Wellington
Te Upoko o te Ika
The New Zealand Company's first settlement in 1840 and the capital since 1865, which means a great deal of the national story — parliaments, strikes, petitions and protests — has an address here.
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17 events in Wellington between 1821 and 1975
Te Rauparaha’s migration to Kapiti
Ngāti Toa left Kāwhia and migrated south, seizing Kapiti Island as a base that controlled Cook Strait and the trade passing through it.
Kapiti IslandThe Elizabeth affair
A British captain hid Te Rauparaha’s war party aboard his brig to capture the Ngāi Tahu chief Te Maiharanui — an affair that strengthened calls for an official British presence.
Akaroa HarbourThe New Zealand Company’s Tory reaches Port Nicholson
Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s company sent a ship to acquire as much land as it could before the Crown stopped private purchases.
Port NicholsonNew Zealand Company settlers land at Port Nicholson
The Aurora arrived at Petone weeks before the Treaty was signed. Flooding soon pushed the settlement across the harbour to Thorndon.
PetoneHutt Valley and Whanganui campaigns
Fighting over disputed New Zealand Company purchases spread through the Hutt Valley in 1846 and up to Whanganui in 1847. Governor Grey had Te Rauparaha seized in a dawn raid and held without charge.
Hutt ValleyThe Wairarapa earthquake
At an estimated magnitude 8.2, the most powerful earthquake recorded in New Zealand lifted the southern end of the Remutaka Range by more than 6 metres and raised Wellington’s shoreline out of the sea.
WairarapaNew Zealand declines to join Australia
A royal commission weighed federation with the new Commonwealth of Australia and recommended against it. The Australian constitution still leaves the door open.
New Zealand becomes a Dominion
The colony was renamed a Dominion — a change of title that Prime Minister Joseph Ward wanted for its prestige, and which altered almost nothing legally.
WellingtonThe North Island Main Trunk line is completed
Prime Minister Joseph Ward drove the last spike at Manganuioteao, formally opening the railway between Auckland and Wellington.
ManganuioteaoThe Great Strike
Watersiders and miners struck around the country; the government enrolled mounted special constables — farmers and farm workers on horseback — who took back the wharves for strike-breakers.
Wellington waterfrontDepression riots
Unemployed relief workers smashed and looted shops down Queen Street, after earlier trouble in Dunedin. Wellington had its own riot in May.
Queen Street, AucklandStatute of Westminster adopted
Sixteen years after the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, New Zealand adopted it, the last of the Dominions to do so.
WellingtonThe ANZUS treaty is signed
New Zealand, Australia and the United States signed a mutual security pact, giving New Zealand the American security commitment it had sought since the fall of Singapore.
Television broadcasting begins
AKTV2 went to air in Auckland for three hours on its first night, opening with The Adventures of Robin Hood. At first regular programmes went out only on Wednesday nights.
AucklandThe Aramoana begins the roll-on roll-off ferry service
The country’s first roll-on roll-off ferry let cars and rail wagons drive straight on and off, joining the two islands into one freight network.
Cook StraitThe Wahine disaster
The inter-island ferry struck Barrett Reef in a storm with winds over 150 km/h and capsized in the harbour entrance. Fifty-three people died.
Wellington HarbourTreaty of Waitangi Act — the Waitangi Tribunal
A permanent commission of inquiry was created to hear Treaty claims — but only for breaches after 1975. Claims were rare until 1985.
WellingtonMeanwhile, nationally
44 events that reached Wellington along with most of the country. They still shade the map and sit on the timeline above, but they are not Wellington’s own history.
The Musket Wars
Musket-armed war parties reshaped the map of Māori New Zealand. Perhaps 20,000 died and whole districts changed hands before the fighting burned out around 1840.
New Zealand Constitution Act
Representative government arrived, divided into six provinces — and the property franchise excluded almost all Māori, who held land communally.
Settlers outnumber Māori
Around 1858 settlers came to outnumber Māori for the first time. The census counted about 59,000 Europeans; rougher counts put Māori at 56,000 to 60,000, about three-fifths of their number when Cook arrived.
The capital moves to Wellington
Commissioners from the Australian colonies were asked to pick a capital on Cook Strait, and chose Wellington. Auckland protested, and its members pushed for separation.
WellingtonMāori Representation Act
Four Māori seats were created as a temporary measure, giving Māori men the vote twelve years before all Pākehā men got it.
Vogel’s public works and immigration scheme
Julius Vogel borrowed heavily in London — £10 million by 1876 — to build railways, roads and telegraph lines, and to bring in about 100,000 assisted migrants.
The provinces are abolished
The nine provincial governments were abolished, leaving central government as the single legislative authority, with new counties in rural areas while towns carried on unchanged.
Education Act — free, secular and compulsory
A national primary system, free and compulsory for Pākehā children aged 7 to 13, and deliberately secular to avoid conflict between the churches.
The Liberals take power
New Zealand’s first modern political party began 21 years in government, with reforms that led many to see the country as ‘the social laboratory of the world’.
Women win the vote
New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world where women could vote in national elections. Kate Sheppard’s 1893 petitions held nearly 32,000 signatures.
ChristchurchOld-age pensions introduced
One of the first state pensions anywhere — means-tested, character-tested, and closed to Chinese and other Asian residents.
New Zealand troops sent to the South African War
The first overseas war New Zealand fought as a country: about 6,500 men and 8,000 horses, and some 230 deaths.
New Zealand enters the First World War
About 100,000 served overseas from a population of just over a million. Around 18,000 died and there were some 41,000 instances of wounding or illness; no other British dominion lost a higher share of its military-age men.
The Gallipoli landing
New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April. In all, 2,779 died, about one in six of those who served there. The date became the country’s day of remembrance.
Passchendaele — the worst day
An attack on Bellevue Spur in Flanders mud, against uncut wire and without effective artillery support, killed 843 New Zealanders in a few hours.
The influenza pandemic
About 9,000 people died in two months — roughly half as many as died in four years of war. Māori died at more than eight times the Pākehā rate.
The first Labour government
Michael Joseph Savage led Labour to a landslide in 1935 and built the welfare state: state houses, guaranteed dairy prices, a 40-hour week and free hospital care under the Social Security Act.
WellingtonSocial Security Act
Free hospital care, subsidised doctors’ visits and a comprehensive array of benefits, meant to protect New Zealanders ‘from the cradle to the grave’.
New Zealand declares war on Germany
‘Where she goes, we go’ — 140,000 served overseas and nearly 12,000 died, from a population of 1.6 million.
American troops arrive
With Singapore fallen and Japan advancing, more than 150,000 US servicemen were stationed in or visited New Zealand, bringing a considerable clash of cultures.
WellingtonThe great Māori urban migration
Māori went from 26 percent urban in 1945 to nearly 80 percent by 1986 — a migration Te Ara says has been described as the most rapid movement of any population.
Kayforce sent to Korea
About 4,700 New Zealanders served in Kayforce and 1,300 on navy frigates during seven years in Korea; 45 died, 33 of them during the war.
The 1951 waterfront dispute
Lockout and strike ran for 151 days. Emergency regulations made it a crime even to give food to a watersider’s children.
Wellington waterfrontThe 1953–54 royal tour
Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit New Zealand. Perhaps three in four New Zealanders saw her in person.
No Maoris, No Tour
A petition of around 160,000 signatures opposed sending an All Black team to South Africa with Māori players excluded. The tour went ahead anyway.
WellingtonWestern Samoa becomes independent
The first Pacific nation to regain independence in the twentieth century did so from New Zealand, ending more than 47 years of often harsh administration.
Decimal currency day
Pounds, shillings and pence became dollars and cents, promoted by a cartoon character called Mr Dollar.
Ngā Tamatoa formed
A group of young urban Māori activists, many university-educated, began confronting the state over te reo, the Treaty and racism — loudly and publicly.
AucklandThe Māori language petition
Te petihana reo Māori
Ngā Tamatoa and Te Reo Māori Society delivered a 30,000-signature petition asking for te reo to be taught in schools. The date is now Māori Language Day.
Parliament, WellingtonA frigate sails to Mururoa
Norman Kirk sent HMNZS Otago, with a cabinet minister aboard, to sit off the French nuclear test zone in protest.
Devonport Naval BaseThe Māori land march
Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa
Whina Cooper, aged 79, led a month-long hīkoi from Te Hāpua in the far north to Parliament under the slogan ‘not one more acre’.
Te HāpuaThe Erebus disaster
An Air New Zealand sightseeing flight to Antarctica flew into Mount Erebus in whiteout conditions. All 257 people aboard died.
Departed Auckland AirportThe Springbok tour
Fifty-six days that split the country. Protesters occupied the pitch at Hamilton and stopped the game; by the final test, police in riot gear fought crowds outside Eden Park.
Rugby Park, HamiltonRogernomics — the economy is deregulated
A Labour government floated the dollar, removed farm subsidies and tariffs, and sold state assets in a radical programme of market liberalisation.
Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction backdated to 1840
The Tribunal could now investigate Crown breaches all the way back to 1840, and the number of claims rose hugely.
Homosexual Law Reform Act
Sex between men aged 16 and over was decriminalised, after a bitter public debate and sixteen months in Parliament.
Parliament, WellingtonNew Zealand becomes nuclear free
Legislation barred nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from New Zealand’s internal waters. The US had already withdrawn its ANZUS security guarantee.
WellingtonTe reo Māori becomes an official language
Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori
Te reo Māori gained official status and the right to be spoken in court, fifteen years after the language petition and following a Waitangi Tribunal finding that it was a taonga.
The 1987 sharemarket crash
The New Zealand market fell further than almost any other and took years longer to recover, badly burning many small ‘mum and dad’ investors.
AucklandThe Sealord fisheries settlement
The Crown funded a Māori half-share in Sealord and allocated quota, settling commercial fisheries claims nationally in one deal.
New Zealand votes for MMP
By 54 to 46 percent, voters replaced first-past-the-post with mixed-member proportional representation, after decades of falling trust in politicians.
The first MMP election
The first proportional Parliament took two months of negotiation to produce a government, and looked more like the country than any before it.
Jenny Shipley becomes the first woman Prime Minister
Shipley replaced Jim Bolger in a party-room coup. Two years later Helen Clark’s Labour Party won the election, and a woman held the office continuously until 2008.
WellingtonHelen Clark elected Prime Minister
Labour returned in coalition, and Helen Clark became the first woman to take the office by winning an election, closing the century.
Wellington