Miramar
Most people come to Miramar for one building on Weka Street, and the film industry is the newest thing here by about seven hundred years. Te Motu Kairangi was an island until an earthquake in the fifteenth century closed the channel behind it, and the peninsula has been rising out of the sea in stages ever since. It is a suburb of weatherboard houses and quiet bays with a world-famous workshop in the middle of it, and the workshop is not the most interesting thing on the headland.
Last updated 2 September 2026
Why it matters
The best story on this peninsula is underneath it. Miramar is a block of land that has been pushed out of the sea in stages, and the research that dated those stages was done for the Earthquake Commission in 1992 by Pillans and Huber, who radiocarbon-dated the raised shore platforms one by one.
There have been at least four uplift events in the last seven thousand years. The one everybody has heard about — the earthquake that closed the channel and turned the island into a peninsula — dates to 960 ± 50 years before present, which calibrates to somewhere between about 1300 and 1450 AD. Māori tradition knows it as Haowhenua. It lifted the land by roughly one to two metres and blocked the waterway that had separated Te Motu Kairangi from the mainland.
The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake did not join Miramar to Wellington. It arrived four centuries too late for that. What it did was lift the whole peninsula again, by a further 1.2 to 2.6 metres depending where you stand — between two and two and a half metres at Shelly Bay. The land in between, the low ground the airport now sits on, is the Rongotai Isthmus. When Cook charted this coast in 1773 he recorded a peninsula, not an island, because by then it had been one for three hundred years.
The people came with the land. Te Ara o Ngā Tūpuna, the Māori heritage trail developed by Wellington City Council with the Wellington Tenths Trust and Ngāti Toa, runs twenty-five sites from Pipitea Marae in Thorndon round to Ōwhiro Bay, and five of them are here: Whetū Kairangi Pā, Rangitatau Pā, Rukutoa, Oruaiti Pā, and Shelly Bay — which was Maru-Kai-Kuru. The gazetted name of the whole headland is Te Motu Kairangi / Miramar Peninsula.
Myth: the 1855 earthquake joined Miramar to the mainland
Reality: the joining happened roughly four hundred years earlier. The EQC-funded study dates that event to 960 ± 50 years before present — about 1300 to 1450 AD, the Haowhenua earthquake — with one to two metres of uplift. 1855 lifted land that had already been joined for centuries, by another 1.2 to 2.6 metres. And neither is the whole story: this is the last of at least four uplift events in seven thousand years, and the researchers are explicit that whether the local faults lift or drop this ground is not fully settled.
Myth: Wētā Workshop Unleashed is in Wellington
Reality: “Unleashed” is the Auckland attraction, at SkyCity. The Miramar site trades as Wētā Workshop Experiences, and it is a different thing — a working workshop rather than a built attraction. Plenty of listings still send people to the wrong city for the wrong product.
Myth: you can see the studios
Reality: you cannot. Stone Street Studios on Stone Street — four stages, including the 24,500 square foot one built for King Kong — and Park Road Post on Park Road are working facilities with no visitor programme of any kind. Wētā FX likewise. The only door open to the public on this peninsula is Wētā Workshop's, and the rest of the film industry here looks like light industrial units, because that is what it is.
What it's like
Miramar is startlingly ordinary, and that is most of the charm. You come over the hill or round the bay and find a flat suburb of weatherboard houses, a main street with a butcher and a cinema, an airport at one end and a headland at the other. Nothing announces that a large part of the last thirty years of world cinema was made in these streets. The buildings that did it are grey sheds with security gates.
The peninsula itself is better than the suburb. The road runs right round the eastern side against the water, past small bays that face back at the city across the harbour, and it is the kind of coast where the wind decides what sort of day you are having. Shelly Bay is on this stretch — a row of old military buildings on the water's edge that has spent a decade at the centre of Wellington's angriest planning argument.
That argument is over. The five-hundred-million-dollar housing development was cancelled in 2023 and the site was bought by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who have talked about returning it to something closer to a natural state. Wellington City Council's own page describes what is there now: a film props company, a gym, art studios, a café and a function venue, with parking, grass, and rocky coves you can swim off. There are no toilets. Anything you read calling Shelly Bay a building site, or naming the old developer, is out of date.
Round the point from it is the Massey Memorial, which is the tomb of William Ferguson Massey, prime minister from 1912 until he died in 1925, and his wife Christina. It was completed in 1930, and the crypt they lie in is a converted gun pit from the old Halswell Battery, lined with marble to serve as a vault — a fort that had stood unused for eleven years, turned into a tomb. Heritage New Zealand lists it Category 1. It is on a headland with one of the best views in the city and it is entirely open to visitors.
How to visit
Wētā Workshop Experiences, 1 Weka Street. Open seven days except Christmas Day, 8.45am to 5pm. It is entirely indoors and undercover, which makes it the single most weather-proof thing to do in Wellington — worth knowing on the sort of day the city specialises in.
What is on offer, and what it costs: the Wētā Workshop Experiences Tour from NZ$59, ninety minutes, all ages, guided through props, costumes and creatures with a hands-on sculpting element and two digital photographs included. Guided Transfers & Tour from NZ$105 adds a return pick-up from the city centre. Intro to Leatherwork, a hands-on costume-technique workshop, from NZ$60. Private tours are by enquiry with a minimum of twenty. The Wētā Cave shop is free to walk into.
The bus trap, and it is a real one. The Metlink route you want is the number 2, which Wellington City Council calls its busiest and most frequent. But the number 2 splits, and both halves carry the same number.
Take the 2 showing MIRAMAR on the front, and get off at stop 6240 on Darlington Road — from there it is about 250 metres to the Wētā Cave. The 2 showing SEATOUN is the same route number and leaves you at Miramar Shops with a fifteen-minute walk. This is Wētā Workshop's own advice on its own visitor page, and almost nothing else mentions it. Check the destination board, not just the number.
We have not been able to confirm a current journey time or frequency against Metlink's own site, so we are not printing one. No bus stops on Weka Street itself.
If you would rather not risk it, the Guided Transfers & Tour at $105 includes the return pick-up and removes the problem entirely, which for two people is roughly what a taxi each way would cost anyway.
Making the most of it
Walk the Eastern Walkway, which is the best hour and a half on the peninsula. It runs 2.6 kilometres from Tarakena Bay to the Pass of Branda and takes about an hour and a half, climbing through Oruaiti Reserve past signposted Māori historic sites, wartime gun emplacements, and the Atatürk Memorial to the New Zealanders and Turks who died at Gallipoli in 1915. It is the one place where the pā sites, the artillery and the view are all on the same path.
Go to the Massey Memorial even if prime ministerial tombs are not your subject. It is at 130 Massey Road on Point Halswell, it was finished in 1930, and the fact that a fortification gun pit was converted into a crypt is the sort of detail that makes a place stick. Heritage New Zealand lists it as able to visit and notes it draws large numbers every year.
Shelly Bay is the stop to make between the two. It is a few hundred metres south of the memorial, a track runs on from it to the Maupuia Walkway, and there is a café among the studios and workshops in the old military buildings. We are deliberately not naming the café — the one everybody writes about closed after a fire and the council's own page now says only “a cafe”, so check what is actually trading before you plan lunch around it. And there are no public toilets at Shelly Bay.
Scorching Bay is where to swim. The council describes it as sheltered from the northerly, with a large grassed area, and it is the inner-harbour beach Wellingtonians actually use.
The Roxy on Park Road is a working cinema and you can simply go. It is an independent, film-industry-founded picture house on an ordinary suburban street with a restaurant attached, and seeing a film in it is a better piece of Miramar than photographing a studio gate. We have not been able to confirm its history or its tour offer against its own site, so we are not repeating the version that circulates.
Give the studio-spotting up. Stone Street, Park Road Post and Wētā FX take no visitors, and there is nothing to see from the footpath but fences. The two hours that would go on finding them are better spent on the walkway.
Nearby
Miramar is the far end of Wellington, which makes it a half-day of its own rather than something to slot between two other things. The number 2 runs back through Kilbirnie and Hataitai to the city, so the natural pairing is a morning here and an afternoon in town.
If you are choosing what else to do with the day, Te Papa is the other place in the city where Wētā Workshop's work is on show — the Gallipoli figures were made by the same people, at two and a half times life size, and seeing them after a workshop tour is a genuinely different experience. Matiu / Somes Island sits in the harbour you have been looking at all morning.
Everything else is on the Wellington page.
A final word on Miramar
Book the workshop, check the destination board on the bus, and then give the afternoon to the headland rather than the film industry. The peninsula was doing something remarkable for seven hundred years before anyone built a studio on it, and it is still doing it.
Andrew + Margaret
- Wellington Overview
- Te Papa Tongarewa Overview
- Matiu / Somes Island Overview
- Cost of visiting New Zealand Practical
Which bus goes to Wētā Workshop?
The number 2 — but the route splits and both halves show the same number. Take the one showing MIRAMAR and get off at stop 6240 on Darlington Road, about 250 metres away. The one showing SEATOUN drops you at Miramar Shops with a fifteen-minute walk. This is Wētā Workshop's own advice, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
Can I visit the film studios?
No. Stone Street Studios, Park Road Post and Wētā FX are working facilities with no visitor programme, and there is nothing to see from the street. Wētā Workshop on Weka Street is the only part of the industry here that takes the public, from NZ$59 for a ninety-minute tour.
Is Wētā Workshop Unleashed in Miramar?
No — “Unleashed” is the Auckland attraction at SkyCity. The Miramar site is Wētā Workshop Experiences, and it is a tour of a working workshop rather than a built attraction. A fair number of listings still confuse the two.
Is Shelly Bay open?
Yes. The housing development was cancelled in 2023 and the site was bought by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. Wellington City Council's own page describes a film props company, a gym, art studios, a café and a function venue, with parking, grass and rocky swimming coves — and no toilets. Copy describing it as a building site is out of date.
What is the best walk?
The Eastern Walkway — 2.6 kilometres and about an hour and a half from Tarakena Bay to the Pass of Branda, through Oruaiti Reserve, past signposted Māori sites, wartime gun emplacements and the Atatürk Memorial. It is the one path that carries the pā, the artillery and the view together.