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Cook Strait
Cook Strait ( mi, Te Moana-o-Raukawa) separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, A H, Ed. (1966''Cook Strait''from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, updated 18-Sep-2007. Note: This is the distance between the North Island and Arapaoa Island; some sources give a slightly larger reading of around , that between the North Island and the South Island. and is considered one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world. Regular ferry services run across the strait between Picton in the Marlborough Sounds and Wellington. The strait is named after James Cook, the first European commander to sail through it, in 1770. In Māori it is named ''Te Moana-o-Raukawa'', which means ''The Sea of Raukawa''. Raukawa is a type of woody shrub native to New Zealand. History Approximately 18,000 years ago during the Last Gla ...
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New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering . New Zealand is about east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland. The islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight and record New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs ...
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Māori Mythology
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori tradition concerns more folkloric legends often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in to explain the overall origin of the Māori and their connections to the world which they lived in. Māori had yet to invent a writing system before European contact, beginning in 1769, so they had no method to permanently record their histories, traditions, or mythologies. They relied on oral retellings memorised from generation to generation. The three forms of expression prominent in Māori and Polynesian oral literature are genealogical recital, poetry, and narrative prose. Experts in these subjects were broadly known as . The rituals, beliefs, and ge ...
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Nelson, New Zealand
(Let him, who has earned it, bear the palm) , image_map = Nelson CC.PNG , mapsize = 200px , map_caption = , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = New Zealand , subdivision_type1 = Unitary authority , subdivision_name1 = Nelson City , subdivision_type2 = , subdivision_name2 = , established_title1 = Settled by Europeans , established_date1 = 1841 , founder = Arthur Wakefield , named_for = Horatio Nelson , parts_type = Suburbs , p1 = Nelson Central , p2 = Annesbrook , p3 = Atawhai , p4 = Beachville , p5 = Bishopdale , p6 = Britannia Heights , p7 = Enner Gly ...
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Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha (c.1768 – 27 November 1849) was a Māori rangatira (chief) and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars, receiving the nickname "the Napoleon of the South". He was influential in the original sale of land to the New Zealand Company and was a participant in the Wairau Affray in Marlborough. Early days From 1807, muskets became the weapon of choice and partly changed the character of tribal warfare. In 1819 Te Rauparaha joined with a large war party of Ngāpuhi led by Tāmati Wāka Nene; they probably reached Cook Strait before turning back. Migration Over the next few years the intertribal fighting intensified, and by 1822 Ngāti Toa and related tribes were being forced out of their land around Kāwhia after years of fighting with various Waikato tribes often led by Te Wherowhero. Led by Te Rauparaha they began a fighting retreat or migration southwards (this migration was called Te-Heke-Tahu-Tahu-ahi), conquering hapu ...
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Allen & Unwin
George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It went on to become one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and to establish an Australian subsidiary in 1976. In 1990, Allen & Unwin was sold to HarperCollins and the Australian branch was the subject of a management buy-out. George Allen & Unwin in the UK George Allen & Sons was established in 1871 by George Allen, with the backing of John Ruskin, becoming George Allen & Co. Ltd. in 1911 and then George Allen & Unwin in 1914 as a result of Stanley Unwin's purchase of a controlling interest. Unwin's son Rayner S. Unwin and nephew Philip helped run the company, which published the works of Bertrand Russell, Arthur Waley, Roald Dahl, Lancelot Hogben, and Thor Heyerdahl. It became well known as J. R. R. Tolkien's publisher, some time after publishing the popular children's fantasy novel ''The Hobbit'' in 1937, and its ...
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Whitcombe And Tombs Limited
Whitcoulls is a major New Zealand book, stationery, gift, games & toy retail chain. Formerly known as Whitcombe & Tombs, it has 54 stores nationally. Whitcombe & Tombs was founded in 1888, and Coulls Somerville Wilkie in 1871. The companies merged in 1971 to form Whitcoulls. Coulls Somerville Wilkie Coulls Somerville Wilkie had its origins in Coull Bros, founded in Dunedin in 1872 by brothers Thomas, William, and James Francis Coull. A printing and publishing company, it operated from Crawford Street to the south of the city centre.. Through merger and partnership, its name changed several times before becoming Coulls, Culling & Co. Ltd., a name under which it traded from 1902 until 1922.Business series 2a: Manufacturing
" ''Friends of the Hocken Bulletin 53, April 2006. Retrieved 20 ...
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Kapiti Coast
The Kapiti Coast District is a local government district of the Wellington Region in the lower North Island of New Zealand, 50 km north of Wellington City. The district is named after Kapiti Island, a prominent island offshore. The population of the district is concentrated in the chain of coastal settlements along State Highway One: Ōtaki, Te Horo, Waikanae, Paraparaumu, Raumati Beach, Raumati South, and Paekākāriki. Paraparaumu is the most populous of these towns and the commercial and administrative centre. Much of the rural land is given over to horticulture; market gardens are common along the highway between the settlements. The area available for agriculture and settlement is narrow and coastal. Much of the eastern part of the district is within the Tararua Forest Park, which covers the rugged Tararua Range, with peaks rising to over 1500 m. Geography The Kapiti Coast District stretches from Ōtaki in the north to Paekākāriki in the south. It incl ...
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Whaler
A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Japan, still dedicates a single factory ship for the industry. The vessels used by aboriginal whaling communities are much smaller and are used for various purposes over the course of the year. The ''whale catcher'' was developed during the age of steam, and then driven by diesel engines throughout much of the twentieth century. It was designed with a harpoon gun mounted at its bow and was fast enough to chase and catch rorquals such as the fin whale. At first, whale catchers either brought the whales they killed to a whaling station, a settlement ashore where the carcasses could be processed, or to its factory ship anchored in a sheltered bay or inlet. With the later development of the slipway at the ship's stern, whale catchers were able ...
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Whale
Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), and Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale). Odontocetes include the Monodontidae (beluga ...
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Bight (geography)
In geography, a bight is a concave bend or curvature in a coastline, river or other geographical feature (such as a cliff), or it may refer to a very open bay formed by such a feature. Such bays are typically broad, open, shallow and only slightly recessed. Description Bights are distinguished from sounds, in that sounds are much deeper. Traditionally, explorers defined a bight as a bay that could be sailed out of on a single tack in a square-rigged sailing vessel, regardless of the direction of the wind (typically meaning the apex of the bight is less than 25 degrees from the edges). The term is derived from Old English ''byht'' (“bend, angle, corner; bay, bight”) with German ''Bucht'' and Danish ''bugt'' as cognates, both meaning " bay". Bight is not etymologically related to "bite" (Old English ''bītan''). Notable examples * Bay of Campeche * Bay of Plenty * Bight of Benin * Bight of Biafra or Bight of Bonny * Canterbury Bight * German Bight or Heligoland Bight * ...
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Abel Tasman
Abel Janszoon Tasman (; 160310 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach New Zealand and the islands of Fiji and Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). Origins and early life Abel Tasman was born around 1603 in Lutjegast, a small village in the province of Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands. The oldest available source mentioning him is dated 27 December 1631 when, as a seafarer living in Amsterdam, the 28-year-old became engaged to marry 21-year-old Jannetje Tjaers, of Palmstraat in the Jordaan district of the city. Relocation to the Dutch East Indies Employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Tasman sailed from Texel (Netherland) to Batavia, now Jakarta, in 1633 taking the southern Brouwer Route. During this period, Tasman took part in a voyage to Seram Island; the locals had sold spices to othe ...
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Pātea
Patea ( ) is the third-largest town in South Taranaki District, New Zealand. It is on the western bank of the Pātea River, 61 kilometres north-west of Whanganui on . Hāwera is 27 km to the north-west, and Waverley, Taranaki, Waverley 17 km to the east. The Pātea River flows through the town from the north-east and into the South Taranaki Bight. History and culture Pre-European history Patea is the traditional final place where some Māori people, Māori led by Turi (Māori ancestor), Turi aboard the ''Aotea (canoe), Aotea'' settled, after it was beached at the Aotea Harbour. European settlement Patea, called Carlyle or Carlyle Beach for a time by European settlers, was originally nearer the Pātea River mouth than the present town. During the New Zealand Wars Patea was an important military settlement. Duncan Alexander Cameron, General Cameron's force arrived at the river mouth on 15 January 1865 and constructed redoubts on both sides of the river.South Taranaki ...
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