The Bay View #39 (Apr. 2002) « Oriental Bay Residents' Association

Oriental Parade was named after one of the early immigrant ships to Wellington but it took some time to become the elegant esplanade we see today. In the 1840s it was remote enough to be a quarantine station and in the 1880s dead whales were rendered down here. In the same decade the bay was a source of material for the first Te Aro reclamation – a railway ran fill from the bay. A number of enhancements in the early part of the 20th century, including extensive beach redevelopment, seawall construction and the planting of Norfolk pines and native poutukawa, helped turn this into Wellington’s “Riviera”. Today swimming and promenading are popular pastimes.

Band Rotunda Along the Parade on the sea side of the road a Band Rotunda was built which was originally located from Thomdon. In 1936 a new building replaced the older rotunda and turned into changing rooms. In the early 1980s a restaurant and viewing area was built on top. The ground floor of the rotunda now houses the community room and the Wellington Art Centre.

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ORIENTAL BAY PROMENADE In the early 1920s the council of the day decided to change the rugged beach coastline around Oriental Bay as far as the approaches to Point Jerningham into an attractive wall lined wide promenade.

Unfortunately recent councils decided to force people to share this walking passive recreational area with adult cyclists. Most cyclist groups prefer to use the roadway and the council made changes by altering the angle for parked cars so that on coming cyclists can be seen more easily.

In good weather there are hundreds of people using this open space recreational promenade area and we can expect more people using it when the enhancement of the bay is developed.

There have been numerous conflicts and accidents to people from cyclists and the council chooses to ignore the problem.

PROMENADE: A public place for walking, paved area at the seaside; a leisure walk, especially for pleasure. (NZ Oxford Dictionary)

UPDATE ORIENTAL BAY The proposed redevelopment, redesign and construction of Oriental Bay’s entire foreshore will commence in late May/early June and finish in late 2002 ready for use next summer.

The purpose of the project is to enhance and enlarge the existing Freyberg and Oriental Bay beaches, and create a new beach east of the rotunda, which is now covered by stones. Over the last 50 years, the Bay’s foreshore has been developed in an ad hoc manner, resulting in an increasingly popular but unplanned recreational area.

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