Mt Victoria tunnel tales

Mt Victoria tunnel tales

As plans get underway for another Mt Victoria tunnel near the Basin Reserve, Joanna Newman from the Mt Victoria Historical Society describes the construction of the original.

Mt Vic is unique in Wellington in having two tunnels through the suburb so close to each other. Less than a kilometre from the tram tunnel, which featured in the last issue of The Local, is ‘The Mt Vic Tunnel’.

Work started in 1929 and the tunnel was officially opened in October 1931. As a result of the Depression and the Relief Works Scheme, Wellington City Council was able to raise a loan to build it earlier than would have otherwise happened. It was largely built by relief labour; one worker recalled that he worked alongside doctors and lawyers as they hacked away at the rock. Some men would come to work in their suits and only then change into overalls, so that their neighbours wouldn’t know they were doing relief work. 

A month or so after breaking through the hill, work on the tunnel came to an abrupt halt when a massive search began for Phyllis Symons, a pregnant 17-year-old who had disappeared. Her lover, George Coats, a widower with six children being raised in an orphanage, was arrested after he was seen digging at the Hataitai site where spoil from the tunnel excavation was dumped. He had been one of the relief workers, until he lost his job.  (Coats was found guilty of murder and hanged in December 1931.)

Hundreds of people turned out for the tunnel opening on October 12, 1931. During the ceremony, the Mayor of Wellington, Thomas C. A. Hislop, noted that his father, former Mayor Thomas W Hislop, had opened the tram tunnel nearby in 1907. The Mayor's car was first through the tunnel, followed by hundreds of other cars and pedestrians during the afternoon. 

Tooting in the tunnel has long been a popular activity of motorists. Whatever mythology some try to create to justify it, it’s probably simply as journalist, Jane Bowron, once wrote: “Me, I've just tooted all these years because it was such an asinine act of sheer joy and how friendly to get a reply back from another Mr Toad in his cart hitting the horn for the sheer hell of it.”

Today, we still await news of what the Government plans for a ‘second’ (i.e. third) Mt Vic tunnel.