Location: Wellington waterfront
Brief description: Waitangi Park is bounded by Oriental Parade, Cable Street and Herd Street.
The park has a large grassed area, a skateboard park and an innovative playground, but its most distinctive feature is the re-created wetland – the vegetation and gravels are designed to filter and cleanse the Waitangi Stream, which for years ran in an underground storm-water culvert.
Accessibility: The park is flat.
Dogs: Dogs must be kept on a leash.
History: Waitangi Stream once fed a more extensive wetland used for centuries by Māori for food-gathering, as a source of fresh water, and as a place to launch waka.
European plans to turn the stream into a canal ended when the 1855 earthquake lifted the land by 1.5 metres. After land reclamation, the stream became part of the underground storm-water system.
Over the last century the park has been a number of things including the site of a morgue, a bus park and a huge incinerator.
Visit map