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 1822 and 1975
Te Rauparaha’s migration to Kapiti
Ngāti Toa left Kāwhia and fought their way 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 — a scandal that helped convince Britain it needed an official presence.
Akaroa HarbourThe New Zealand Company’s Tory arrives
Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s company sent a ship to buy land before Britain could annex the country, forcing the Crown’s hand.
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 Company purchases spread through the Hutt and up to Whanganui. Governor Grey seized Te Rauparaha from his bed without charge.
Hutt ValleyThe Wairarapa earthquake
At an estimated magnitude 8.2, the largest earthquake in recorded New Zealand history lifted parts of Wellington by more than a metre.
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, linking Auckland and Wellington by rail for the first time.
ManganuioteaoThe Great Strike
Watersiders and miners struck nationwide; the government swore in mounted special constables — farmers on horseback — who cleared the wharves by force.
Wellington waterfrontDepression riots
Relief workers and the unemployed smashed shopfronts down Queen Street. Similar riots hit Dunedin and Wellington within days.
Queen Street, AucklandStatute of Westminster adopted
Sixteen years after it was offered, New Zealand finally took full legal independence from the British Parliament — the last Dominion to do so.
WellingtonThe ANZUS treaty is signed
New Zealand, Australia and the United States signed a mutual security pact, completing the shift from British to American protection.
Television broadcasting begins
AKTV2 broadcast to a few thousand Auckland sets for two hours a night, opening with a British sitcom.
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, which made it nearly useless for a decade.
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
For the first time the European population passed the Māori population — about 59,000 settlers to 56,000 Māori, on a Māori population that had roughly halved since 1800.
The capital moves to Wellington
Australian commissioners were asked to pick a more central capital, and chose Wellington. Auckland was furious and briefly talked of 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 £10 million in London to build railways, roads and telegraph lines, and to bring 100,000 assisted migrants.
The provinces are abolished
Nine provincial governments were swept away and replaced by central government plus counties and boroughs — the shape of local government for the next century.
Education Act — free, secular and compulsory
A national primary system, free and compulsory for children aged 7 to 13, and deliberately secular to sidestep sectarian argument.
The Liberals take power
The world’s first organised political party to hold national office began two decades of reform that made New Zealand a byword for social experiment.
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 third petition carried nearly 32,000 signatures.
WellingtonOld-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: around 6,500 men and 8,000 horses, and 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 41,000 were wounded — proportionally among the heaviest losses of any country.
The Gallipoli landing
New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April. Of about 14,000 who served there, 2,779 died. 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 around 845 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 seven times the Pākehā rate.
The first Labour government
Michael Joseph Savage led Labour to a landslide and built the welfare state: state houses, guaranteed prices, free health care and a 40-hour week.
WellingtonSocial Security Act
Free hospital care, subsidised doctors’ visits and universal benefits from cradle to grave — among the most comprehensive welfare systems in the world at the time.
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, around 100,000 US servicemen passed through New Zealand — a social shock as much as a military one.
WellingtonThe great Māori urban migration
Māori went from about 25 percent urban in 1945 to nearly 80 percent by 1975 — one of the fastest urbanisations recorded anywhere.
Kayforce sent to Korea
About 4,700 New Zealanders served in Korea under the United Nations flag; 45 died. It was the country’s first UN commitment.
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. An estimated three in four New Zealanders saw her in person.
No Maoris, No Tour
A petition of 162,000 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 48 years of often harsh administration.
Decimal currency day
Pounds, shillings and pence became dollars and cents, promoted by a cartoon character called Mr Dollar and a jingle everyone remembers.
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 in the French nuclear test zone in protest.
Devonport Naval BaseThe Māori land march
Te Rōpū o te Matakite
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 — the fastest liberalisation in the developed world.
Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction backdated to 1840
The single amendment that made Treaty settlements possible: the Tribunal could now investigate Crown breaches all the way back to 1840.
Homosexual Law Reform Act
Sex between men over 16 was decriminalised, after a sixteen-month campaign and one of the most vitriolic public debates in modern New Zealand.
Parliament, WellingtonNew Zealand becomes nuclear free
Legislation banned nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ships from New Zealand waters, effectively ending the ANZUS alliance with the United States.
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, wiping out a generation of small 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 — largely as a punishment for a decade of unmandated reform.
The first MMP election
The first proportional Parliament took nine weeks 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 won an election outright, and a woman held the office continuously until 2008.
WellingtonHelen Clark elected Prime Minister
Labour returned in coalition, closing the century with the first woman elected to the office rather than appointed to it.
Wellington