Photography - Historical | |
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New Zealand - Stewart Island - Stewart Island is the southernmost permanently settled area in New Zealand. Oban township in Half Moon Bay is the administrative headquarters of Stewart Island County. Oban is the holiday centre for the island. #602968 Stewart Island - The original Māori name, Te Punga o Te Waka a Maui, positions Stewart Island firmly at the heart of Māori mythology. Translated as The Anchor Stone of Maui’s Canoe, it refers to the part played by the island in the legend of Maui and his crew, who from their canoe, the South Island, caught and raised the great fish, the North Island. - Rakiura is the more commonly known and used Māori name. It is usually translated as Glowing Skies, possibly a reference to the sunsets for which it is famous or for the aurora australis, the southern lights that are a phenomenon of southern latitudes. - For some, Rakiura is the abbreviated version of Te Rakiura a Te Rakitamau, translated as "great blush of Rakitamau", in reference to the latter's embarrassment when refused the hand in marriage of not one, but two daughters, of an island chief. According to Māori legend, a chief on the island named Te Rakitamau was married to a young woman who became terminally ill and implored him to marry her cousin after she died. Te Rakitamau paddled across Te Moana Tapokopoko a Tawhiki (Foveaux Strait) to the South Island where the cousin lived, only to discover she had recently married. He blushed with embarrassment; so the island was called Te Ura o Te Rakitamau. - Captain James Cook and his crew were the first Europeans to sight the island from the Endeavour in March 1770. As the ship sailed south around it, Cook recorded its insularity and described the strait that separates it from the South Island. It is argued by Margaret Cameron-Ash that he decided to hide it. She points out that he was operating during the period of intense Anglo-French rivalry that filled the twelve years between Britain's success in the Seven Years' War and France's revanche in the American Revolutionary War. He recalled the Admiralty's verbal instructions to conceal strategically important discoveries that could become security risks, such as off-shore islands from which operations could be mounted by a hostile power. Cook knew he had to hide Foveaux Strait and depict Stewart Island as a peninsula. Consequently, he altered his journal entry and redrew his chart of New Zealand showing the two southerly islands joined by an isthmus. - The strait was first charted by Owen Folger Smith, a New Yorker who had been in Sydney Harbour with Eber Bunker from whom he probably learned of the eastern seal fishery. Smith charted the strait in the whaleboat of the sealing brig Union (out of New York) in 1804 and on his 1806 chart it was called Smith's Straits. - The island received its English name in honour of William W. Stewart. He was first officer on the Pegasus which visited in 1809 and he charted the large south-eastern harbour that now bears the ship's name (Port Pegasus), and determined the northern points of the island, proving that it was an island. In 1824 he initiated plans in England to establish a timber, flax and trading settlement at Stewart Island and sailed there in 1826, with it becoming known as Stewart's Island. - In 1841, the island was established as one of the three Provinces of New Zealand, and was named New Leinster. However, the province existed on paper only and was abolished after only five years. With the passing of the New Zealand Constitution Act 1846, the province became part of New Munster, which entirely included the South Island.[8] When New Munster was abolished in 1853, Stewart Island became part of Otago Province until 1861, when Southland Province split from Otago. In 1876, the provinces were abolished altogether. - For most of the twentieth century, "Stewart Island" was the official name, and that is still in common use by most New Zealanders. The name was officially altered to Stewart Island/Rakiura by the Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, one of many such changes under the Ngāi Tahu treaty settlement. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Island) Whites Pictorial Reference of New Zealand: Representative Airviews of New Zealand Cities and Boroughs - Whites Pictorial Reference has been produced to tell a new story - a modern story. Aerial photography has been utilised to show where New Zealanders live and the countryside from which comes their wealth. Most important, it also illustrates most vividly the Dominion's growing cities and towns, but perhaps more to the point it shows that there is still plenty of room for further development... Author: White Leo (compiled) Click the link provided at the top to purchase the book through the MAD on New Zealand Shop - Supporting New Zealand Authors and Artists