WELLYWOOD: Wellington Regional Stadium (Wellywood) Mystery Cache

Welcome to WELLYWOOD, a series of caches designed to enlighten you and show you around some of the wonderful locations in 'the coolest little capital of the world'.

You will be required to do some 'pre-work' to complete find some of these caches, while others will require you to do some exploring 'out in the field', and some will require a combination of both. Most caches can be found in the greater Wellington area, although there may be a few that are further afield. We hope you enjoy the series.

Wellington Regional Stadium

The stadium is a multi-purpose facility, though used mainly for sporting events. It is the home of the Wellington Lions ITM Cup rugby team, and the primary home of the Super Rugby Hurricanes. The stadium also hosts the Wellington Sevens, one of the events in the annual IRB Sevens World Series for national rugby sevens teams. Westpac Stadium regularly serves as a home venue for All Blacks rugby matches. Westpac Stadium is also the home venue for A-League football (soccer) team Wellington Phoenix FC, the stadium often referred to as "The Ring of Fire" by Phoenix supporters. It also serves as a major home venue for the New Zealand national football team (the All Whites), notably hosting the home leg of their 2010 FIFA World Cup qualification match against Bahrain. During the summer the stadium generally hosts international and occasionally domestic limited overs cricket, with the home team being the New Zealand Black Caps for the international contests and Wellington Firebirds for the domestic competition. The stadium has also been used for rugby league matches, including national team fixtures and New Zealand Warriors away fixtures. The stadium has also hosted many concerts and other events over the years.

Construction facts:

• The Stadium is one of the biggest pre-cast concrete construction jobs undertaken in New Zealand using 4,000 lightweight concrete units cast in Otaki and New Plymouth and trucked to Wellington

• It is the most 'craned' construction job ever undertaken by Fletchers - more even than the big hydro construction projects in the South Island

• The lightweight concrete used is 20% to 30% lighter than ordinary concrete. The largest units still weighed up to 35 tonnes.

• The project employed 250 construction staff on site and a further 230 off site.

• About 18,000 cubic metres (5000 truck loads) of concrete were used in total.

• Also used were 1590 tonnes of structural steel, 2700 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 250,000 concrete blocks.

• Construction crews installed 3.5 kilometres of fencing, barriers and handrails.

• Electricians installed 4.9 kilometres of electrical cabling.

• The Stadium has no posts or poles to obstruct the view and every seat is angled to look toward the middle.

• The roof has an aerofoil vane on the leading edge to help hold the roof in place and calm and filter the wind on the arena surface.

• The number of toilets far exceeds the building code.

• The building "footprint" covers almost 1.8 hectares.

• The grassed oval itself covers 16,162 square metres.

• Night events are lit by 392, 2000 watt globes mounted in four lighting towers.

• The Stadium cost $130 million to build, the finance came from: Wellington Regional Council -$25m; Wellington City Council -$15m; Grants & Donations - $7m; Fundraising - $50m, Bank loan - $33m

Stadium facts:

• Number of seats: 34,500

• Number of public seats (non-

• members, non-boxes): 31,000

• Number of covered seats: 24,000

• Number of corporate boxes: 64

• Bowl site size: 48,000 sqm

• Number of piles: 410

• Roof size: 12,000 sqm

• Height from arena to roof: 26 metres

• Height of light tower: 55 metres

• Length from end to end: 235 metres

• Width west to east: 185 metres

• Width of pitch (widest point): 135 metres

• Length of pitch (widest point): 162 metres

• Number of turnstiles: 43

• Number of escalators: 2

• Number of goods lifts: 2

• Number of toilet pans: 383

• Number of urinals: 275

• Number of television sets: 270

• Food and beverage outlets: 15

• Mobile beverage outlets: 9

• Northern replay screen: 84 sqm

• Southern replay screen: 52 sqm

• Length of the concourse: 650 metres

• Width of the concourse: 14 metres

• Length of walkway to rail station: 680 metres

• Emergency Evacuation time: 8 minutes

• Carparks on site: 850

• Staff numbers on event days: 400-1000

• Staff numbers on non-event days: 25-50