The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land.
Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future.
Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle pieces
To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.
63 of the 150 Pōkai Whenua GeoTour caches will contain a randomly placed special FTF token (a replica of the Tuia Mātauranga GeoTour commemorative coin). This is yours to keep! If you find more than one, you might consider leaving it for the next person who finds the cache.
Arthur Wakefield and the New Zealand Company
Born in Essex on 19 November 1799, Arthur Wakefield joined the Royal Navy at age eleven. He saw action in the Dutch East Indies, and was part of the force that captured and burnt Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812. He took part in the bombardment of Algiers. In the post-Napoleonic period he was stationed off South America, involved in diplomatic duties during the various wars of independence. He then spent several years off the coast of West Africa as part of the flotilla engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. He also saw duty in the North Atlantic, the West Indies and the Mediterranean Sea. He was eventually given command of his own ship, the steam frigate Rhadamanthus. However, in 1837 he was passed over for promotion, so, recognising that his career was going nowhere, he resigned from the Navy in 1841.
Immediately after Arthur Wakefield left the Navy in 1841, his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield recruited him to join the New Zealand Company, tasking him to select settlers for a new settlement to be named Nelson. Initially to be called Molesworth after radical MP Sir William Molesworth, a supporter of Wakefield, it was renamed Nelson (after the British admiral) when Molesworth showed little interest in leading the colony.
In May 1841 three ships, the Arrow, Whitby, and Will Watch, sailed for New Zealand under the command of Captain Arthur Wakefield with surveyors and labourers to prepare plots for the first settlers (scheduled to follow five months later), reaching Wellington in September 1841. The ships arrived at Blind Bay (today known as Tasman Bay), where the expedition leaders searched for land suitable for the new colony, before settling on the site of present-day Nelson, an area described as marshy land covered with scrub and fern.
By January 1842 the advance guard had built more than 100 huts on the site of the future town in preparation for the arrival of the first settlers. A month later the township was described as having a population of 500, along with bullocks, sheep, pigs and poultry, although the company was yet to identify or purchase any of the rural land for which purchasers had paid.
In the first two years, 18 ships transported more than 3,000 colonists. Captain Wakefield actively worked to promote the orderly development of the colony. Although he seems to have been rather paternal in his attitude to the settlers, he also seems to have been respected and admired.
However, the new colony encountered serious difficulties in subsequent months. The biggest problem was the lack of arable land. The New Zealand Company, and particularly Wakefield's brother, had made extravagant promises to the settlers about the availability of land. Each settler family had been offered 1 acre (4,000 m²) of urban land, 50 acres (200,000 m²) of suburban land, and 150 acres (600,000 m²) of rural land. However, the company had nothing like that amount of land available and the existing owners – Māori – proved very reluctant to sell their land and not inclined to trust the New Zealand Company's promises.
The search for this remaining 200,000 acres (810 km2) would ultimately lead to the Wairau Affray of 17 June 1843, when Arthur Wakefield, 21 other Europeans and four Māori died in a skirmish over land in the Wairau Valley, 25 km from Nelson. Arthur Wakefield claimed to have bought the land from the widow of a whaler who, in turn, had claimed to have bought it from chief Te Rauparaha. The chief denied having sold it. Although settlers in Nelson and Wellington were appalled at the slaughter at Wairau, an investigation by Governor Robert FitzRoy laid the blame squarely at the feet of the New Zealand Company representatives.
This watercolour by Charles Heaphy shows the three ships of the New Zealand Company's expedition to choose a site for its second settlement, Will Watch, Whitby and Arrow, anchored in Nelson Haven. Prefabricated barracks and tents were erected to house New Zealand Company staff who were busy preparing the site for the settlers due to arrive three months later. In the middle distance are the Moutere Hills and beyond them the Tasman Mountains.