FIRST VIEW OF CAPITAL CITY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 83, 5 October 1933, Page 10

FIRST VIEW OF CAPITAL CITY

! When the "Evening Post" photographer, anticipating the trains-to-jbe, perched his camera above the portal of the Main Trunk (Tawa Flat) deviation tunnel and produced !In yesterday's issue a "first view of Wellington," as Main Trunk passengers will see it in 193—, he had a happy idea, which.only needed an infra-red sight of the city end of the picture to make it perfect. But the perfection of the idea is not equalled by the perfection of the surroundings. Right in the foreground is the big depression between the Main Trunk rails and the Wellington-Hutt rails (where the former curve out and the latter curve in). It is just a big hole where the sea lately was. Much of the beauty of the "first view of Wellington" will depend on how this vacant space is filled up and occupied, for it is the foreground of the picture. Is it'to be occupied by a few old humpies and decaying fences, as the corner end of the Government Printing Office block was occupied (and disfigured) until a few months ago? Again, part of the foreground is filled by part of the six miles steepish face that runs from Wellington to Petqne-—the face down which, it has been said, a great block of land slipped and subsided, to form the floor "of Wellington Harbour. Beaudficatiori of this face with trees and plants has been urged for years. Now we see, thanks to the photograph, that the proper planting and general treatment of the country surrounding the tunnel portal—including the depression and adjacent portions of the fault-face— are essential to a creditable ffirst view of Wellington." Where is the landscape artist?