In the last few days Wellington has been plagued by an outbreak of humming. Not your run-of-the-mill, can’t remember the words humming but rather humming on a city-wide scale. As our local newspaper put it on Tuesday:

Mysterious hum reported in Mt Victoria

A mysterious low-pitched humming sound has been troubling some Wellington residents for the last few days and it seems no-one has any idea what it might be.  The Wellington City Council has had several calls over the past few days with the most recent being about 5am today.  Spokesman Richard MacLean said the complaints had been coming in from Mt Victoria, Newtown and Mt Cook residents. “We are interested to hear if this starts to become a constant thing. We are keeping our ear to the ground.”

One Mt Victoria resident said he and his fiancee had noticed the noise on Saturday and it hadn’t stopped since. He likened it to a low to medium pitched humming sound and said it went all day and all night and was “doing his head in”.

Of course the source is a mystery but there have been many suggestions made in the local paper. Some rational and some not so:

 “Maybe it is the 50Hz hum that comes from a transformer feeding electricity to the area. If the transformer is overloaded it will hum louder, or maybe something on or near its enclosure is vibrating at 50Hz.”

“The Mothership is preparing [to] leave. Because Mt Victoria is actually an ancient alien spaceship. It would be a bit annoying for the suburb’s residents, though it would make the commute between Te Aro and Hataitai substantially quicker once it left.”

But  this comment is my favourite: “Why is Mt Victoria humming? Simply because she doesn’t know the words.”