Last Friday afternoon, about 3 o'clock, I walked up Observatory Hill from The Writers' Festival down at Walsh Bay, on my way to a 4 o'clock session with Keating & Wessel at the City Recital Centre in Angel Place. Negotiating the pedestrian underpass at Kent Street, I sidled along the 1856 rebuild of Saint Phillips' and nipped across York Street to Church Hill.
I knew the view I wanted to replicate, and clung to a marooned traffic light as vehicles of all shapes and sizes whizzed off the bridge around my very ears! We are looking due south down the gunnels of the city to the Town Hall. The top photograph was taken in 1967. The TH is a spot in the distance, midway on the right is the AWA Tower, nowadays dwarfed. On the left is the Presbyterian Church of St Stephens, now mostly converted into very swish apartments.
Follow the yellow Hillsbus, as it wends its way down York Street.
The biggest difference, other than the sheer busyness of the modern scene? Yep, the greening of the city.
Pretty cool, huh?