Plimmer's Ark and the Vanished Shoreline

Look at the curve of Lambton Quay beneath your feet. That gentle arc isn't a design choice. It's the original eighteen-forties shoreline. Right here — right where you're standing — was the beach. Everything between you and the harbour is reclaimed land. Over a hundred and fifty-five hectares of it, added between eighteen fifty-two and nineteen seventy-three. If you'd stood here in eighteen-forty, you'd be ankle-deep in salt water.

The big accelerator was the Wairarapa earthquake of eighteen fifty-five — magnitude eight point two, the most powerful quake recorded in New Zealand. In a single violent event, it lifted the harbour bed by one to two metres. Suddenly there was all this new dry land, and Wellingtonians immediately started filling in the rest.

Now step inside the Old Bank Arcade behind you. Head toward the escalator and look down. Under the glass floor, you'll see dark, weathered timbers. Those are the remains of the ship Inconstant, which ran aground in the harbour around eighteen-fifty. A man named John Plimmer — who liked to call himself the Father of Wellington — bought the wrecked hull, dragged it to the foreshore, roofed it over, and turned it into a warehouse. People called it Plimmer's Ark. When the earthquake hit, the land rose and the ship was stranded inland. As the city grew over reclaimed ground, the Ark was buried and forgotten. A hundred and forty years later, when this arcade was being redeveloped in the late nineties, archaeologists dug down and found it. Still here. Still in position.

The grand building above is Thomas Turnbull's design for the Bank of New Zealand, completed in nineteen-oh-one. Beautiful building. But the real treasure is beneath your feet.