Tasman
Te Tai-o-Aorere
Golden Bay, where Abel Tasman's crew and local Māori met violently in 1642, and afterwards a quiet district of gold workings, hops and orchards.
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3 events in Tasman between 1842 and 1997
Nelson settlement established
The New Zealand Company’s second settlement was founded on a site with far less flat land than it had sold to its buyers.
NelsonBrightwater’s chicken power
A Brightwater mill owner lit the district’s first electric streetlights, and local memory has it that roosting hens switched Brightwater’s lamps on and off.
BrightwaterThe Ngāi Tahu settlement
A grievance first formally stated in 1849 was finally settled: $170 million, an apology, and Aoraki/Mount Cook, vested in the iwi and gifted back to the nation, over land covering most of the South Island.
Ōnuku Marae, AkaroaMeanwhile, nationally
2 events that reached Tasman along with most of the country. They still shade the map and sit on the timeline above, but they are not Tasman’s own history.
New Zealand connected to the world by cable
A submarine cable from Sydney landed near Nelson, linking New Zealand to London by telegraph and cutting communication with Europe from months to hours.
Cable Bay (Wakapuaka), near NelsonErnest Rutherford wins the Nobel Prize
Born at Spring Grove near Brightwater and raised partly on a family farm, Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, then discovered the atomic nucleus and split the atom.
Brightwater, Nelson