1.
GMV Aramoana
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GMV Aramoana was a roll-on roll-off train ferry operating across Cook Strait between 1962 and 1983. Government Motor Vessel Aramoana was built in 1961 for the New Zealand Railways Department to link the North and South Island rail networks and she was the last vessel built by William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, on the River Clyde. In 1965, she was joined by the similar, but slightly larger, aramoanas two motor lifeboats were lost in the very heavy seas. In 1978 Aramoana was rebuilt at Singapore to carry 800 passengers to meet the increased traffic, in 1983, both Aramoana and Aranui were replaced by the significantly larger MV Arahura and were sold to the Najd Trading & Construction Company of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1984. Aramoana was renamed Captain Nicolas V, and renamed Najd II the following year, Aramoana was laid up at the United Arab Emirates port of Ajman in 1993. In 1994 she left Ajman towed by a tug and was broken up on Alang beach on the shore of the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat state. A combined vehicle deck could carry 70 cars and 30 rail wagons, Aramoana was built to provide a railway service between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, later known as the Interislander. Initially she provided one round trip per day, in her first year of service she carried 207,000 passengers,46,000 cars and 181,000 tonnes of cargo. In 1985 she carried Muslim pilgrims on the Red Sea, list of ships built by William Denny and Brothers
2.
Dunedin
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Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. It is named for the capital of Scotland, generally Anglicised as Edinburgh, Dunedin was the largest New Zealand city by territorial land area until superseded by Auckland on the creation of the Auckland Council in November 2010. Dunedin was the largest city in New Zealand by population from the 1860s until about 1900, the city population at 5 March 2013 was 120,246. The Dunedin urban area lies on the central-eastern coast of Otago, the harbour and hills around Dunedin represent the remnants of an extinct volcano. The city suburbs extend out into the valleys and hills, onto the isthmus of the Otago Peninsula, and along the shores of the Otago Harbour. The citys most important activity in economic terms centres around tertiary education – Dunedin is home to the University of Otago, New Zealands first university, and the Otago Polytechnic. Students account for a proportion of the population,21.6 percent of the citys population was aged between 15 and 24 at the 2006 census, compared to the New Zealand average of 14.2 percent. In 2014 Dunedin was designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature, archaeological evidence shows the first human occupation of New Zealand occurred between AD 1250–1300, with population concentrated along the southeast coast. A camp site at Kaikai Beach, near Long Beach, has dated from about that time. There are numerous sites in what is now Dunedin, several of them large and permanently occupied. The population contracted but expanded again with the evolution of the Classic culture which saw the building of several pā, fortified settlements, notably Pukekura at, there was a settlement in what is now central Dunedin occupied as late as about 1785 but abandoned by 1826. Maori tradition tells first of a people called Kahui Tipua living in the area, then Te Rapuwai, semi-legendary, the next arrivals were Waitaha followed by Kāti Mamoe late in the 16th century and then Kai Tahu who arrived in the mid 17th century. These migration waves have often represented as invasions in European accounts. They were probably migrations like those of the European which incidentally resulted in bloodshed, the sealer John Boultbee recorded in the 1820s that the Kaika Otargo were the oldest and largest in the south. Lieutenant James Cook stood off what is now the coast of Dunedin between 25 February 1770 and 5 March 1770, naming Cape Saunders and Saddle Hill and he reported penguins and seals in the vicinity, which led sealers to visit from the beginning of the 19th century. Permanent European occupation dates from 1831, when the Weller brothers founded their whaling station at Otago, modern Otakou, epidemics badly reduced the Maori population. By the late 1830s the Harbour had become an international whaling port, johnny Jones established a farming settlement and a mission station, the South Islands first, at Waikouaiti in 1840. After inspecting several areas around the eastern coast of the south island, the name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland
3.
South Island
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The South Island or Te Waipounamu is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, the South Island covers 150,437 square kilometres and has a temperate climate. In the early stages of European settlement of the country, the South Island had the majority of the European population, in prose, the two main islands of New Zealand are called the North Island and the South Island, with the definite article. Charcoal drawings can be found on rock shelters in the centre of the South Island. The drawings are estimated to be between 500 and 800 years old, and portray animals, people and fantastic creatures, possibly stylised reptiles, some of the birds pictured are long extinct, including moa and Haasts eagles. They were drawn by early Māori, but by the time Europeans arrived, early inhabitants of the South Island were the Waitaha. They were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest by the Kāti Mamoe in the 16th century, Kāti Mamoe were in turn largely absorbed via marriage and conquest by the Kāi Tahu who migrated south in the 17th century. While today there is no distinct Kāti Mamoe organisation, many Kāi Tahu have Kāti Mamoe links in their whakapapa and, a notable feature of the Moriori culture, an emphasis on pacifism, proved disadvantageous when Māori warriors arrived in the 1830s aboard a chartered European ship. In the early 18th century, Kāi Tahu, a Māori tribe who originated on the east coast of the North Island, There they and Kāti Mamoe fought Ngāi Tara and Rangitāne in the Wairau Valley. Ngāti Māmoe then ceded the east coast regions north of the Clarence River to Kāi Tahu, Kāi Tahu continued to push south, conquering Kaikoura. By the 1730s, Kāi Tahu had settled in Canterbury, including Banks Peninsula, from there they spread further south and into the West Coast. In 1827-1828 Ngāti Toa under the leadership of Te Rauparaha successfully attacked Kāi Tahu at Kaikoura, Ngāti Toa then visited Kaiapoi, ostensibly to trade. When they attacked their hosts, the well-prepared Kāi Tahu killed all the leading Ngāti Toa chiefs except Te Rauparaha, Te Rauparaha returned to his Kapiti Island stronghold. After destroying Te Maiharanuis village they took their captives to Kapiti, John Stewart, though arrested and sent to trial in Sydney as an accomplice to murder, nevertheless escaped conviction. In the summer of 1831–32 Te Rauparaha attacked the Kaiapoi pā, Kaiapoi was engaged in a three-month siege by Te Rauparaha, during which his men successfully sapped the pā. They then attacked Kāi Tahu on Banks Peninsula and took the pā at Onawe, in 1832-33 Kāi Tahu retaliated under the leadership of Tūhawaiki and others, attacking Ngāti Toa at Lake Grassmere. Kāi Tahu prevailed, and killed many Ngāti Toa, although Te Rauparaha again escaped, fighting continued for a year or so, with Kāi Tahu maintaining the upper hand. Ngāti Toa never again made an incursion into Kāi Tahu territory
4.
New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
5.
Bach (New Zealand)
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A bach (/ˈbætʃ/, is a small, often very modest holiday home or beach house in New Zealand. Bach was thought to be short for bachelor pad. An alternative theory for the origin of the word is that bach is the Welsh word for small, baches began to gain popularity in the 1950s as roads improved and the increasing availability of cars allowed for middle-class beach holidays, often to the same beach every year. With yearly return trips being made, baches began to spring up in many family vacation spots and they are almost always small structures, usually made of cheap or recycled material like fibrolite, corrugated iron or used timber. They were influenced by the cabins and sheds of the early settlers and farmers. Other baches used a caravan as the core of the structure, a reconstructed example of a typical bach from the 1950s can be found in National Maritime Museum on Princes Wharf in central Auckland. The period-furnished bach is complemented with an adjacent beach shop with original products from that time, while older baches tend to be fibrolite lean-to structures, modern kit-set structures are becoming popular amongst bach owners. Department of Conservation figures estimate that more than 50,000 baches exist around New Zealand, early baches rarely enjoyed amenities like connections to the water and electricity grid or indoor toilets. They were furnished basically, often with second hand furniture, in more recent times the basic bach has been replaced by the modern holiday house, more substantial, more expensive and usually professionally built. Some bach-dotted beaches in the 1950s have today become suburban areas, as such they are quite prized, even though authorities typically look unfavourably on proposals to convert them into full residential buildings. Some baches whose construction was obviously legally dubious have been dismantled over time
6.
Mole (architecture)
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A mole is a massive structure, usually of stone, used as a pier, breakwater, or a causeway between places separated by water. The word comes from Middle French mole, ultimately from Latin mōlēs, meaning a large mass, especially of rock, a mole may have a wooden structure built on top of it that resembles a wooden pier. The defining feature of a mole, however, is that water cannot freely flow underneath it, the oldest known mole is at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor complex on the Red Sea. By extending the tracks the railroads could get beyond the mud flats. None of the four Bay Area moles survive today, although the causeway portions of each were incorporated into the filling in of large tracts of marshland for harbor and industrial development. The two concrete moles protecting the harbour at Dunkirk played a significant part in the evacuation of British. The harbour had been made unusable by German bombing and it was clear that troops were not going to be taken directly off the beaches fast enough, naval captain W. G. Tennant had been placed ashore to take charge of the navy shore parties and organise the evacuation. Tennant had what proved to be the highly successful idea of using the East Mole to take off troops, the moles had never been designed to dock ships, but despite this, the majority of troops rescued from Dunkirk were taken off in this way. Notable in antiquity was the Heptastadion, a giant mole built in the 3rd century BC in the city of Alexandria, Egypt to join the city to Pharos Island where the Pharos lighthouse stood. The Heptastadion is also believed to have served as an aqueduct while Pharos was inhabited, silting over the years resulted in the former dyke disappearing under several metres of accumulated silt and soil upon which the Ottomans built a town from 1517 onwards. Part of the city of Alexandria is now built on the site. When England acquired the north African city of Tangier as English Tangier in 1661, the English began building a mole to improve the harbour. The mole was planned to be 1,436 feet long and cost £340,000, and the harbour was to be 600 yd long,30 ft deep at low tide. Work began on the mole in August 1663 and continued for years under a succession of Governors. With an improved harbour the town would have played the role that Gibraltar later played in British naval strategy. A crippling blockade by the Jaysh al-Rifi finally forced the English to withdraw from Tangier in 1683, the King gave secret orders to abandon the city, level the fortifications, destroy the harbour, and evacuate the troops. Samuel Pepys was present at the evacuation and wrote an account of it, stone quaysides are sometimes called moles. A well-known example is the Molo in Venice and it is the site of the Doges Palace and two pillars which form a gateway to the sea
7.
Aramoana massacre
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The Aramoana massacre was a spree shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in the small seaside township of Aramoana, northeast of Dunedin, New Zealand. Resident David Gray, after a dispute with his next-door neighbour, killed 13 people, including local police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie. After a careful house-by-house search the next day, police officers led by the Anti-Terrorist Squad located Gray and it is the deadliest criminal shooting in New Zealand history. The massacre began on 13 November at 7,30 p. m. when Gray confronted neighbour Garry Holden about one of Holdens dogs wandering onto his property. Nearby were three girls, Holdens two daughters, Chiquita and Jasmine, and his girlfriend Julie Ann Brysons adopted daughter, Rewa. The girls ran into Holdens house as Gray walked onto Holdens property and he quickly found Chiquita and shot her once in the chest with a Squires and Bingham. 22-calibre semi-automatic sporting rifle, the bullet lodging in her abdomen. The wounded girl fled past her fathers body to Brysons nearby house, Bryson, realising that Rewa and Jasmine were still in the Holden house, drove her van there with Chiquita in an attempt to save the girls. Gray shot at the van as it passed the house, which was by then ablaze, Gray started shooting indiscriminately, targeting a utility vehicle full of locals who had seen the Holden house burning and stopped to help. He first shot Vanessa Percy several times in the back as she ran down the street in terror and he then turned to the three children. He killed the two boys, Leo Wilson and Dion Percy, the boys sister, Stacey, was critically injured by a bullet to her abdomen, but survived. Ross Percy, the father, who had been driving them home after a day fishing when they saw the fire, was shot in the head. Gray then entered the home of Tim Jamieson, killing him and another elderly local, the next victim was James Dickson, who was looking for his dog. Eva Helen Dickson, James mother, and neighbour Chris Cole went into the road to see what the noise was, Gray shot at both of them, wounding Cole who was in a phone booth calling the police and forcing Mrs Dickson to dive for cover. Mrs Dickson, who had recently had a hip replacement and was unable to walk without assistance, pulled herself along on her using her arms and feet in a ditch to get inside. She then crawled back to Cole to tell him help was coming, by this stage, it was getting dark and the dispatcher advised her to stay inside. Mrs Dickson later received the George Medal for bravery, help arrived too late for Cole, who died in the hospital. The first armed police officer to arrive was Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, officer in charge of Port Chalmers police station and he came armed with a Smith & Wesson Model 10 police revolver. New Zealand police do not usually carry firearms, Guthrie enlisted the help of Constable Russell Anderson, who had arrived a short time earlier with the fire service
8.
Otago Harbour
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Otago Harbour is the natural harbour of Dunedin, New Zealand, consisting of a long, much-indented stretch of generally navigable water separating the Otago Peninsula from the mainland. They join at its southwest end,21 km from the harbour mouth and it is home to Dunedins deep water port facilities on its western shores in the suburb of Port Chalmers. The harbour was formed from the remnants of a giant shield volcano. The remains of this violent origin can be seen in the basalt of the surrounding hills, the last eruptive phase ended some ten million years ago, leaving the prominent peak of Mount Cargill. Substantial container port facilities exist at Port Chalmers,9 km along the shore from the harbour mouth. A channel along the side of the harbour is regularly dredged, allowing vessels with a draught of 12.5 m to Port Chalmers. New Zealands frozen meat export trade was inaugurated at Port Chalmers in 1882, the dredging of this channel, the Victoria Channel, was a major undertaking for the settlement of Dunedin in the 19th century. The eastern side of the harbour is shallow, with large sandbanks exposed at low tide, two islands form a line between Port Chalmers and Portobello in the lower harbour—Goat Island and Quarantine Island/Kamau Taurua. A smaller island known as Pudding Island lies close to the Peninsula shore, Portobello is home to one of New Zealands leading marine research establishments, the Portobello Marine Laboratory, a department of the University of Otago. This lies at the edge on the tip of a small arm of the Otago Peninsula. Near the mouth of the lies the township of Aramoana, infamous for a massacre of 13 people by a gunman, David Gray. This is also the site twice projected for New Zealands second aluminium smelter, the proposals, in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, were abandoned after major public protest. The harbour is tidal, shallow and seldom rough and for that reason is popular for sports such as yachting and windsurfing. A significant area at the head of the harbour has been reclaimed since the founding of Dunedin, smaller portions have also been reclaimed at a number of places around the harbour, including Port Chalmers, Macandrew Bay, and Broad Bay. As a part of the famous Otago Peninsula, the water is known for various rare wildlife. The area is the home of many species of wading birds, other bird species which visit the harbour include two species of penguins, little penguin and famous yellow-eyed penguins. Taiaroa Head, at the tip of the Otago Peninsula, is home to a colony of northern royal albatrosses, the bay and peninsula provides a critical habitat for Hookers sea lions and New Zealand fur seal. Southern elephant and leopard seals are occasional visitors into the harbor, in total, four species of pinnipeds, and at least nine or more species of cetaceans are known to inhabit or migrate through the area
