Nelson
''Whakatū'' (Māori) |
| |
Population:
(June 2006 estimate) | 60,500
(urban)
46,400[1]
(unitary) |
| Urban Area | |
|---|---|
| Extent: | from Glenduan to
the Wairoa River |
| Unitary authority | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Nelson City |
| Mayor: | Paul Matheson |
| Extent: | from Rai Saddle to
Stoke |
| Land Area: | 444km² |
The City of 'Nelson' is situated very close to the centre of
New Zealand. It lies at the southern shore of
Tasman Bay, at the northern end of the
South Island of New Zealand, and is the administrative centre of the whole Nelson region.
Nelson is a centre for arts and crafts, and each year hosts popular events such as the
Nelson Arts Festival. The annual
Wearable Art Awards were begun in Nelson and there is a Museum of Wearable Arts showcasing winning designs close to the
Airport.
Nelson is the birthplace of
Lord Rutherford, the
Nobel Prize-winning
physicist whose image appears on New Zealand's one hundred dollar
banknote (the largest denomination in circulation in New Zealand).
Nelson received its name in honour of the
1st Viscount Nelson and Admiral of the fleet that defeated both the French and Spanish fleets at the
Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Many of the roads and public areas around the city are named after people and ships associated with that battle and Trafalgar Street is the main shopping axis of the city. Inhabitants of Nelson are referred to as Nelsonians.
Nelson's
Māori name, Whakatū,
[ NZ government Māori Language Commission ] means "a place to stand", literally meaning "home".
Geography
A view of Nelson from the "Centre of New Zealand"
The Nelson Tasman or "Top of the South" region is administered as two
unitary authorities by
Nelson City Council and the (much larger in geographical area) adjoining
Tasman District Council headquartered in
Richmond 15 kilometres to the south west. It is positioned between
Marlborough, another unitary authority, to the east and the
West Coast Regional Council to the west.
For some while there has been talk about amalgamating
[2] [3] [4] the two authorities in order to streamline and render more financially economical the existing co-operation between the two councils exemplified
[5] by
Latitude Nelson[6] (their jointly owned tourist promotion vehicle).
Nelson has beaches and a sheltered harbour. The harbour entrance is protected by a natural breakwater known as the Boulder Bank, which also reduces the effects of the tide on Nelson city's beach, Tahunanui where a recent project to protect the silver sands from tidal scouring and the coastal dune system from erosion has proved a great success. This allows for some of the safest sea bathing in the country.
National Parks
Nelson is surrounded by mountains on three sides with Tasman Bay on the other. It functions as the gateway to
Abel Tasman National Park,
Kahurangi National Park, Lakes
Rotoiti and
Rotoroa in the
Nelson Lakes National Park. It is a centre for both
ecotourism and
adventure tourism and has a high reputation among
caving enthusiasts due to several prominent cave systems around
Takaka Hill and Mounts
Owen and
Arthur which hold the largest and deepest explored caverns in the southern hemisphere.
Climate
Many people believe Nelson has the best climate in New Zealand, in that it regularly tops the national statistics for
sunshine hours, with an annual average total of over 2400 hours. You can see the raw data here:
[7]
Centre of New Zealand?
The geographical "Centre of New Zealand" allegedly lies in Nelson;
[1] on a hilltop suspiciously convenient to the centre of the city. However, this supposed "centre" was simply the convenient starting point for the original trigonometrical surveys of the South Island. The 'true' geographical centre lies in a patch of unremarkable dense
scrub in a forest on
Spooner's Range near
Tapawera, 35 kilometres southwest of Nelson.
[2]
The first
rugby match in New Zealand took place at the Botanic Reserve in Nelson on
May 14,
1870, between the
Nelson Football Club and
Nelson College and an informative commemorative plaque was renovated at the western edge of the grassed area by
Nelson City Council in 2006.
Population
Nelson's total population rose from 41,568 in 2001 to 42,888 in 2006, while Tasman district's rose from 41,352 to 44,625 to exceed that of Nelson for the first time ever.
[3]
Figures released on 23 April 2007 by Statistics New Zealand showed that 3,774 people born in the United Kingdom and Ireland lived in the Nelson City Council area and made up 9.1 per cent of its population
[9] - the highest proportion of residents from the
British Isles in New Zealand - with another 9.5 per cent of Nelson residents born overseas. Although Statistics New Zealand no longer keeps statistics for numbers of residents born in the
German-speaking countries, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Wellington has stated that a greater proportion of German speakers live in the Nelson and Bays area than anywhere else in New Zealand. There was a 23.7 percent rise in the number of Asians living in Nelson and a 35.4 percent rise in the number in Tasman district.
Culture and the arts
As the major regional centre, the city offers many lodgings, restaurants, and unique speciality shopping such as at the
Goldsmiths where "The One Ring™" in
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy was designed.
[4]
★ Nelson has a vibrant local music and arts scene and is known nationwide for its culturally idiosyncratic craftsmen and women. These include
Potters,
Glass Blowers (such as
Flamedaisy Glass Design and
Höglund Art Glass Studio & Gallery), and dozens of
Wood carvers using native New Zealand
macrocarpa and
Southern beech.
★ Nelson is increasingly a stop for large
cruise liners.
★ Art organizations include the
Suter Gallery[5] and
Nelson Arts Festival.
[6]
Festivals
Music lovers may attend the biennial
Nelson School of Music Winter Music Festival, the
Adam New Zealand Festival of Chamber Music [10] and the annual
Jazz Festival.
The
Taste Nelson festival at
Founders Park highlights this region's gastronomy, the
Festival of Possibilities features well-being and wonderment, while the
Suter International Film Festival screens 20 non-Hollywood films in late May to June every year.
The
Nelson Kite Festival takes advantage of the reliable sea breezes that blow inland from Tasman Bay across Neale Park each afternoon with kite lovers arriving from around New Zealand and from overseas.
A panorama over Nelson City
Architecture
Unlike many towns and cities in New Zealand, Nelson has retained many
Victorian buildings in its historic centre and a whole street has been designated as having heritage value:
South Street
Surviving historic buildings
Christ Church Cathedral
Amber House
Broadgreen House
Cabragh House
Chez Eelco
Founders Park Windmill
Isel House
Melrose House
Nelson Central School Renwick House
South Street Cottages
Victorian Rose Pub
Museums
Nelson Provincial Museum
The Literary and Scientific Institute of Nelson (1842) was the very first
museum in New Zealand
[7][8] and in October 2005 returned to its original Town Acre 445 site, at the corner of Hardy and Trafalgar Streets. It is open at 10:00 every day of the year except
Good Friday and
Christmas Day. ''Pupuri Taonga O Te Tai Ao'' (in the
Māori language) showcases the Nelson region's history, from geological origins to the stories of individuals and families.
[9]
This museum holds over 1.4 million treasures collected during the past 160 years in a NZ$5 million modern building funded by the regional communities of Nelson and Tasman .
Collections include:
★ Kingdon-Tomlinson family silver collection dating from 1594 - 1800 and consisting of over 140 pieces. It was gifted by
Deed of Trust to the people of Nelson and the surrounding region by
Julie Annie Tomlinson in 1959.
★ Bett Collection (the nucleus of an extensive and growing historical library and archives). Dr
Francis Arnot Blackader Bett (1873-1957) passionately collected books, photographs, maps, documents, sketches and paintings relating to the Nelson province.)
★ Marsden Collection. A rare and beautiful collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century antique furniture, plate, glassware and
porcelain - including
Sevres,
Dresden and
Worcester. This has been consolidated from an original
bequest together with separate holdings held by the
Cawthron Institute and the
Anglican Diocese of Nelson The Marsden Book Collection is also held at the museum dating from 1773 to the early 1920s and relates to natural history, discovery and exploration of the Pacific.
★ Tyree Studio Collection of more than 105,000
photographic negatives is one of the most comprehensive social history collections in New Zealand.
William Tyree (1855-1924) and
Frederick Tyree (1867-1924) were the sons of a master boot-maker from
Surrey,
England. In 1871, the Tyrees arrived in New Zealand. By 1878, William had established the Tyree Studio in Trafalgar Street, Nelson, and by 1884 his younger brother, Frederick, and Rosaline Frank were working as his assistants. Their
Aunt's
Victorian decorative tiled fireplace is installed in
Amber House nearby.
:Until 1895, William Tyree methodically documented and recorded the social history of the region and from 1910, when he moved to Sydney,
Rosaline Frank managed the Tyree Studio. Frederick Tyree established his own photographic business in
Takaka,
Golden Bay, and continued his interest in
photography until his death in 1924. The Tyree Studio continued to operate until 1947 under the ownership of Rosaline Frank.
★ The
Nelson Mail Photographic Collection of images from 1979 to 1994. More than 205,000 individual negatives and growing.
★ Other collections: Geoffrey C Wood Collection, F N Jones Collection, Manson Collection, Prouse Collection,
Nelson College Collection, Jenkins Collection, F G Gibbs Collection, Greenwood Collection, Knapp Collection, W E Brown Collection, Ellis Dudgeon Collection, Reg & Hugh Kingsford Collection, The
Nelson Evening Mail Newspaper Collection,
The Examiner,
The Colonist.
Parks and zoo
Nelson has a large number and variety of
public parks and reserves maintained at public expense by Nelson City Council
[10].
The compact Natureland Zoological Park close to Tahunanui Beach is popular with young children, where they can closely approach
wallabies,
monkeys,
meerkats,
llamas and
alpacas,
Kune Kune pigs,
otters, and
peacocks. There are also
turtles,
tropical fish and a walk through
aviary.
[11]
History
Early settlement
Settlement of Nelson began about 1100 years ago by Māori. There is evidence the earliest settlements in New Zealand are around the Nelson-Marlborough regions. The earliest recorded
iwi in the Nelson district are the Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Tumatakokiri, Ngāti Apa and Rangitane tribes.
Raids from northern tribes in the 1820s, led by
Te Rauparaha and his
Ngāti Toa, soon decimated the local population and quickly displaced them.
New Zealand Company
The
New Zealand Company in
London planned the settlement of Nelson. They intended to buy cheaply from the
Māori some 200,000 acres (800 km²) which they planned to divide into one thousand lots and sell (at a considerable profit) to intending settlers. The Company earmarked future profits to finance the free passage of artisans and labourers and their families, and for the construction of public works. However by September 1841 only about one third of the lots had sold. Despite this the Colony pushed ahead.
Three ships sailed from London under the command of Captain
Arthur Wakefield. Arriving in New Zealand, they discovered that the new Governor of the colony,
William Hobson would not give them a free hand to secure vast areas of land from the Māori or indeed to decide where to site the colony. However, after some delay, Hobson allowed the Company to investigate the Tasman Bay area at the north end of the South Island. The Company selected the site now occupied by Nelson City because it had the best harbour in the area. But it had a major drawback: it lacked suitable
arable land; Nelson City stands right on the edge of a mountain range while the nearby Waimea Plains amount to only about 60,000 acres (243 km²), less than one third of the area required by the Company plans.
The Company secured from the Māori for £800 a vague and undetermined area, but including Nelson, Waimea,
Motueka,
Riwaka and Whakapuaka. This allowed the settlement to begin, but the lack of definition would prove the source of much future conflict. The three colony ships sailed into Nelson Haven during the first week of November 1841. When the four first immigrant ships arrived three months later they found the town already laid out with streets, some wooden houses, tents and rough sheds. These ships were the Fifeshire, the Mary-Ann, the Lord Auckland and the Lloyds. Within eighteen months the Company had sent out eighteen ships with 1052 men, 872 women and 1384 children. However, fewer than ninety of the settlers had the capital to start as landowners.
Notably, the early settlement of Nelson province included a proportion of
German immigrants, who arrived on the ship ''Sankt Pauli'' and formed the nucleus of the villages of Sarau (
Upper Moutere) and Neudorf. These were mostly Lutheran Protestants with a small number of Bavarian Catholics.
After a brief initial period of prosperity the inherent problems, the lack of land and the lack of capital caught up with the settlement and it entered a prolonged period of relative depression. Organised immigration ceased until the 1850s and the labourers had to accept a cut in their wages by a third. By the end of 1843 artisans and labourers began leaving Nelson and by 1846 some twenty five percent of the immigrants had moved away.
The pressure to find more arable land became intense. To the south-east of Nelson lay the wide and fertile plains of the Wairau Valley. The New Zealand Company tried to claim that they had purchased the land. The Māori owners stated quite adamantly that the Wairau Valley had not formed part of the original land sale and made it clear they would resist any attempts by the settlers to occupy the area. The Nelson settlers led by Arthur Wakefield and Henry Thompson attempted to do just that. This resulted in the
Wairau Affray, wherein twenty-two settlers died. The subsequent Government enquiry exonerated the Māori and found that the Nelson settlers had no legitimate claim to any land outside Tasman Bay.
Nelson Province
From 1853 until provincial governments were abolished in 1876, Nelson was the capital of
Nelson Province.
The provincial
anniversary date for Nelson Province remains
1 February and a
public holiday is celebrated on the closest
Monday to that date.
[12]
Sister cities
★
Miyazu, Japan
★ City of
Huangshi, People's Republic of China;
★
Eureka, CA, USA
Footnotes
1. The earliest version of this article first appeared in ''NZ Science Teacher'' '71' 21-23 1992
2. Nelson City Council website: graviational centre
3. [8]
4. http://www.jenshansen.com/thering.aspx
5. The Suter Gallery home page
6. Nelson Arts Festival
7. National Register of Archives and Manuscripts - Nelson Institute
8. http://www.museumnp.org.nz/history.html
9. http://www.museumnp.org.nz/
10. Nelson City Council - Reserves and Parks
11. http://www.natureland.co.nz/
12. Department of Labour - NZ public holiday dates 2006-2009
See also
★
Nelson Airport
External links
★
★
Latitude Nelson
★
The Harlequin Guide to Nelson
★
Nelson City Council
★
Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology
★
Nelson Ports
★
Creative Tourism Nelson
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
