Well, let me tell you.
Wellington was the idea of director of the New Zealand Company and big ol’ racist Edward Gibbon Wakefield. It was designed to be the perfect planned city (complete with a cemetery in each corner). It was completely boring, like Christchurch.
The problem was that Wakefield had not actually been to New Zealand at this point, and he decided the perfect place for Wellington would be where Petone is now. Problem: It was a fucking swamp. The settlers (and if you’re reading along at home, remember to give them a silly accent at this point; I prefer to make them AWWWfully Ing-glish) were all like “Fuck this shit,” and they decided that the current Wellington site would be a bit more choice. And they tried to build based on Wakefield’s same plan at the new site.
Problem: THERE ARE LIKE A HUNDRED FUCKING HILLS. This explains why none of the roads in Wellington suburbs (except Karori, which is boring; cf Christchurch) make no fucking sense. Also, are funny shaped. Because there are fucking hills in the way. It ALSO explains why if I want to get to uni, I have to walk down a hill, then up a different one, and then down a little bit on the other side. Uni is about 15 mins away from my house. Wellington has problems.
[As a sidenote, eventually some peeps decided it would be pretty okay to drain the swamp. But they replaced it with Petone, so I’m not really sure that’s an improvement.]