Track of the gull, Te Raekaihau

Te Raekaihau is a Maori name for the headland between Lyall Bay and Houghton Bay, on Wellington's south coast. In English, the name means 'the place that eats the wind'.

From Te Raekaihau you look south, to the vast emptiness of the Southern Ocean. Before the 18th century voyages of the navigator Captain James Cook RN, Europeans believed that a Great Southern Land must exist there, to balance the landmass of the northern hemisphere. But there is only sea and sky.