Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne

Why it matters

The valley was a Māori mahinga kai — a food-gathering place — then farmland, then a mining site, and then, for most of the twentieth century, Wellington's water supply, with two reservoirs in the bottom of it. That history is why it exists in this form: a steep-sided catchment with one road in, publicly owned, and already fenced off from the city for a hundred years for entirely different reasons.

What went round it in 1999 was something new. The predator-proof fence is 8.6 kilometres long — a tightly woven mesh with a rounded hat on top that animals cannot climb over and a skirt buried below ground that they cannot dig under. It is designed to exclude every introduced mammal on the mainland: rats, stoats, weasels, ferrets, possums, hedgehogs, cats. Not reduce them. Exclude them.

Inside it, over twenty-five years, species have come back that had no mainland population left. Takahē, which were believed extinct until 1948. Tuatara, which are not lizards and have been doing what they do since before the dinosaurs. Kiwi pukupuku, the smallest of the five kiwi species and the second rarest. Hihi, tīeke, kākāriki, pāteke.

And this is the part that makes Zealandia more than a very good enclosure. Wellington City Council's bird monitoring, comparing its parks and reserves against 2011, records kererū up 243 per cent, kākā up 170 per cent, tūī up 93 per cent and pīwakawaka up 37 per cent — and native birds now outnumbering introduced ones across the monitored sites. The fence was built to keep things out. What has changed the city is what got out.

What it's like

You come in through a visitor centre on the side of the hill, past an indoor exhibition with a life-size moa in it, and then out through a gate in the fence — and the change is immediate and slightly comic, because on one side is Karori and on the other is the year 1200. The track drops to the lower reservoir and the valley closes over you.

It does not look like a sanctuary. It looks like ordinary New Zealand bush, regenerating rather than ancient, with tracks that run from flat and accessible along the water to genuinely steep and rooty higher up. The old dam is still there. The reservoirs are still there, full of shags and scaup. What is different is entirely audible.

The birds are also, mostly, invisible. Native New Zealand birds evolved without mammals and their defence is to be extremely well camouflaged and to hold still, which means the visitors who see the most are the ones who move the least. Zealandia's own advice is to spend a few minutes in Birdsong Gully first, listening to recordings of what you are about to be surrounded by, so that you can tell a hihi from a korimako when it happens.

Kākā are the exception. They are large, green, extremely loud parrots with no interest in being subtle, and they will come and look at you.

How to visit

Open every day except Christmas Day, 9am to 5pm, with last entry at 4pm. The café runs 9am to 4pm with the kitchen closing at 2pm. You do not need to book general admission — buy at the ticket desk on Level 1 of the visitor centre. Tours are a different matter and do need booking.

What it costs, and Zealandia does the same thing Te Papa does — a resident price and a visitor price:

Getting there is the bit people get wrong. Zealandia is in Karori, over the hill from the centre, and there is no direct walk. A free electric shuttle runs from the Tākina convention centre and from the top of the Cable Car, ten to fifteen minutes — but it seats eleven and Zealandia is explicit that a space cannot be guaranteed, so treat it as a bonus rather than a plan. Buses 4, 13 and 22 stop on Northland Road and 21 on Birdwood Street, both about five minutes' walk. There is limited free parking at the visitor centre and an overflow 500 metres away. If you are driving something tall, the Karori tunnel has a 3.05-metre height restriction — which matters if you are in a campervan.

General admission is self-guided only. External guides, tour leaders and commercial operators are not permitted to guide visitors on a general admission ticket, which is worth knowing if you are travelling with someone who does that for a living.

And on Wednesdays, buggies go bush. A parent or caregiver with a buggy or pram gets in for $10, children under five are free as always, and there are two buggies at the front desk to borrow at no charge. Child carry-packs count.

Making the most of it

Go at the ends of the day. The valley is quietest in sound and busiest in birds early and late; the middle of the day is when both reverse. If you can only come once and you are choosing, take the last two hours before closing.

Zealandia by Night is the tour worth the money. It runs nightly, lasts two and a half hours, departs around dusk with the exact time confirmed when you book, and is capped at twelve people with a minimum age of twelve. It starts inside the visitor centre with a five-minute film, goes out by torchlight, and ends back at the centre with a cup of kawakawa, lemongrass and ginger tea. What you are looking for is kiwi pukupuku, tuatara, pepeketua, wētāpunga, ruru and banks of titiwai — glowworms. Arrive fifteen minutes early. Private night tours run for groups of up to forty-eight.

If you have children under twelve, the night tour is not open to you — but two things are. Kids' Night Walks run April to September with a minimum age of five, and Twilight Tours run October to March, catching the valley in the half-hour when it changes over.

The two tours almost nobody knows about. Zealandia at Dawn runs on selected weekends between April and September and puts you in the valley with only your group as the light comes up, which is the single best thing on this page if the dates line up. Photography tours run on selected weekends between October and April.

Do Birdsong Gully first, properly. It takes five minutes, it is free with entry, and it is the difference between hearing birds and hearing particular birds. Everything after it is better.

What you might actually see by day: takahē, which are large, blue and unbothered; tuatara, if you look at the right sunny rock at the right moment; kākā, hihi, tīeke, kākāriki, pāteke, tūī, korimako, kererū, pōpokotea and wētā. Several of these have no other mainland population.

Nearby

Zealandia sits above Karori, and the practical link back into the city is the Cable Car — the shuttle runs from the top station, so the Botanic Garden and Zealandia combine into one half-day rather more neatly than the map suggests.

It also pairs well with Te Papa for a reason beyond convenience: Te Papa's natural-history galleries explain what New Zealand lost and why, and Zealandia is where you go to hear a fraction of it put back. Do them in that order if you can.

Everything else is in Wellington itself. If you are building a wider route, our North Island in two weeks puts the city in sequence.