Portal:New Zealand/Selected picture/2006
See Previous pictures for earlier selected pictures.
Weeks in 2006[edit]
- Week 1
Backdropped by a colourful Earth, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang, both STS-116 mission specialists, participate in the mission's first of three planned sessions of extravehicular activity as construction resumes on the International Space Station. The landmasses depicted are the South Island (left) and North Island (right) of New Zealand.
See also: Image:River Avon Christchurch.jpg
- Week 2
Picton is a town in the Marlborough region of New Zealand It is near the head of Queen Charlotte Sound near the north-east corner of the South Island. Inter-island ferries to and from Wellington arrive and depart here by way of the Marlborough Sounds.
See also: Image:AucklandMuseum edit gobeirne.jpg
- Week 3
Waimate is a town and district in the South Island of New Zealand. It is 40 km south of Timaru in south Canterbury, 20 km north of the Waitaki River.
Waimate is well-known locally for its population of wallabies. These marsupials were introduced from Australia and now live in the wild in the countryside surrounding the town.
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- Week 4
Tongariro National Park is the oldest National Park in New Zealand. It is located in the central North Island of New Zealand. It has been acknowledged by UNESCO as one of the 24 mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Sites.
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- Week 5
The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university. It is the South Island's largest employer and claims to have the world's 2nd longest continuously running annual student revue (the Capping Show) and New Zealand's oldest ballet company (the Selwyn Ballet).
Founded in 1869, the university opened in July 1871. Its motto is "Sapere aude" ("Dare to be wise"). (The University of New Zealand subsequently adopted the same motto.) The University of Otago Students' Association answers this with its own motto, "Audeamus" ("let us dare").
- Week 6
Arthur's Pass is an alpine crossing of the Southern Alps of the South Island of New Zealand. It is at a height of 920 metres above sea level, and marks part of the boundary between Westland and Canterbury, 140 kilometres from Christchurch and 95 kilometres from Greymouth. The pass lies in a saddle between the valleys of the Otira River, a tributary of the Taramakau in the west and the Bealey River in the east.
- Week 7
Larnach Castle (often incorrectly referred to as "Larnach's Castle"), is an imposing mansion on the ridge of Otago Peninsula within the limits of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. It is one of only two castles in New Zealand, the other of which (Cargill's Castle, also in Dunedin) is now a ruin. For this reason it is often referred as New Zealand's only castle. It is also one of New Zealand's few "stately houses".
- Week 8
Whitianga is the main settlement of Mercury Bay on the North Island of New Zealand. The town has a deepwater harbour. Its harbours has made Whitianga the home of the Mercury Bay Boating club and the departure point for big game fishing enthusiasts. Many charter boats ply the waters of Mercury Bay for fishing or scenic cruising.
- Week 9
Taipa-Mangonui is the name given to a string of small resort settlements in the far north of New Zealand's North Auckland Peninsula, close to the base of the Aupouri Peninsula. The resorts of Taipa, Cable Bay, Cooper's Beach, and Mangonui, all of which lie along the coast of Doubtless Bay, are so close together that they have run together to form one larger settlement with a combined population of 1587 (2001 census).
- Week 10
Papatoetoe railway station is located on the Eastern and Southern Lines of the Auckland Railway Network. The old station building was moved by the Papatoetoe Railway Station Preservation Trust to a new location at the corner of Station Road, Shirley Road, Tavern Lane & St George Street. Parts of this building dated back to 1875. A new Station was constructed on the present site.
- Week 11
The Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings, designed in 1858 by Benjamin Mountfort, is a stone building today regarded as one of Mountfort's most important works. From the exterior, the building appears austere, as was much of Mountfort's early work: a central tower dominates two flanking gabled wings in the Gothic revival style.
- Week 12
The Great Moss Swamp lies in the Maniototo, close to the former gold mining route of the Old Dunstan Road, 60 kilometres to the northwest of Dunedin city centre. The swamp lies in a depression between the southwest edge of the Rock and Pillar Range and the northeastern corner of the Lammermoor Range.
- Week 13
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Punakaiki is a small community on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, between Westport and Greymouth. The community lies on the edge of the Paparoa National Park. The Pancake Rocks is a popular tourist attraction at Dolomite Point south of the main village, consisting of a heavily eroded dolomite area where the sea bursts though a number of vertical blowholes during high tides.
- Week 14
Russell, formerly known as Kororareka, was the first permanent European settlement and sea port in New Zealand. It is situated in the Bay of Islands, in the far north of the North Island. The car ferry across the Bay of Islands, the main tourist access to Russell, runs between Okiato and Opua.
- Week 15
The Weka or woodhen (Gallirallus australis) is an endemic bird of New Zealand. It is a member of the rail family. There are four subspecies. Wekas are sturdy brown birds, about the size of a chicken. They are omnivores, feeding mainly on invertebrates and fruit, but are also willing to eat seeds, small vertebrates such as rats, birds and lizards. They are also known to scavenge carrion.
- Week 16
The Purakaunui Falls are a cascading multi-tiered waterfall on the Purakaunui River in The Catlins in the southern South Island of New Zealand. A highly distinctive cataract, it is an iconic image for southeastern New Zealand. The falls are in an isolated area surrounded by native bush in a 500 hectare scenic reserve, and fall 20 metres in three tiers.
- Week 17
Foveaux Strait is the strait between the South Island and Stewart Island/Rakiura of New Zealand. It is named after Joseph Foveaux who was Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales at the time. On the north side of the strait is the harbour of Bluff. On the south side is Stewart Island/Rakiura. Foveaux Strait is right in the middle of the Roaring Forties, and is very rarely this calm.
- Week 18
Tasman Lake has formed as the Tasman Glacier retreated over the last 20-30 years. Tour boats ply its grey waters, giving visitors a close encounter with the lake's many icebergs and a view of the glacier's snout. The glacier's barren lateral and terminal moraines line the rest of the lake's coastline. Aoraki/Mount Cook (at far left) overlooks the lake.
- Week 19
Lake Hawea is located in the Central Otago region of New Zealand, at an altitude of 348 metres. It covers an area of some 141 km² and is, at its deepest, 392 metres deep. Its name is Māori, and is thought to be named after a local tribe though the exact meaning is uncertain. In 1958 the lake was raised artificially by 20 metres to store more water for increased hydroelectric power generation.
- Week 20
The Mueller Glacier is a 13 kilometre long glacier flowing through Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. It lies to the south of Mount Cook, high in the Southern Alps and flows north. Its meltwaters eventually join the Tasman River. The glacier was named after German-Australian botanist and explorer Baron von Mueller.
- Week 21
Henry Edmund (Harry) Holland (10 June 1868 - 8 October 1933) was a New Zealand politician and unionist. After the 1919 elections, the first contested by the Labour party as a united bloc, Holland narrowly defeated the moderate James McCombs for the parliamentary leadership of the party, becoming Labour's first leader in the modern sense.
- Week 22
The Cathedral Caves are a series of sea caves on the Catlins Coast in New Zealand. They are one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area. The two main caves join together within the cliff, and one has a 30 m (100 ft) high ceiling. Access to the caves from the road crosses private land, and attracts a user fee. The caves are only accessible 2 hours either side of low tide.
- Week 23
The Sky Tower is a tower located on the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets in the central business district of Auckland, New Zealand. It is 328 metres tall, as measured from ground level to the top of the mast, making it the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. Interestingly the architect publicly disassociated himself from the design.
- Week 24
Lyttelton is a port town located on the north shore of Lyttelton Harbour on Banks Peninsula, 12 km by road from Christchurch. The town is linked to Christchurch by railway and road tunnels through the Port Hills. At 1900 m long, the Lyttelton Road Tunnel (opened in 1964) is the country's longest road tunnel, and the railway tunnel is the country's oldest, dating from 1867.
- Week 25
Port Chalmers is the main port of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Technically a suburb since local body reorganisation in the 1980s, it is still regarded by people throughout Dunedin as a separate town. It has a population of 3,000. Port Chalmers lies ten kilometres inside Otago Harbour, some 15 kilometres northeast from Dunedin's city centre.
- Week 26
Te Kuiti is a small town in the south of the Waikato region of the North Island of New Zealand. It lies at the junction of State Highways 3 and 30 and on the North Island Main Trunk Railway, 70 km south of Hamilton. The town promotes itself as the sheep-shearing capital of the world and is host to the annual New Zealand National Shearing Championships.
- Week 27
The Anglican cathedral of Christ Church in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand was built in the second half of the 19th century. It is located in the centre of the city, surrounded by the plaza of Cathedral Square. It is the cathedral seat of the Bishop of Christchurch. The cathedral spire reaches to 63 metres above Cathedral Square.
Severely damaged in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The Cathedral is being dismantled for a possible rebuild.
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- Week 28
The Bush is a term used for rural, undeveloped land or country areas in many places. In New Zealand, the term has a more specific connotation of isolated, heavily forested countryside, as opposed to the open coastal plains and tussock-covered high country. Bush always refers to areas of native trees rather than exotic forests.
- Week 29
Muriwai - also called Muriwai Beach - is a coastal community approximately 17km West of Kumeu, 42 kilometres Northwest of Auckland city, at the southern end of an unbroken 50 kilometre stretch of beach which extends up the Tasman Sea coast to the mouth of the Kaipara Harbour. It is unique because of its black sand, caused by the iron content derived from the ancient volcanoes in the area.
- Week 30
The University of Canterbury has a 760,000 square metre site at Ilam, a suburb of Christchurch about 7 km from the city centre. There are five libraries, with the Central Library housed in the tallest building on campus, the 11-storey James Hight building. Also of note is the Rutherford Building, which houses the Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry departments.
- Week 31
Often incorrectly called The Maungatuas or The Maungatua Range, Maungatua is a prominent ridge which dominates the skyline of the Taieri Plains in Otago, New Zealand. Rising 900 metres above the floodplain of the Taieri River, directly to the west of Dunedin's airport at Momona, it can be clearly seen from much of Dunedin's urban area, 35 kilometres to the east.
- Week 32
John Ballance (March 27, 1839 – 27 April 1893), served as Premier of New Zealand at the end of the 19th century, and was the founder of the Liberal Party (the country's first organized political party). Ballance always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle. He has been described as "unassuming and unpretentious" , and was known to be quiet, polite, and extremely patient.
- Week 33
The Whangaehu River is a large river in central North Island of New Zealand. Its headwaters are the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu on the central plateau, and it flows into the Tasman Sea eight kilometres southeast of Wanganui. The sudden collapse of part of the Ruapehu crater wall on December 24, 1953 led to New Zealand's worst railway accident, the Tangiwai disaster.
- Week 34
Mount Ngauruhoe is an active stratovolcano in New Zealand. It is the youngest vent and highest peak in the Tongariro volcanic complex on the Central Plateau of the North Island, and first erupted about 2,500 years ago. Although seen by most as a volcano in its own right, it is technically a secondary cone of Mount Tongariro.
- Week 35
Lawyer's Head is a prominent landmark on the coast of Otago, New Zealand. Located within the city of Dunedin, this rocky headland juts into the Pacific Ocean at the eastern end of the city's main beach, Saint Kilda Beach. It is named for the likeness of the cliff face to the profile of a lawyer in traditional legal wig.
- Week 36
List of caves of New Zealand gives some of the more well known caves and caverns in New Zealand. Not all caves have an official name as set by the New Zealand Geographic Board. The national caving association maintains maps of all known surveyed caves and the name is generally allocated by the group who first discovered the cave.
- Week 37
The Tautuku Peninsula is a rocky headland on the south coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located 25 km (15 mi) east of Waikawa, at the western end of a bay (Tautuku Bay) in the area known as the Catlins. There are now numerous cribs (holiday cottages) on the peninsula, but these are mainly reached by four-wheel drive or tractor as no roads reach the peninsula.
- Week 38
Craters of the Moon is a small but highly active geothermal field covering about 50,000 m², close to State Highway 1 a few kilometres north of Taupo, New Zealand. There are numerous steam vents, constantly shifting, collapsing and reforming, giving the whole area desolate appearance, hence the name. There are also some bubbling thermal mud pools.
- Week 39
Kerikeri, the largest town in the Bay of Islands on the North Island of New Zealand, is a popular tourist destination about three hours drive north of Auckland, and 80 kilometres north of Whangarei. It is often described as the Cradle Of The Nation, being the site of the first permanent mission station in the country, and it has some of the most historic buildings in the country.
- Week 40
Old Saint Paul's is a former cathedral in the Diocese of Wellington of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. It is an example of 19th-century Gothic Revival architecture adapted to colonial conditions and materials. It is located at 34 Mulgrave Street, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand, close to the New Zealand Parliament.
- Week 41
In 1878, when Wiremu Hōterene Taipari married a woman of the Ngāti Awa tribe of Whakatāne, Ngāti Awa carvers arrived at Thames and built a meeting house at Pārāwai as a wedding gift for the couple. The house, named Hotunui in honour of an important Ngāti Maru ancestor, now stands in the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
- Week 42
The Beehive is the common name for the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings in Wellington. Credit for the design is usually given to British architect Sir Basil Spence, who made a rough sketch on the back of a dinner napkin in 1964 while dining with Keith Holyoake. The building was subsequently drafted and constructed by government departments and completed in 1981.
- Week 43
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The magpie moth is an arctiid moth (Nyctemera annulata) found in New Zealand. It is a medium sized moth. The adults have a wing span of 35 – 45 mm, and are black with white patches. They flutter away slowly when disturbed. Some species in other countries are also known as Magpie moths.
- Week 44
Te Henga (Bethells Beach) is a coastal community located in the north of the North Island, New Zealand. The Māori name Te Henga, meaning sand, originally applied to a wide area of the lower Waitakere River valley, but in 1976 the New Zealand Geographic Board changed the name of the beach from Bethells Beach to Te Henga (Bethells Beach).
- Week 45
The Maungatautari Restoration Project is the largest ecological restoration project in New Zealand, involving the total removal of all pest mammals. It is located just south of Lake Karapiro in the Waikato region of the North Island and comprises 33.63 square kilometres of forested volcanic peak surrounded by pastoral farmland, embraced on two sides by the Waikato River.
- Week 46
After an earlier wooden Parliament House was destroyed by fire in 1907, a competition to find a replacement design was announced by Prime Minister Joseph Ward in February 1911. Out of the 37 entries, the winning design was by Government Architect John Campbell. As another of Campbell's entries won fourth place, the actual design is a combination of both entries.
- Week 47
The West Coast region reaches from Kahurangi Point in the north to Awarua Point in the south, a distance of 600 km. Much of the land is rugged, although there are coastal plains around which much of the population resides. The land is very scenic, with wild coastlines, mountains, and a very high proportion of native bush, much of it native temperate rain forest.
- Week 48
Abel Tasman National Park is located at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. It consists of an area of forested hill country to the north of the valleys of the Takaka and Riwaka Rivers, and is bounded to the north by the waters of Golden Bay and Tasman Bay. Tramping, kayaking, camping and sightseeing are popular activities in the park.
- Week 49
Ruakaka is a small township in the North of New Zealand approximately 30 kilometres south of Whangarei. Originally a small beachside community, Ruakaka has seen development due to its proximity to the expansion of the country's only oil refinery at Marsden Point during the 1980s.
- Week 50
Hanmer Springs is a small town in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located inland, 65 kilometres southwest from Kaikoura, on a minor road 10 kilometres north of State Highway 7, the northern route between Christchurch and the West Coast via Lewis Pass.
- Week 51
The Coromandel Peninsula lies in the North Island of New Zealand. It extends 85 kilometres north from the western end of the Bay of Plenty, forming a natural barrier to protect the Hauraki Gulf and the Firth of Thames in the west from the Pacific Ocean to the east. Hilly, forested and rugged, it is a popular holiday destination. The area is also popular with alternative lifestylers.
- Week 52
Fiordland National Park occupies the southwest corner of the South Island of New Zealand, an area known as Fiordland. It is the largest national park in New Zealand (12,500 km²), and a major part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site. It is popular for tramping, alpine climbing and tourism and the popular attraction of Milford Sound is within the park boundary.