Walk Tours NZ: Rainbow-Themed Walking Tours

Gareth Watkins and Roger Smith are the friendly faces behind Walk Tours NZ. They have always had a passion for both rainbow history, especially in the Wellington region, and walking – so it was a natural fit to combine the two and form Walk Tours NZ.

The first rainbow walk tour they put on was during Pride 2017, which was a huge success and gave them the ‘best feeling’. Since then, they have made a commitment to do at least one tour per month. They are still going strong nearly a decade later, with a whole range of tours on offer. To date, Gareth and Roger have given over a hundred community walk tours around Wellington, all free of charge, centred around local takatāpui rainbow histories.

Last year, they created a four-part podcast series, Out on the Streets: Pride in Place, exploring how they create rainbow walk tours ‘from dreaming and planning, to walking and reflecting’.

Episode one focuses on why walk tours are so fulfilling. Gareth and Roger talk us through the history of Walk Tours NZ and the magical process of creating a new walk tour. They discuss the joy of ‘living history’, saying how ‘you can read about places, but to be actually in the location that a particular thing happened, and to be sharing that, is so rewarding.’

They discuss how one of the first steps for them is to visualise the experience they are trying to create. This involves asking preliminary questions like how many people will be on the tour, how many stops will they make, and how long will the tour take? Embedded in all their work is the goal of ‘promoting respectful storytelling and presenting a … worthwhile experience for the audience’.

In episode two, they take a ‘deep dive’ into the planning, researching, and writing of the tour. The first step is to think about the overarching topic of the tour. Will the tour be based around a particular anniversary, like the fortieth anniversary of homosexual law reform in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Walk Tours NZ has framed tours around clusters of geographic locations, such as the Cuba Street precinct. They’ve also highlighted specific individuals, such as Carmen Rupe and Georgina Beyer, and constructed thematic tours including ‘Not So Straight Artists’ and ‘A Change Is Coming’. How you name your tour is crucial to catching people’s attention – Gareth and Roger demonstrated this by calling their Carmen Rupe tour ‘The Fabulous Carmen Walk Tour: Tea, Toasties, and Trade’.

Once they’ve picked their topic, the next step for Gareth and Roger is to research and learn as much as possible, then focus the story and distil the information. They discuss how people not only take away knowledge from the tour, but also the ‘passion of the tour guides, and the embedded emotion in the narrative that you talk about’. They explain that you want to turn pure information into a compelling story that builds through the tour as a whole.

In episode three, Gareth and Roger look at promotion, managing registrations and enhancing the tour with visual flip books, handouts, audio clips and more. These enhancements bring the tour to life and make it more engaging.

Flip books are useful when you’re going to a site where the building no longer exists; you can use an image to show what the scene once looked like and paint an authentic picture of the past. One of Gareth and Roger’s tips is to ‘concentrate on big, bold images that can be seen from a distance, but also have some kind of interest when you’re looking close up’.

A recent innovation in their walk tours has been to play short audio snippets from the Pride NZ audio collection through a Bluetooth speaker. Gareth and Roger explain how this ‘adds a whole new dimension in terms of introducing somebody else’s voice … [It] adds real colour and something a little bit different to the walk tours’.

Walk Tours NZ has even used perfume on their tours! On the Carmen Rupe tour, they spray Elizabeth Taylor’s ‘White Diamonds’ perfume, to conjure up a sense of time and place. They explain that this perfume was a favourite of Chrissy Witoko, who was a contemporary of Carmen Rupe.

In the final episode, Gareth and Roger look at what happens on the day of the tour itself, how to manage participants, and some of the exciting outcomes they’ve experienced. They have received a lot of positive feedback about their mahi. One audience member told them, ‘By sharing Wellington’s rainbow heritage with an increasingly diverse audience, you sustain the vibrance of our shared space. I feel energised and deeply grateful for your work.’ Gareth and Roger have had a number of overseas travellers plan their trips to Wellington based on the walk tour dates, and the tours were even one of the kernels of inspiration for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga’s Rainbow List – but more on that in the next blog post.

Gareth and Roger want to create a ‘safe and inclusive event for everyone attending’, as well as a ‘welcoming and accessible experience.’ They have developed virtual walk tours from their physical ones, which increases access to the tours. New Zealand Sign Language interpreters have also joined the tours a number of times.

There is a lot of value and beauty in walk tours, and Gareth and Roger love the ‘mindfulness’ they can provide. They reflect on ‘The idea that rather than [just] walking through a city, … we’re actually stopping and looking at things that maybe aren’t there anymore. But … there are resonances there, and it might just be a door, or it might just be an empty space …, but you can bring that to life through a photograph and a story.’

‘It’s a really wonderful reminder that history, and heritage, is all around us all the time’.

If you want to learn more about Walk Tours NZ, or are looking for some superb tips for setting up a walking tour yourself, we highly recommend checking out the four-part podcast series, Out on the Streets: Pride in Place. Wellington Heritage Festival looks forward to welcoming Walk Tours NZ back to our festival programme in the future.

Gathering outside parliament, as part of the ‘A Change is Coming’ walk tour in Wellington Heritage Festival 2025.

Flip books in action, as part of the ‘A Change is Coming’ walk tour in Wellington Heritage Festival 2025.

Gathering outside Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, as part of the ‘A Change is Coming’ walk tour in Wellington Heritage Festival 2025.

Heading to the Parliamentary Library, as part of the ‘Not So Straight Artists’ walk tour in Wellington Heritage Festival 2024.