The city's most recent claim to fame, the event that shook it out of its admitted small town-ness and into the international league, was when local boy and affirmed Wellingtonian, Peter Jackson, decided to shoot his opus, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, right here.

Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, offers windy days, warm inhabitants and much excitement over local director, Peter Jackson's latest film, King Kong.

I am on the top of the world. Or, shall I say, at the top of the bottom. Exact location: Mount Victoria Lookout, 242 metres up, Wellington, at the very southern edge of New Zealand's North Island, Southern Hemisphere. The sweep of the city at my feet has me entranced and I open wide my arms as though to hug the entire vista. New Zealand's capital city, population 164,000, is superbly cradled between green, rolling hills and a magnificent port.

Wellingtonians love to discuss the weather, "because there is so much of it," laughs Mark Rogers, who has escorted me up Mount Victoria. Big city Aucklanders tend to make jokes about Wellington's laid-back breeziness - literally. Example: The biggest thrill the notoriously breezy city had hitherto experienced was the time it went four days without a puff of wind. And there we come to the city's most recent claim to fame. Local boy and affirmed Wellingtonian, Peter Jackson, decided to shoot his opus, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, right here in Wellington.

And thereupon hung many a tale. When Wellingtonians were not debating the weather as they were wont to do, they were discussing the theatrics of cast and crew. Celebrity spotting became a community pastime and the hottest story doing the rounds involved Liv Tyler being unceremoniously thrown out of a local nightspot. Domestic and international tourists and Rings buffs, pay homage to film sites, though all traces of sets have disappeared due to environmental concerns. A lone Gollum rears his head above the structures of the city's airport, a reminder that, in complete stealth late one night, a mysterious truck entered the precincts and left behind this memento - a surprise indeed for the star-struck to revel in.

A LITTLE BIT OF INDIA

Kilbirnie is where the Indians are centred. They form part and parcel of life here and the isolated islander, open to indigenous culture and with an innate curiosity, revels in Indian customs and festivals. Three years ago, I am told, Diwali was celebrated by all locals, with great fanfare in the centre of the city. Mary Marshall, native Wellingtonian, is an expert at Vini yoga and even tutors a young pupil. Her ambition is to visit Krishnamacharya's school in Chennai: "I cannot wait to go to India and experience yoga first-hand."

AND WELLYWOOD TOO

I am sitting over a cup of ubiquitous coffee at The Chocolate Fish, a roadside eatery with the ambience of a sea port café. A chocolate fish, sinfully sweet, dangles from my mouth. This is where, I discover, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom and others, hung out on their filming stint.

FAR AND AWAY

Wellington is the world's most southern capital. Eleven per cent of Wellingtonians walk to work, daily, taking in stupendous views. The Beehive, well-known parliament building, legend has it, was first designed as a joke on the back of a cigarette packet.

For the rest of the article, pick up VERVE’s January-February, 2005 issue