Pop's Cat

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Astonishing Legends Network The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Deadletter Office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network or any affiliated entities or guests.

**Forrest Burgess** (0:37)
When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone, but trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends, and now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too.
Join us weekly in Blanket Forteana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter Office.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
Tonight's episode, Pop's Cat.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:16)
Well, tonight we are headed about as far from the Dead Letter office as we can get to the bottom of the world, the southern tip of New Zealand's North Island and the capital city there of Wellington.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:27)
Oh, I thought you had a story from Antarctica.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:30)
Yes, not yet. I'm still waiting to hear from McMurdo.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:33)
Oh, well, there's a lot of interesting, yes, UAP news coming from the very bottom of the world, we're talking about a very lovely and charming and mystical place of New Zealand. And this story is pretty interesting, Scott, because apparently Wellington is regularly cited as the world's windiest city by average wind speed. And they call it affectionately Windy Welly.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:00)
Ah, there we go.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:02)
Or as they said on The Simpsons about New York, the Windy Apple, which was a misnomer, combining that and the Windy City of Chicago.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:14)
Yes.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:15)
But that reason they call it Windy Welly is because the Cook Strait funnels, gales, gale force winds straight through it. And those gale force gusts happen roughly half of the days of the year.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:27)
So the Cook Strait, that's obviously named for Captain Cook, I'm guessing, I'm effectively guessing.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:32)
You are correct, sir. I would hope so. Well, in this case, though, talking about the Cook Strait, the very earliest attribution for its discovery goes to kind of a mythological figure named Kupe, who was a Maori navigator. And in Maori culture, he's also attributed as the discoverer of New Zealand in whole, but we're talking about the Cook Strait here.
So, James Cook, Captain Cook, sailed through it later on as well in 1770 But at this time, he was still a lieutenant, so he's not Captain Cook yet.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:08)
He wasn't just born Captain Cook, he was just-

**Forrest Burgess** (3:10)
No, but that would be a great, I dare you to have another child and name him Captain Cook, or just Captain Philbrook. Yes, like my good friend Arnie wanted to give one of his male children the middle name of Danger, just so he could say when he's on a date, my middle name is Danger.
I think his wife said no.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:33)
Anyway.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:34)
Yeah, getting back to it, at this time because of that, it's since been known as the Cook Strait. We're talking about the gap between New Zealand's two islands, the North Island where tonight's dead letter from our listener Billy was living at the time, and then the South Island. Only about 14 miles across at the skinniest part, it's mean water, treacherous waters here, mostly tidally. But just a quick thing on Captain Cook's as we're talking about him. He had a tragic and fateful and historic ending in Hawaii, which most people also know about. He died on February 14th, 1779 in a violent skirmish and confrontation with Native Hawaiians at Kealakakua Bay. I love Hawaii and I just have a hard time with the Natives, especially driving around in the...
That's the old joke from the standup. It's like, I was driving down the street in Hawaii and I think I was committing a traffic violation because I thought it was one way and it was one way.
But getting back to it, yeah, the Tasman Sea is on one side and then the Pacific is on the other and then trying to squeeze through that gap at the same time is a bit precarious because the tides and then the wind just slammed into each other nonstop 24-7. And that's the whole reason Wellington gets hammered. The Straits act as like a funnel and then fires everything right up into the city, especially the wind.

**Scott Philbrook** (5:08)
Yes, Wellington has been the capital since 1865, but tonight's dead letter isn't in the city itself. It actually takes place just north east of the harbor in a long flat stretch called the Hutt Valley, which is anchored by the Te Awa Karangi, or Hutt River. Forgive me if I mispronounced the Maori version of that, but I tried my best. Apparently, the first settlers tried to build a town in this area right at the river's mouth back in 1840, but flooding ran them off. They had a fair amount of catastrophes.