More musings - capital city blues and a nod to Tolkien

Wellington, New Zealand is challenged but has a fabulous southside

Wellington’s wild south coast. Photo / Krzysztof Golik

With businesses shuttering, government workers losing their jobs en masse and ageing water pipes bursting and creating spontaneous fountains in the streets, New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, is having a sub-optimal time.

The heady days of Sir Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit filming, and their associated employment and prestige, seem long ago.

But if it’s all becoming overwhelming, there is an escape: Wellington’s wonderful, wild south coast.

A walk, cycle or drive around that rocky shoreline can make you forget about the negativity facing the capital: it’s so different from the rest of the city.

And the wildness has induced me to label that stretch of unforgettable oceanfront with a name that channels Wellington’s Lord of the Rings legacy: the Mordor Coast.

In Tolkien’s books Mordor was landlocked (though it had a big lake/inland sea, the Sea of Nurnen) but there’s something about Wellington’s daunting southern shores that makes me think ‘if Tolkien had given Mordor a coastline this would be it’.

Wellington’s south coast gives off Mordor vibes. Photo / Phillip Capper

I can’t claim to be a huge Tolkien fan - I read The Hobbit when young and in that culturally lazy trope I saw the Lord of the Rings films but haven’t read the books - but in my mind Wellington’s south coast is ‘the Mordor Coast’.