Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson is a city and unitary authority on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the oldest city in the South Island and the second-oldest settled city in the country; it was established in 1841 and became a city by British royal charter in 1858.
Nelson City is bordered to the west and south-west by the Tasman District and to the north-east, east and south-east by the Marlborough District. The Nelson urban area has a population of, making it New Zealand's 15th most populous urban area.
Nelson is well known for its thriving local arts and crafts scene; each year, the city hosts events popular with locals and tourists alike, such as the Nelson Arts Festival.
Naming
Nelson was named in honour of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who defeated both the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Many roads and public areas around the city are named after people and ships associated with that battle. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as Nelsonians; Trafalgar Street is its main shopping axis.Nelson's Māori name, Whakatū, means 'construct', 'raise', or 'establish'.
In an article to The Colonist newspaper on 16 July 1867, Francis Stevens described Nelson as "The Naples of the Southern Hemisphere". Today, Nelson is nicknamed "Sunny Nelson" due to its high sunshine hours per year and the "Top of the South" because of its geographic location.
In New Zealand Sign Language, the name is signed by putting the index and middle fingers together which are raised to the nose until the fingertips touch the nose, then move the hand forward so that the fingers point slightly forward away from oneself.
History
Māori settlement
Settlement of Nelson began about 700 years ago by Māori. There is evidence that the earliest settlements in New Zealand were around the Nelson–Marlborough regions. Some of the earliest recorded iwi in the Nelson district are Ngāti Hāwea, Ngāti Wairangi, Waitaha and Kāti Māmoe. Waitaha people developed the land around the Waimea Gardens, are believed to have been the first people to quarry argillite in around Nelson. They also developed much of the Waimea Gardens complex – more than on the Waimea Plains near Nelson. In the early 1600s, Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri displaced other te Tau Ihu Māori, becoming the dominant tribe in the area until the early 1800s. Raids from northern tribes in the 1820s, led by Te Rauparaha and his Ngāti Toa, soon decimated the local population and quickly displaced them.Today there are eight mutually recognised tribes of the northwestern region: Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Rangitāne, Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama and Te Atiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui.
New Zealand Company
Planning
The New Zealand Company in London planned the settlement of Nelson. They intended to buy from the Māori some of land, which they planned to divide into one thousand lots and sell to intending settlers. The company earmarked profits to finance the free passage of artisans and labourers, with 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, and land was surveyed by Frederick Tuckett.Three ships, the Arrow, Whitby, and Will Watch, sailed from London, the expedition commanded by 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, less than one third of the area required by the Company plans.
The Company secured land, which was not clearly defined, from the Māori for £800: it 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 first four immigrant ships – Fifeshire, Mary-Ann, Lord Auckland and Lloyds – arrived three months later, they found the town already laid out with streets, some wooden houses, tents and rough sheds. The town was laid out on a grid plan. Within 18 months, the company had sent out 18 ships with 1,052 men, 872 women and 1,384 children. However, fewer than ninety of the settlers had the capital to start as landowners.
Cultural and religious immigrants
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 and Neudorf. These were mostly Lutheran Protestants with a small number of Bavarian Catholics.In 1892, the New Zealand Church Missionary Society was formed in a Nelson church hall.
File:Lutheran Church of Upper Moutere, February 2007.jpg |320px|thumb|center| St Paul's Lutheran Church, Upper Moutere
Problems with land
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. The labourers had to accept a cut in their wages. Organised immigration ceased. By the end of 1843, artisans and labourers began leaving Nelson; by 1846, some 25% 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 and 4 Māori died. The subsequent Government inquiry exonerated the Māori and found that the Nelson settlers had no legitimate claim to any land outside Tasman Bay. Public fears of a Māori attack on Nelson led to the formation of the Nelson Battalion of Militia in 1845.
City status
Nelson township was managed by the Nelson Provincial Council through a Board of Works constituted by the Provincial Government under the Nelson Improvement Act 1856 until 1874. It was proclaimed a Bishop's See and city under letters patent by Queen Victoria on 27 September 1858, the second New Zealand city proclaimed in this manner after Christchurch. Nelson only had some 5,000 residents at this time. Edmund Hobhouse was the first Bishop. The Municipal Corporations Act 1876 stated that Nelson was constituted a city on 30 March 1874.Nelson Province
From 1853 until 1876, when provincial governments were abolished, Nelson was the capital of Nelson Province. The province itself was much larger than present-day Nelson City and included all of the present-day Buller, Kaikōura, Marlborough, Nelson, and Tasman, as well as the Grey District north of the Grey River and the Hurunui District north of the Hurunui River. The Marlborough Province split from Nelson Province in October 1859.Provincial anniversary
is a public holiday observed in the northern half of the South Island of New Zealand, being the area's provincial anniversary day. It is observed throughout the historic Nelson Province, even though the provinces of New Zealand were abolished in 1876. The modern area of observation includes all of Nelson City and includes all of the present-day Buller, Kaikōura, Marlborough, Tasman districts as well as the Grey District north of the Grey River / Māwheranui and the Hurunui District north of the Hurunui River. The holiday usually falls on the Monday closest to 1 February, the anniversary of the arrival of the first New Zealand Company boat, the Fifeshire, on 1 February 1842.Anniversary celebrations in the early years featured a sailing regatta, horse racing, running races, shooting and ploughing matches. In 1892, the Nelson Jubilee Celebration featured an official week-long programme with church services, sports, concerts, a ball and a grand display of fireworks.
Time gun
In 1858, the Nelson Provincial Council erected a time gun at the spot on Brittania Heights where Captain Wakefield erected his flagpole in 1841. The gun was fired each Saturday at noon to give the correct time. The gun is now preserved as a historical relic and the Songer Tree marks the site on Signal Hill of the original flagpole.Geography
The Nelson-Tasman area comprises two unitary authorities – Nelson City, administered by the Nelson City Council, and Tasman District, administered by the Tasman District Council, based in Richmond to the southwest. It is between Marlborough, another unitary authority, to the east, and the West Coast Regional Council to the west. The Nelson City territorial authority area is small, at only.For at least two decades, there has been talk about amalgamating Nelson City and the Tasman District to streamline and render more financially economical the existing co-operation between the two councils, exemplified by the jointly owned Port Nelson and the jointly funded Nelson Regional Development Agency. However, an official poll conducted in April 2012 showed nearly three-quarters of those who voted in Tasman were opposed to the proposal, while a majority of Nelson voters were in favour.
Nelson has beaches and a sheltered harbour. The harbour entrance is protected by a Boulder Bank, a natural, 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 in 1842 proved the difficulty of the passage. 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 Tāhunanui slump in 1892 increased the effects of the tide on Nelson city's beach, Tāhunanui, and removed sediment. This meant the popular beach and adjoining car park were being eroded 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.