Nelson, New Zealand

Nelson Whakatū
Flag
Nelson
Coordinates:
Country	New Zealand
Unitary authority	Nelson City
Government
- Mayor	Kerry Marshall
Areafrom Rai Saddle to Stoke
- Territorial	445 km2 (171.8 sq mi)
Population (June 2010 estimate)[1]
- Territorial	45,500
- Density	102.2/km2 (264.8/sq mi)
- Urban	59,800
Time zone	NZST (UTC+12)
- Summer (DST)	NZDT (UTC+13)

The city of Nelson is close to the centre of New Zealand. It lies at the shore of Tasman Bay, at the northern end of the South Island, and is the administrative centre of the 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 began near Nelson and a museum, World of Wearable Art, is now housed close to Nelson Airport showcasing winning designs.

Brightwater, near Nelson is the birthplace of Lord Rutherford, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who successfully split the atom. His image appears on New Zealand's $100 banknote, the largest denomination in circulation in New Zealand.

Nelson received its name in honour of the Admiral Horatio Nelson who 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,^[2] means 'build', 'raise', or 'establish'. Nelson is one of the few New Zealand cities to have its own flag.

Geography

Southern suburbs of Nelson (right) and the nearby town of Richmond (left) seen from the air.

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 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 the two authorities in order to streamline and render more financially economical the existing co-operation between the two councils,^[3][4][5] exemplified by similar action in the creation of Nelson Tasman Tourism,a jointly owned tourism promotion organisation.^[6]

Nelson has beaches and a sheltered harbour. The harbour entrance is protected by a Boulder Bank, a natural, 13 km bank of rocks transported south from Mackay Bluff via longshore drift. The bank creates a perfect natural harbour which enticed the first settlers although the entrance was narrow. The wreck of the Fifeshire on Arrow Rock (now called Fifeshire Rock in memory of this disaster) in 1842 proved the difficulty of the passage.^[7] A cut was later made in the bank in 1906 which allowed larger vessels access to the port.

The creation of Rocks Road around the waterfront area after the Tahunanui slump^[8] in 1929 increased the effects of the tide on Nelson city's beach, Tahunanui, and removed sediment. This meant the popular beach and adjoining car park was being eroded (plus the sand dunes) so a project to replace these sands was put in place and has so far proved a success, with the sand rising a considerable amount and the dunes continuing to grow.

National Parks

Nelson is surrounded by mountains on three sides with Tasman Bay on the other and the region is 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, as it regularly tops the national statistics for sunshine hours, with an annual average total of over 2400 hours.^[9]

Geographical Centre of New Zealand

The marker at the "Centre of New Zealand".

The geographical "Centre of New Zealand" allegedly lies in Nelson;^[12] on a hilltop near 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 in Spooners Range near Tapawera, 35 kilometres south-west of Nelson: .^[13]

Economy

The sub-national GDP of the Tasman and Nelson regions was estimated at US$2.343 billion in 2003, 2% of New Zealand's national GDP.^[14]

History

Early settlement

A view of Nelson from the "Centre of New Zealand".

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

Diocese of Nelson Christ Church Cathedral on Church Hill, central Nelson.

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 a vague and undetermined area from the Māori for £800 that included 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 18 months the Company had sent out 18 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 lack of land and 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 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, where 22 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 1876, when provincial governments were abolished, Nelson was the capital of Nelson Province. The provincial anniversary date for Nelson Province is 1 February and a public holiday is celebrated on the nearest Monday.^[15]

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.^[16]

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% of its population[5] - the highest proportion of residents from the United Kingdom and Ireland in New Zealand - with another 9.5% born overseas. Although Statistics New Zealand no longer keeps statistics for numbers of residents born in Germany, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Wellington has stated that a greater proportion German speakers live in the Nelson and Bays area than anywhere else in New Zealand. There was a 23.7% rise in the number of Asians living in Nelson and a 35.4% rise in Tasman district.

Education

Nelson hosts two Tertiary Education Institutions, the main one being Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. The institute has two main campuses, one in Nelson and the other in Blenheim, in the neighbouring Marlborough region. The Institute has been providing tertiary education in the Nelson-Marlborough region for the last 100 years. Nelson also has a University of Canterbury College of Education campus which currently has an intake two out of every three years for the Primary sector.

Nelson Airport

Nelson Airport (IATA: NSN, ICAO: NZNS) is an airport in Nelson. Approximately 1 million people use the airport terminal annually.In 2006, the airport received restricted international airport status, and it has handled international private jets since then.

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.^[17]

• 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), Fibre Spectrum Handweavers & Fibre Artists' Studio^[18] and dozens of Wood carvers using native New Zealand Southern beech and exotic macrocarpa.

• Nelson is a popular visitor destination and year-round attracts both New Zealanders and international tourists.^[19]
• The Saturday Nelson Market is well known and you can buy direct from local artists.^[20]
• Art organizations include the Suter Gallery^[21] and Nelson Arts Festival.^[22]
• The Victory Village community received the 2010 New Zealander of the Year award for Community of the Year.^[23]

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.

Festivals

Music lovers may attend the biennial Nelson School of Music Winter Music Festival, the Adam New Zealand Festival of Chamber Music[6] and the annual Jazz Festival.

The Taste Nelson festival at Founders Heritage Park highlights this region's gastronomy, the Festival of Opportunities features alternative health and lifestyle possibilities,^[24][25] 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

Amber House

• Nelson Cathedral
• Amber House
• Broadgreen House
• Cabragh House
• Chez Eelco
• Founders Park Windmill
• Isel House
• Melrose House
• Nelson Central School Renwick House
• Victorian Rose Pub
• Redwood College (Founders Park)

Museums

The Nelson region houses several museums,.

• The Nelson Provincial Museum houses a collection of locally significant artifacts.
• The World of Wearable Art houses a collection of collectable cars and a collections of works from the Wearable Art Awards.

Parks and Zoo

Nelson has a large number and variety of public parks and reserves maintained at public expense by Nelson City Council^[26].

Natureland Zoological Park is a small zoological facility close to Tahunanui Beach. The facility is popular with 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.^[27] Although the zoo nearly closed in 2008, the Orana Wildlife Trust took over its running instead.^[28]

Sister cities

• Miyazu, Japan
• City of Huangshi, People's Republic of China
• Eureka, California, United States of America

See also

• Nelson Airport

• Richmond

References and notes

External links

• Nelson travel guide from Wikitravel
• Historic images of Nelson from the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Nelson City Council
• Nelson Tasman Tourism
• Nelson history stories and resources
• Victory Village community in Nelson

Regions of New Zealand North Island Northland · Auckland¹ · Waikato · Bay of Plenty · Gisborne¹ · Hawke's Bay · Taranaki · Manawatu-Wanganui · Wellington South Island Tasman¹ · Marlborough¹ · Nelson¹ · West Coast · Canterbury · Otago · Southland ¹ Unitary authorities.