ToP (Tour of Porirua) continues with what will be 20+ caches to be placed all around our great city of Porirua.

Formerly you could only do this cache going westbound towards Porirua, but with the new road layout you CAN get to it from either direction now! If you miss the turnoff coming from Porirua towards the cache, go to the Haywards interchange, and come back. If you miss the turnoff going towards Porirua, you might have to travel a whiles until you find a way to turn around. You need to turn north into the Mount Cecil Road, and then immediately park. Traffic moves at a very high rate of speed along this road, so please be careful with pulling off the main road and then pulling back on again.

Porirua History

(with thanks to Wikipedia)

The name "Porirua" has a Māori origin: it may represent a variant of pari-rua ("two tides"), a reference to the two arms of the Porirua Harbour. In the 19th century the name designated a land-registration district that stretched from Kaiwharawhara (or Kaiwara) on the north-west shore of Wellington Harbour northwards to and around Porirua Harbour. The road climbing the hill from Kaiwharawhara towards Ngaio and Khandallah still bears the name "Old Porirua Road".

In the late 1940s state planning envisaged Porirua becoming a satellite city of Wellington with state housing. The name Porirua was first applied to a council in 1961 when Makara County, to the west of Wellington, was abolished, the mostly rural western part becoming the Makara Ward of Hutt County and the rapidly growing eastern urban portion (including Titahi Bay) becoming the Borough of Porirua. Four years later the population was officially estimated at over the 20,000 threshold then necessary for Porirua to be declared a city. Since then Porirua has grown to a city population approaching 51,000, with state housing no longer in the majority. Major territorial additions to the city occurred in 1973 and 1988 as part of the reduction and eventual abolition of Hutt County.

Porirua is largely formed around the arms of the Porirua Harbour and the coastline facing out to Cook Strait and the north-eastern parts of the South Island. Most of the populated areas of Porirua are coastal: Camborne, Karehana Bay, Mana, Onepoto, Papakowhai, Paremata, Pauatahanui, Plimmerton, Pukerua Bay, Takapuwahia, Titahi Bay and Whitby all have direct access to coastal parks and recreation reserves. Several suburbs without direct coastal access, including Aotea, Ascot Park and Ranui Heights, have substantial portions with good views over the harbour. Elsdon, formerly known as Prosser Block, lost access to the harbour as a result of reclamation work, especially during the 1960s. Much of the existing city centre, north of Parumoana Street and east of Titahi Bay Road, was built upon this landfill.

Haywards Substation and SH58

The eastern entrance to Porirua is from the Hutt Valley across State Highway 58. This road has been significantly upgraded in the three years before this cache was placed with extra barriers in the road, reduced speed in spots, shoring up of the sides, and a major new interchange where it joins SH2. The latter was driven by the ongoing works to improve traffic flow on SH2, which still remains the most grid-locked road in the southern part of the North Island, but no longer gridlocked at this junction. The former part, improving the road, was the result of a fatla motorcycle crash that delayed traffic in the area for 4-6 hours one day, and the NZTA then put in a reduced speed limit for quite a while during the improvements.

Just around the corner, and technically not in Porirua, is the Haywards electrical substation, one of national grid operator Transpower's largest substations and a key part of New Zealand's national electricity network. The North Island converter station for the HVDC Inter-Island is co-sited with the main HVAC substation, and converts the ±350 kV direct current electricity transmitted from the South Island converter station at Benmore to 220 kV alternating current for the North Island, and vice versa.

220 kV to 110 kV interconnecting transformers at Haywards supply the regional 110 kV network that serves much of the Wellington Region. Supply transformers at Haywards step down voltage to 33 kV and 11 kV and provide a connection to the Wellington Electricity subtransmission and distribution network serving the central-north Hutt Valley, from Trentham in the north to Taita in the south. 220 kV lines connect Haywards to the Wilton substation to supply central Wellington City, and north to Bunnythorpe near Palmerston North to connect with the rest of the North Island grid.

The Cache

There is no need to venture close to the main roadway. But please keep safety in mind and watch for muggles living near the location (not that I saw any, but lots of parked cars at the houses).

You are looking for a small pill bottle container. No room for swaps or trackables.

Also make sure that you note the code in the logbook, as you will need this for some of the caches later on in the series. The code is at the top of the logsheet.

Bring your own writing utensil. Online logs that do not match the logbook will be deleted unless previously arranged with the CO.