FIND THESE STEPS: From the Awarua station, just to the right of the shelter, and from the top between 46 and 48 Fox Street, Ngaio.

A reader suggested this set of steps, and I”m very grateful. They are stunning and long.

It is a beautiful, secluded and woodsy location, with views between the trees, well maintained steps, and lots of them – 210.

If you are travelling on the Johnsonville line, don’t already know them, and have a bit of time, it is worth a stop off to enjoy them.

 

A fantastic view at the top looking toward Ngaio and Crofton Downs. Fox Street was named for Sir William Fox, a notable contributor to the development of Wellington and, as Ms Irving-Smith comments, “an ardent crusader for temperance.”

The Awarua Station is on the Johnsonville train line, from where you can travel either to Johnsonville or to the Wellington Train Station. The line was opened in 1938, and this station was upgraded in 2008/2009.

An undated photo of the previous Awarua station showing the huge hill behind it.

Awarua Street and Simla Crescent Railway Stations. Evening post (Newspaper. 1865-2002) :Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post newspaper. Ref: 1/2-061619-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22664201

The climb up begins just to the right of the station shelter.

A stunning stand of trees along the steps – I don’ know what sort, though.

 

 

Along the sharp turn up the hill to Roseneath on Carlton Gore Road, above Oriental Parade.

Just a few steps with a grand view leading to the locked gate of Roseneath School.

Wellington City Heritage website notes that the Wellington Beautifying Society planted 50 pohutukawa trees along the road in 1937 and some of them remain.

Apparently Sir George Grey saw this point as the location for Government House. It is named for the son of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Edward Jerningham Wakefield. It was he who drew up the contract by which Maori sold the The New Zealand Company the land that became Wellington. The contract, its translation, and understanding by local iwi is still a point of dispute.

The path and steps are on top of the Carlton Gore retaining wall built between 1925 and 1930, designed by the Wellington City Engineer’s Department (City Engineers J.M.Dawson and A.J. Paterson) jand built by Fletcher Construction. According to Wellington City Heritage archives the city debated whether a lift or inclined tramway was suitable but decided a road – including a wonderful hairpin bend – would be a better solution.

Carlton Gore? I could find no insight who this was, and why this is named for him.

At the top of the hill to Roseneath School along side the memorial to war dead from the school in 1917.

The notice board for canons firing the Saluting Battery from  Pt Jerningham beside St Barnabas church.

Steps are everywhere in Lisbon and I haven’t made any attempt here at all to try to list them all but one set of stairs makes an appearance in Jose Saramago’s book The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

“…meet at the foot of the Escadinhas de Sao Crispim, there are a hundred and thirty-four steps, said Raimundo Silva, and as steep as those of the Aztec temples.”

FIND THESE STEPS: From the top at 49 and 59 Maida Vale Road and from the lower level at 62 Evans Bay Parade.

 

 

FIND THESE STEPS: Grafton Road runs parallel to Palliser Road at the lower level and Palliser doubles back on itself. The steps run between 2 Palliser Road at the higher level and come out at  74 on the lower.

From the top of the stairs.

Cheerful artwork improves the bus stop.