tinakori Hills, and the plantations that arc growing up on the Town Bell ou both sides of the city. To these must bo added llie belter roads thai give access lo the hill suburbs and their superb views of the city, harbour, and outer ring of mountains ' beyond, and sometimes the sea and ■the South Tsland across iho Straits. _T2he watcflrflst cfriv^ v«i!n Oriental,

Bay as its starting-point, has no equal in New Zealand and few anywhere else in the world. The city itself lias the finest buildings in the Dominion, and has otherwise shared in the general improvement.

To the citizen of Wellington tliis is all part of his life and as such taken for granted, but that it makes a novel and surprisingly favourable impression on the stranger and the visitor is shown by many voluntary tributes. What the traveller by car misses most in Wellington is the motor camp, now a permanent feature of cities and towns throughout New Zealand, and at all regular holiday resorts. The habit of camping in the summer season has come to stay and for this reason a correspondent in yesterday's "Post" puts the case for a large section of motorist holi-day-makers when he appeals for more motor camps about Wellington. The difficulties are probably greater here than elsewhere, but where the demand exists, as it does, the authorities might well consider ways and means of meeting it, especially in view of the coming Centennial celebrations.