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Photo: Twokatz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Historic home built for a meat magnate.
Gear Homestead, named Okowai by its original owner James Gear, is a historic building in Porirua, New Zealand. It was listed by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as a Category 2 historic place in 1983.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Showcases policing methods of the past, present, and future.
A museum and art gallery. There is a Japanese Garden (contributed by sister city Nishio) and at the adjacent public library you can see one of the North Island's best genealogical collections.
The headquarters of the Ngati Toa tribe, who immigrated from the Waikato in the 1820s under Te Rauparaha; across the harbour, see the small historic reserve in Plimmerton where the Government captured him in 1846, and which seems to be in better condition than the ruins of the stone fort that was built in the same year at "Parramatta" (now the Ngatitoa Domain) but dismembered by an earthquake very soon after.
It may get snow in winter but at other times is a rewarding few hours' walk for great views of Cook Strait and beyond.
Maybe watch yet another future world champion windsurfer or boardsailor beating the breezes. The area near the beach is one of the Porirua's oldest settlements, dating from the nineteenth century when Plimmer and others pushed the Wellington and Manawatu Railway through.
At its eastern end is a wildlife sanctuary that has one of the highest densities of copepods (small crustaceans) in the world.