Rugby union
Rugby union known in most of the world as rugby, is a contact team sport which originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is between two teams of 15 players using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field with H-shaped goalposts at each end. Rugby union is a popular sport around the world, played by male and female players of all ages. In 2014, there were more than 6 million people playing worldwide, of whom 2.36 million were registered players. World Rugby called the International Rugby Football Board and the International Rugby Board, has been the governing body for rugby union since 1886, has 101 countries as full members and 18 associate members. In 1845, the first football laws were written by Rugby School pupils. An amateur sport, in 1995 restrictions on payments to players were removed, making the game professional at the highest level for the first time.
Rugby union spread from the Home Nations of Great Britain and Ireland and was absorbed by many of the countries associated with the British Empire. Early exponents of the sport included New Zealand, South Africa and France. Countries that have adopted rugby union as their de facto national sport include Fiji, Madagascar, New Zealand and Tonga. International matches have taken place since 1871 when the first game took place between Scotland and England at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh; the Rugby World Cup, first held in 1987, takes place every four years. The Six Nations Championship in Europe and The Rugby Championship in the Southern Hemisphere are other major international competitions, held annually. National club or provincial competitions include the Premiership in England, the Top 14 in France, the Mitre 10 Cup in New Zealand, the National Rugby Championship in Australia, the Currie Cup in South Africa. Other transnational club competitions include the Pro14 in Europe and South Africa, the European Rugby Champions Cup in Europe, Super Rugby, in the Southern Hemisphere and Japan.
The origin of rugby football is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby School in 1823, when William Webb Ellis is said to have picked up the ball and run with it. Although the evidence for the story is doubtful, it was immortalised at the school with a plaque unveiled in 1895. Despite the doubtful evidence, the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after Webb Ellis. Rugby football stems from the form of game played at Rugby School, which former pupils introduced to their university. Old Rugbeian Albert Pell, a student at Cambridge, is credited with having formed the first "football" team. During this early period different schools used different rules, with former pupils from Rugby and Eton attempting to carry their preferred rules through to their universities. A significant event in the early development of rugby football was the production of the first written laws of the game at Rugby School in 1845, followed by the Cambridge Rules drawn up in 1848. Other important events include the Blackheath Club's decision to leave the Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871.
The code was known as "rugby football". Despite the sport's full name of rugby union, it is known as rugby throughout most of the world; the first rugby football international was played on 27 March 1871 between Scotland and England in Edinburgh. Scotland won the game 1-0. By 1881 both Ireland and Wales had representative teams, in 1883 the first international competition, the Home Nations Championship had begun. 1883 is the year of the first rugby sevens tournament, the Melrose Sevens, still held annually. Two important overseas tours took place in 1888: a British Isles team visited Australia and New Zealand—although a private venture, it laid the foundations for future British and Irish Lions tours. During the early history of rugby union, a time before commercial air travel, teams from different continents met; the first two notable tours both took place in 1888—the British Isles team touring New Zealand and Australia, followed by the New Zealand team touring Europe. Traditionally the most prestigious tours were the Southern Hemisphere countries of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa making a tour of a Northern Hemisphere, the return tours made by a joint British and Irish team.
Tours would last for months, due to the number of games undertaken. Touring international sides would play Test matches against international opponents, including national and county sides in the case of Northern Hemisphere rugby, or provincial/state sides in the case of Southern Hemisphere rugby. Between 1905 and 1908, all three major Southern Hemisphere rugby countries sent their first touring teams to the Northern Hemisphere: New Zealand in 1905, followed by South Africa in 1906 and Australia in 1908. All three teams brought new styles of play, fitness levels and tactics, were far more successful than critics had expected; the New Zealand 1905 touri
Squash (sport)
Squash is a ball sport played by two or four players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball. The players must alternate in striking the ball with their racquet and hit the ball onto the playable surfaces of the four walls of the court; the game was called squash rackets, a reference to the "squashable" soft ball used in the game. The governing body of Squash, the World Squash Federation is recognised by the International Olympic Committee, but the sport is not part of the Olympic Games, despite a number of applications. Supporters continue to lobby for its incorporation in a future Olympic program; the use of stringed rackets is shared with real tennis, which dates from the late sixteenth century, though is more directly descended from the game of rackets from England. In "rackets", instead of hitting over a net as in sports such as tennis, players hit a squeezable ball against walls. Squash was invented in Harrow School out of the older game rackets around 1830 before the game spread to other schools becoming an international sport.
The first courts built at this school were rather dangerous because they were near water pipes, buttresses and ledges. The school soon built four outside courts. Natural rubber was the material of choice for the ball. Students modified their rackets to have a smaller reach to play in these cramped conditions; the rackets have changed in a similar way to those used in tennis. Squash rackets used to be made out of laminated timber. In the 1980s, construction shifted to lighter materials with small additions of components like Kevlar and titanium. Natural "gut" strings were replaced with synthetic strings. In the 19th century the game increased in popularity with various schools and private citizens building squash courts, but with no set dimensions; the first squash court in North America appeared at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire in 1884. In 1904 in Philadelphia, the earliest national association of squash in the world was formed as the United States Squash rackets Association, now known as U.
S. Squash. In April 1907 the Tennis, rackets & Fives Association set up a sub committee to set standards for squash; the sport soon formed, combining the three sports together called “Squash”. In 1912, the RMS Titanic had a squash court in first class; the 1st-Class Squash Court was situated on G-Deck and the Spectators Viewing Gallery was on the deck above on F-Deck. To use the Court cost 50 cents in 1912. Passengers could use the court for 1 hour, it was not until 1923 that the Royal Automobile Club hosted a meeting to further discuss the rules and regulations and another five years elapsed before the Squash rackets Association was formed to set standards for squash in Great Britain. Standard rackets are governed by the rules of the game. Traditionally they were made with a small strung area using natural gut strings. After a rule change in the mid-1980s, they are now always made of composite materials or metals with synthetic strings. Modern rackets have maximum dimensions of 686 mm long and 215 mm wide, with a maximum strung area of 500 square centimetres.
The permitted maximum weight is 255 grams. Squash balls are between 39.5 and 40.5 mm in diameter, have a weight of 23 to 25 grams. They are made with two pieces of rubber compound, glued together to form a hollow sphere and buffed to a matte finish. Different balls are provided for varying temperature and atmospheric conditions and standards of play: more experienced players use slow balls that have less bounce than those used by less experienced players. Depending on its specific rubber composition, a squash ball has the property that it bounces more at higher temperatures. Squash balls must be hit dozens of times to warm them up at the beginning of a session. Small colored dots on the ball indicate its dynamic level, thus the standard of play for which it is suited; the recognized speed colors indicating the degree of dynamism are: Some ball manufacturers such as Dunlop use a different method of grading balls based on experience. They still have the equivalent dot rating, but are named to help choose a ball, appropriate for one's skill level.
The four different ball types are Intro, Progress and Pro. The "double-yellow dot" ball, introduced in 2000, is the competition standard, replacing the earlier "yellow-dot" ball. There is an "orange dot" ball for use at high altitudes. Players wear comfortable sports clothing. In competition, men wear shorts and a T-shirt, tank top or a polo shirt. Women wear a skirt or skort and a T-shirt or a tank top, or a sports dress; the National Institutes of Health recommends wearing goggles with polycarbonate lenses. Many squash venues mandate the use of eye protection and some association rules require that all juniors and doubles players must wear eye protection; the squash court is a playing surface surrounded by four walls. The court surface contains a front line separating the front and back of the court and a half court line, separating the left and right hand sides of the back portion of the court, creating three'boxes': the front half, the back left quarter and the back right quarter. Both the back two boxes
Auckland CBD
The Auckland central business district called the city centre by Auckland Council, is the geographical and economic heart of the Auckland metropolitan area. The area is made up of the city's largest concentration of businesses; the CBD is one of the most densely developed places in New Zealand, with many commercial and some residential developments packed into a space of only 433 hectares. Bounded by several major motorways and by the harbour coastline in the north, it is surrounded further out by suburban areas. Located on the northern shore of a narrow isthmus, the CBD extends from the Auckland waterfront on the Waitematā Harbour southwards along Queen Street and a number of other parallel-running streets; the CBD is considered to be bounded by the main motorways that surround all non-harbour sides, with State Highway 1 forming the southern and western boundaries, State Highway 16 / Grafton Gully forming the eastern boundary. The CBD has an area of 433 hectares, similar to the Sydney CBD, twice as large as the CBDs of Wellington and Christchurch.
The CBD is to a substantial part located on reclaimed land of the Waitematā Harbour. For a closer discussion of this aspect, see the Commercial Bay and Auckland waterfront articles; the town of Auckland was created in 1840 with the first European colonisation of the area, marked by an official ceremony on the now non-existent Point Britomart. The initial centre of the new town was focused on what is now the corner of Shortland and Queen Streets, at the shoreline of Commercial Bay. From their junction, the main wharf ran north off the end of Queen Street, with Shortland Street leading up to Fort Britomart and Government House, around which many of the richer people built houses. Shortland Street tended to be the location of the more important businesses and most of the'luxury' shops of the mid 19th century; the 1850s onwards saw an increasing number of businesses, retail, locating further south along Queen Street, which still to this day forms the'spine' of the area. In 1841, one year after the European founding, the census counted 2,000 people, with "mechanics" the largest group at 250, other groups of note being 150 agricultural labourers, 100 shopkeepers, 100 domestic servants, 125 "upper class members".
During the remainder of the 19th century, Commercial Bay was progressively filled in, allowing a northward extension of Queen Street and the creation of Fort Street, Customs Street, Quay Street. The part of Queen Street north of Customs Street is today referred to informally as Lower Queen Street; as well as being the location of a great many multi-storey warehouses the Lower Queen Street area contained many manufacturing businesses, though many of these started to move to other areas such as Freeman's Bay and Parnell if they took up a lot of room or created noise or pollution. Up until the middle of the 20th century the centre of town still contained a large number of small factories including clothing manufacturers; the relocation of industries to outlying suburbs became pronounced in the 1950s due to incentives made by council planners to create industrial areas in Penrose and Rosebank Road and thus rid the inner city area of noise and heavy traffic. This was mirrored by the development of suburban shopping malls which enticed retailers to vacate the inner city as well.
Attempts by the council to halt this pattern by constructing numerous public car parking buildings met with varying success. The rise of suburban supermarket and mall shopping, created in places such as Pakuranga from 1965 onwards has been added to by the appearance of Big Box retailers in places such as Botany and the North Shore. Residential numbers in the inner city were declining in the 20th century from as early as the 1920s. In the two-mile zone surrounding the CBD, there were 70,000 people in 1926, with only around 50,000 in 1966 - a change made more marked by the development of the remainder of Auckland's population, which grew more than fourfold in the same timeframe. In the 1990s, only a token population of around 1,400 was still residing within the CBD, though this was to grow with a boom of new apartment buildings around the turn of the millennium. Around 24,000 apartment units exist as of 2010; the CBD of Auckland has been the leading centre of New Zealand's business and economic development for nearly two centuries.
The area of today's CBD was the site of the original European settlement of Auckland, oriented along the coastline and Queen Street, in a southward direction. From those origins, it has grown progressively, become much more densely built-up, now being an area of high-rise buildings used for commercial and retail uses, it has the highest concentration of arts and higher education institutions and venues in the country. Some commentators have noted that the recent decades have not been kind to the aesthetics and the community values of the inner city; the demolishing of many older buildings the prerequisite for low-quality or uninspired new office and residential developments, is considered by them to be due to a combination of developers uninterested in long-term outcomes and Council planning direction being too weak. In an attempt to reverse the decline of aesthetics in the CBD, previous Auckland City Councils and the current unitary Auckland Council have instigated several urban regeneration schemes.
These include the recent redevelopment of Aotea Square in 2010 and the upgrade of Saint Patrick's Square in 2009. The area east o
New Zealand State Highway 1
State Highway 1 is the longest and most significant road in the New Zealand road network, running the length of both main islands. It appears on road maps as SH 1 and on road signs as a white number 1 on a red shield, but it has the official designations SH 1N in the North Island, SH 1S in the South Island. SH 1 is 2,033 kilometres long, 952 km in the South Island. For the majority of its length it is a two-lane single carriageway, with at-grade intersections and property accesses, in both rural and urban areas; these sections have some passing lanes. Around 220 km of SH 1 is of motorway or expressway standard as of October 2017: 191 km in the North Island and 28 km in the South Island. Current road construction will see an extra 102 km in the North Island and 6 km in the South Island upgraded to motorway or expressway standard by 2022. SH 1 starts at Cape Reinga, at the northwestern tip of the Aupouri Peninsula, since April 2010 has been sealed for its entire length. From Waitiki Landing south of Cape Reinga, SH 1 travels down the central-eastern side of the peninsula to Kaitaia, New Zealand's northernmost town, before turning south-east across the Northland Peninsula on to Kawakawa in the Bay of Islands, south to the city of Whangarei, the largest urban area in Northland.
SH 1 skirts the south-western Whangarei Harbour, nearing the coast at Ruakaka, before proceeding down to wind through the Brynderwyn Hills before approaching the upper reaches of the Kaipara Harbour. The highway crosses into the Auckland Region, passes through Wellsford and Warkworth, again heading for the east coast. Near Puhoi, on the Hibiscus Coast, SH 1 widens to a four-lane motorway known as the Auckland Northern Motorway; the first 7.5 km of the motorway is an automated toll road. At Orewa, the motorway becomes toll-free, crossing farmland to the North Shore of Auckland; the road crosses through suburbs to the Waitematā Harbour, which it follows before crossing it by the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The motorway comes off the bridge into Auckland's city centre, forms its western boundary as SH 1 proceeds to the Central Motorway Junction. At this junction, SH 1 becomes the Auckland Southern Motorway, after sweeping around the southern end of central Auckland, proceeds in a south-easterly direction.
The motorway continues in a broadly southeast direction across the Auckland isthmus through Manukau and Papakura to the top of the Bombay Hills, just short of the Auckland/Waikato boundary. At Bombay, SH 1 becomes a four-lane dual-carriageway expressway; the expressway takes the highway down the Bombay Hills to Mercer, where SH 1 meets the Waikato River, which it broadly follows for the next 220 km. The Waikato Expressway temporarily ends at Longswamp and becomes a three-laned dual carriageway, resuming at Te Kauwhata before reverting to single carriageway just south of Ohinewai. SH 1 runs as a single carriageway through Huntly to Taupiri; the expressway ends in north-western Hamilton. The highway bypasses the city centre to the west, before crossing to the east side and proceeding south-east out of the city; the expressway resumes at Tamahere, bypassing Cambridge to the north before reverting to a single carriageway east of the town. The highway continues eastward to the town of Tirau, where it turns south to pass through Putaruru and Tokoroa and the surrounding exotic pine plantation forest area.
At Wairakei, SH 1 takes an eastern route to bypass Taupo and meet the Lake Taupo shoreline south of the town near the airport. SH 1 follows the eastern shore of the lake for 50 km to Turangi, at the southern end of the lake. Turning southwards again, SH 1 leaves Turangi and ascends onto the North Island Volcanic Plateau, passing through the fringes of the Tongariro National Park and into the Rangipo Desert, passing the volcanoes of Ruapehu and Tongariro; the road between Rangipo and Waiouru is known as the Desert Road. SH 1 enters the Manawatu-Wanganui Region, descends through an army training area to the end of the Desert Road at Waiouru. From Waiouru, the highway follows tributaries of the Rangitikei River through Taihape to meet the main river at Utiku, it follows the western bank of the Rangitikei through Ohingaiti and Hunterville to Bulls. At Bulls, SH 1 turns southeast to cross the river, turning southwest again 5 km down the road at Sanson. SH 1 crosses the Manawatu Plain, it passes before reaching the end of the plain at Levin.
From Levin, SH 1 follows the narrowing western coastal plain southwards. The highway crosses before passing through Otaki. At Peka Peka, SH 1 widens to a four-lane dual carriageway known as the Kapiti Expressway; the highway bypasses the Kapiti conurbation of Waikanae and Raumati, narrowing again to a two-lane single carriageway south of Mackays Crossing and passing through Paekakariki. Between Paekakariki and Pukerua Bay, SH 1 and the North Island Main Trunk rail line travel along a narrow strip of land between the hills and the sea; the Centennial Highway, as it is known, is a narrow two-lane road, accident prone until a centreline wire rope crash barrier was installed. Travelling through Pukerua Bay, the road becomes dual carriageway once more to Plimmerton, narrowing to single carriageway through the northern suburbs of Porirua to Paremata. At Paremata, SH 1 resumes as dual carriageway along the edge of the Porirua Harbour to Porirua city centre. At Porirua, the highwa
Tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually against a single opponent or between two teams of two players each. Each player uses a tennis racket, strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over or around a net and into the opponent's court; the object of the game is to maneuver the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. The player, unable to return the ball will not gain a point, while the opposite player will. Tennis is played at all levels of society and at all ages; the sport can be played by anyone. The modern game of tennis originated in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century as lawn tennis, it had close connections both to various field games such as croquet and bowls as well as to the older racket sport today called real tennis. During most of the 19th century, in fact, the term tennis referred to real tennis, not lawn tennis; the rules of modern tennis have changed little since the 1890s. Two exceptions are that from 1908 to 1961 the server had to keep one foot on the ground at all times, the adoption of the tiebreak in the 1970s.
A recent addition to professional tennis has been the adoption of electronic review technology coupled with a point-challenge system, which allows a player to contest the line call of a point, a system known as Hawk-Eye. Tennis is played by millions of recreational players and is a popular worldwide spectator sport; the four Grand Slam tournaments are popular: the Australian Open played on hard courts, the French Open played on red clay courts, Wimbledon played on grass courts, the US Open played on hard courts. Historians believe that the game's ancient origin lay in 12th century northern France, where a ball was struck with the palm of the hand. Louis X of France was a keen player of jeu de paume, which evolved into real tennis, became notable as the first person to construct indoor tennis courts in the modern style. Louis was unhappy with playing tennis outdoors and accordingly had indoor, enclosed courts made in Paris "around the end of the 13th century". In due course this design spread across royal palaces all over Europe.
In June 1316 at Vincennes, Val-de-Marne and following a exhausting game, Louis drank a large quantity of cooled wine and subsequently died of either pneumonia or pleurisy, although there was suspicion of poisoning. Because of the contemporary accounts of his death, Louis X is history's first tennis player known by name. Another of the early enthusiasts of the game was King Charles V of France, who had a court set up at the Louvre Palace, it wasn't until the 16th century that rackets came into use, the game began to be called "tennis", from the French term tenez, which can be translated as "hold!", "receive!" or "take!", an interjection used as a call from the server to his opponent. It was popular in England and France, although the game was only played indoors where the ball could be hit off the wall. Henry VIII of England was a big fan of this game, now known as real tennis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, as real tennis declined, new racket sports emerged in England. Further, the patenting of the first lawn mower in 1830, in Britain, is believed to have been the catalyst, for the preparation of modern-style grass courts, sporting ovals, playing fields, greens, etc.
This in turn led to the codification of modern rules for many sports, including lawn tennis, most football codes, lawn bowls and others. Between 1859 and 1865 Harry Gem, a solicitor and his friend Augurio Perera developed a game that combined elements of racquets and the Basque ball game pelota, which they played on Perera's croquet lawn in Birmingham, United Kingdom. In 1872, along with two local doctors, they founded the world's first tennis club on Avenue Road, Leamington Spa; this is. After Leamington, the second club to take up the game of lawn tennis appears to have been the Edgbaston Archery and Croquet Society in Birmingham. In Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister reveals that on December 8, 1874, British army officer Walter Clopton Wingfield wrote to Harry Gem, commenting that he had been experimenting with his version of lawn tennis “for a year and a half”. In December 1873, Wingfield designed and patented a game which he called sphairistikè, was soon known as "sticky" – for the amusement of guests at a garden party on his friend's estate of Nantclwyd Hall, in Llanelidan, Wales.
According to R. D. C. Evans, turfgrass agronomist, "Sports historians all agree that deserves much of the credit for the development of modern tennis." According to Honor Godfrey, museum curator at Wimbledon, Wingfield "popularized this game enormously. He produced a boxed set which included a net, rackets, balls for playing the game – and most you had his rules, he was terrific at marketing and he sent his game all over the world. He had good connections with the clergy, the law profession, the aristocracy and he sent thousands of sets out in the first year or so, in 1874." The world's oldest annual tennis tournament took place at Leamington Lawn Tennis Club in Birmingham in 1874. This was three years before the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club would hold its first championships at Wimbledon, in 1877; the first Championships culminated a significant debate on. In the U. S. in 1874 Mary Ewing Outerbridge, a young socialite, returned from Bermuda with a sphairistikè set. She became fascin
Queen Victoria
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, she inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held little direct political power. Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria avoided public appearances.
As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political and military change within the United Kingdom, was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire, she was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, initiated the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III; until 1817, Edward's niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children.
In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower; the Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace, she was baptised Alexandrina after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of Kent's eldest brother, the Prince Regent. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, the Prince Regent; the Prince Regent had no surviving children, the Duke of York had no children. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarence's legitimate daughters died as infants.
The first of these was Princess Charlotte, born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820. A week her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George IV. Victoria was third in line to the throne after York and Clarence. Clarence's second daughter was Princess Elizabeth of Clarence who lived for twelve weeks from 10 December 1820 to 4 March 1821 and, while Elizabeth lived, Victoria was fourth in line; the Duke of York died in 1827. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, Clarence, as William IV, Victoria became heir presumptive; the Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided. Victoria described her childhood as "rather melancholy".
Her mother was protective, Victoria was raised isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable, was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them; the Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash, her lessons included French, German and Latin, but she spoke only English at home. In 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to oth
Kaipara Harbour
Kaipara Harbour is a large enclosed harbour estuary complex on the north western side of the North Island of New Zealand. The northern part of the harbour is administered by the Kaipara District and the southern part is administered by the Auckland Council; the local Māori tribe is Ngāti Whātua. By area, the Kaipara Harbour is one of the largest harbours in the world, it covers 947 square kilometres at high tide, with 409 square kilometres exposed as mudflats and sandflats at low tide. According to Māori tradition, the name Kaipara had its origins back in the 15th century when the Arawa chief, travelled to the Kaipara to visit his nephew at Pouto. At a feast, he was so impressed with the cooked root of the para fern, that he gave the name Kai-para to the district. "Kai" means food in the Māori language. The harbour extends for some 60 kilometres from north to south. Several large arms extend into the interior of the peninsula at the northeast of the harbour, one of them ending near the town of Maungaturoto, only ten kilometres from the Pacific Ocean coast.
The harbour has extensive catchments feeding five rivers and over a hundred streams, includes large estuaries formed by the Wairoa, Oruawharo and Kaipara. A number of small islands off the shoreline are connected to the mainland by mudflats at low tide; the Kaipara Harbour is broad and shallow, as it is formed from a system of drowned river valleys. The harbour shoreline is convoluted by the entry of many rivers and streams, is about 800 kilometres long, being the drainage catchment for about 640,000 ha of land; the harbour entrance is a channel to the Tasman Sea. It narrows to a width of 6 kilometres, is over 50 metres deep in parts. On average, Kaipara tides fall 2.10 metres. Spring tidal flows reach 9 km/h in the entrance channel and move 1,990 million cubic metres per tidal movement or 7,960 million cubic metres daily; the harbour head is a hostile place. Big waves from the Tasman Sea break over large sandbanks about five metres below the surface, two to five kilometres from the shore; the sand in these sandbanks comes from the Waikato River.
Sand discharged from this river is transported northward by the prevailing coastal currents. Some of this sand is carried into the Kaipara harbour entrance, but cycles out again and continues moving northwards along the west coast; the southern sandbanks at the entrance are accumulating and releasing this sand. These treacherous sandbanks shift and change position, are known locally as the graveyard; the graveyard is responsible for more shipwrecks than any other place in New Zealand, has claimed at least 43 vessels—some say as many as 110. For this reason, a lighthouse was built in 1884 on the northern arm of the entrance, it was closed in the mid 1950s. The structure still exists and was renovated in 1982-84. In Māori mythology, the ocean-going canoe Māhuhu voyaged from Hawaiki to New Zealand and overturned on the northern side of the entrance, it was commanded by the chief Rongomai. His body was eaten by araara, his descendants to this day will not eat that type of fish; the first European shipwreck was the Aurora, a 550-ton barque, in 1840, the most recent was the yacht Aosky in 1994.
Today, the remains of wrecks still become visible under certain tidal and sand conditions. The Kaipara is used today for shipping, no large settlements lie close to its shores, although many small communities lie along its coastline; the Kaipara Harbour is a productive marine ecosystem, with diverse ecotones. There are tidal reaches, intertidal mudflats and sandflats, freshwater swamps, maritime rushes, reed beds and coastal scrublands; the area includes 125 square kilometres of mangrove forest. With subtidal fringes of seagrass; the Kaipara is a migratory bird habitat of international significance. Forty–two coastal species are known, up to 50,000 birds are common. Rare species use the harbour for feeding during summer before returning to the Northern Hemisphere to breed, such as the bar-tailed godwit, lesser knot, turnstone. Threatened or endangered native species, such as the North Island fernbird, fairy tern, Australasian bittern, banded rail, grey‑faced petrels, banded and NZ dotterels, South Island pied oystercatcher, pied stilt, wrybill are present.
Significant local populations of black swan and grey duck breed in the area. Land habitats adjacent to the harbour support some rare botanical species, including native orchids, the king fern, the endangered kaka beak. In particular, Papakanui Spit on the south head of the harbour entrance, a mobile sandspit, is important as a breeding and roosting area for the New Zealand dotterel and the fairy tern, it has areas of pingao. The spit was an important habitat for the Caspian tern; the birds have moved to other parts of Kaipara Harbour due to human disturbance. An air weapons range used by the New Zealand Defence Force is a short distance south of the spit. Māori settlements and marae have been scattered around the harbour margins for hundreds of years; the waterways of the Kaipara provided, still provide, Māori with resources and a ready means of moving between marae. Today most marae are associated with Te Taoū and Te Uri-o-Hau; these sub-tribes both descend from the chief Haumoewhārangi who settled on the north end of the Kaipara entrance at Poutō.
He was killed in an argument about kūmara. His widow Waihekeao developed a partnership with Kāwharu. Kāwharu led several destructive campaigns around Kaipara; the descendants of Wa
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