Te Ara Pukapuka Children's Walk at Central Park
Te Ara Pukapuka, our children's book walk, has landed at Central Park with a wonderful new pukapuka selected for this location!
Wellington City Libraries and the Wellington City Parks, Sport & Recreation team have partnered with author Marion Day and the Upstream: Friends of Central Park environmental group to bring Pakupaku Pīwakawaka by author Marion Day and illustrator Anna Evans to Central Park. This wonderful pukapuka is available to borrow from our libraries, to buy from all good bookstores and Marion Day’s website, and of course, to read as you wander along the trails at Central Park! Each page you find will direct you towards the next as you stroll through the park.
Te Ara Pukapuka Central Park begins (and ends!) at the main entrance to Central Park on Brooklyn Road – right by the bus stop. You can find the entrance here on Google Maps. Following the story through the park will take you into the bush, near the stream, and up past the playground and excellent flying fox. The trail is nice and wide and is suitable if you have a stroller or are a confident wheelchair user - there is a steep-ish downhill section!
Why not pause at the playground halfway through your Te Ara Pukapuka journey?
Pakupaku Pīwakawaka tells the story of a fantail who is tasked with keeping harmful creatures out of Tane’s forest. This pukapuka also briefly introduces us to a pīwakawaka who looks a little different to the grey, black, and brown fantails that we usually see around Wellington. When we asked Upstream if there were any creatures or critters they’d like to see featured in a book at Central Park, they let us know that there are many fantails who live in the park, and they’ve also started seeing black fantails around too.
Image: 341885505 by Alan Bell on iNaturalist, licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED
A black morph fantail. Will you spot one at Central Park?
There are two colourations (or morphs) of Pīwakawaka, the pied morph (grey, black, and brown), and the black morph. It’s very rare to find a North Island fantail that isn’t the pied morph, and only around 5% of South Island Fantails are black morphs. This makes it pretty exciting to find black Pīwakawaka in Central Park right here in Wellington!
Ngā mihi to everyone who helped bring Pakupaku Pīwakawaka to Central Park, and we hope you enjoy reading it as you wander the trails.