Live cameras in Paraparaumu, New Zealand

Paraparaumu is the largest town on the Kāpiti Coast, about fifty kilometers north of central Wellington on the west side of the North Island. Around 30,000 people live in the town and its beachside neighbor, Paraparaumu Beach. The coast here is a long sweep of sand and dunes facing Kāpiti Island, a rugged nature reserve a few kilometers offshore where rare birds such as the little spotted kiwi and the kōkako live free of introduced predators. Behind the town the Tararua Range rises steeply to the east. The town has a small airport, a well-known links golf course that has hosted the New Zealand Open many times, and electric commuter trains on the Kāpiti Line to Wellington.

Paraparaumu's cameras belong to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and show still images from the state highway that update every few minutes. State Highway 1 now runs past the town as the Kāpiti Expressway, opened in 2017 between Mackays Crossing and Peka Peka, and since 2022 it continues south through Transmission Gully, the inland motorway that replaced the old cliff-hugging coast road. The cameras show expressway lanes, interchanges and the green farmland and wetland beside the road.

Best time to look

Like the rest of the country, Kāpiti follows New Zealand Standard Time and moves its clocks forward from late September to early April. The coast often gets more sunshine than the capital, though westerly fronts can bring sudden squalls off the Tasman Sea. Weekday mornings bring a steady stream of commuters heading south, and Friday afternoons in summer fill the northbound lanes with people leaving Wellington for the weekend. Sunsets over Kāpiti Island in summer come late, around nine in the evening.

• Clear evenings: the island silhouetted against the sunset.
• Summer Fridays: holiday traffic heading north.

Waikanae, a few minutes north, has a river estuary popular with birdwatchers, and Queen Elizabeth Park stretches along the dunes to the south.

Sources: Paraparaumu - Wikipedia · Kāpiti Island - Department of Conservation · Transmission Gully - Wikipedia.