DIFFERENT OPINIONS: As the city grew, the gully was either a beauty spot or an eyesore which should make way for a road, depending on who you asked.

Wellington is a city of folded landscapes. The hills are rugged and twisty - the roads cut this way and that around them. But even in the flat parts of the city, there was room for strange little nooks.

The Hobson St suspension bridge used to carry pedestrians across a gully that cut Thorndon in two, connecting it to Tinakori Rd.

In the early days of settlement Wellingtonians disdained to build anything in the gully. A story was put around that it was a crack caused by the massive 1855 earthquake or an earlier one - it changed a few times - but this wasn't the case. More probably it was an old watercourse that had been diverted.

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY THORNDON LEGEND: The Hobson St suspension bridge shortly after it was completed in the late 1870s.

Instead of filling in the gully or shoring up its sides, people built homes and laid out roads on either side and tended to chuck their rubbish down into it, where it could be forgotten. Most of the time, anyway, as The Evening Post recalled in 1927: "It was a wonderful dumping place for a wonderful assortment of rubbish, tins, cases, bottles, old beds, roofing iron, any sort of old junk . . . it became as untidy a gully as one could find."

Built in the 1870s, the bridge was a rickety thing passing over what had turned into an unofficial municipal landfill.

You got a good view of the rubbish, at least. Schoolboys would stand on the bridge in groups and swing it from side to side.

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY FULL UP: In the 1950s the gully was gradually filled in. It's now where the motorway runs.

Residents eventually realised that having a dump so close to your house wasn't a good look. They complained to the council - of course it was always someone else's rubbish causing the trouble - and it cleared the worst away.

In place of trash, greenery grew. By 1924 the gully was being looked at as a place to build a road, and people were complaining about the prospect of losing a "beauty spot".

Those in favour of filling it in pointed out it wasn't convenient that nothing could be driven up Hobson St to Tinakori Rd because of the bridge.

"[The bridge] still carries Thorndon people and those others who are still discovering it and the now picturesque gully below," the Post wrote, hedging its bets.

The 1930s saw repeated proposals to fill it - using trash, funnily enough.

There were many letters to the editor about it. Some decried the loss of a pretty place. "Wake up, Thorndon!" one wrote. "Already some of the residents in this locality are looking for other homes away from this peaceful area, if they are going to have a rubbish tip at their door."

Others said the beauty was only vine-deep, as below the greenery lay rusting tins and a breeding ground for rats.

The war intervened with those plans. Looking for good sites for air raid shelters, authorities settled on the gully. A series of tunnels was constructed in its sides.

After the war it was gradually filled up and the motorway finally came through in the 1960s.