TAMAKI-MAKAU-RAU AKA AUCKLAND, THE CITY OF SAILS

Tina Picotes and the Ferry Building, Auckland

Today, Tonyi Tamaki has explained the history of Auckland to her friends. Auckland is the city with the biggestnumber of inhabitants although it is not the political capital.

In Auckland South, they have rested near a lighthouse where The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her interesting First Certificate Language Practice manual (Grammar 3).

More info: Future I, II, III & IV

Auckland is a city in New Zealand's North Island. Auckland is the largest urban area in the country, with an urban population of around 1,534,700. It is located in the Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, resulting in a total population of 1,657,200. 

A diverse and multicultural city, Auckland is home to the largest Polynesian population in the world.

The Māori-language name for Auckland is Tāmaki or Tāmaki-makau-rau, meaning Tāmaki with a hundred lovers, in reference to the desirability of its fertile land at the hub of waterways in all directions. It has also been called Ākarana, a transliteration of the English name.

The Auckland urban area, as defined by Statistics New Zealand, ranges to Waiwera in the north, Kumeu in the northwest, and Runciman in the south. Auckland lies between the Hauraki Gulf of the Pacific Ocean to the east, the low Hunua Ranges to the south-east, the Manukau Harbour to the south-west, and the Waitakere Ranges and smaller ranges to the west and north-west. The surrounding hills are covered in rainforest and the landscape is dotted with dozens of dormant volcanic cones. 

More information: Auckland Council

The central part of the urban area occupies a narrow isthmus between the Manukau Harbour on the Tasman Sea and the Waitematā Harbour on the Pacific Ocean. Auckland is one of the few cities in the world to have a harbour on each of two separate major bodies of water.

The Grandma & Claire Fontaine at the port

The isthmus on which Auckland resides was first settled around 1350 and was valued for its rich and fertile land.

The Māori population in the area is estimated to have peaked at 20,000 before the arrival of Europeans.

After a British colony was established in 1840, William Hobson, then Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, chose the area as his new capital. He named the area for George Eden, Earl of Auckland, British First Lord of the Admiralty. It was replaced as the capital in 1865 by Wellington, but immigration to the new city stayed strong, and it has remained the country's most populous urban area. Today, Auckland's central business district is the major financial centre of New Zealand.

More information: Auckland

Landmarks such as the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Harbour Bridge, the Sky Tower, and many museums, parks, restaurants, and theatres are among the city's significant tourist attractions. Auckland Airport handles around one million international passengers a month. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, Auckland is ranked third on the 2016 Mercer Quality of Living Survey, making it one of the most liveable cities.

Tonyi Tamaki & Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Auckland South

The isthmus was settled by Māori circa 1350, and was valued for its rich and fertile land. Many pā, fortified villages, were created, mainly on the volcanic peaks. The Māori population in the area is estimated to have been about 20,000 before the arrival of Europeans. The introduction of firearms at the end of the eighteenth century, which began in Northland, upset the balance of power and led to devastating intertribal warfare beginning in 1807, causing iwi who lacked the new weapons to seek refuge in areas less exposed to coastal raids. As a result, the region had relatively low numbers of Māori when European settlement of New Zealand began

On 27 January 1832, Joseph Brooks Weller, eldest of the Weller brothers of Otago and Sydney, bought land including the site of the modern city of Auckland, the North Shore, and part of Rodney District for one large cask of powder from Cohi Rangatira.

More information: Auckland-New Zealand

After the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in February 1840, the new Governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, chose the area as his new capital and named it for George Eden, Earl of Auckland, then Viceroy of India. The land that Auckland was established on was given to the Governor by a local iwi, Ngāti Whātua, as a sign of goodwill and in the hope that the building of a city would attract commercial and political opportunities for iwi.

The Grandma visits Auckland Sky Tower

Auckland was officially declared New Zealand's capital in 1841, and the transfer of the administration from Russell, now Old Russell, in the Bay of Islands was completed in 1842. 

However, even in 1840 Port Nicholson, later renamed Wellington, was seen as a better choice for an administrative capital because of its proximity to the South Island, and Wellington became the capital in 1865. After losing its status as capital, Auckland remained the principal city of the Auckland Province until the provincial system was abolished in 1876.

In response to the ongoing rebellion by Hone Heke in the mid-1840s, the government encouraged retired but fit British soldiers and their families to migrate to Auckland to form a defence line around the port settlement as garrison soldiers. 

More information: Te Ara-The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

By the time the first Fencibles arrived in 1848, the rebels in the north had been defeated. Outlying defensive towns were then constructed to the south, stretching in a line from the port village of Onehunga in the west to Howick in the east. Each of the four settlements had about 800 settlers; the men were fully armed in case of emergency, but spent nearly all their time breaking in the land and establishing roads.

In the early 1860s, Auckland became a base against the Māori King Movement, and the 12,000 Imperial soldiers stationed there led to a strong boost to local commerce. This, and continued road building towards the south into the Waikato, enabled Pākehā, European New Zealanders, influence to spread from Auckland. 

Visiting the Auckland Museum at night

The city's population grew fairly rapidly, from 1,500 in 1841 to 3,635 in 1845, then to 12,423 by 1864. The growth occurred similarly to other mercantile-dominated cities, mainly around the port and with problems of overcrowding and pollution. 

Auckland's population of ex-soldiers was far greater than that of other settlements: about 50 percent of the population was Irish, which contrasted heavily with the majority English settlers in Wellington, Christchurch or New Plymouth. Most of the Irish, though not all, were from Protestant Ulster. The majority of settlers in the early period were assisted by receiving cheap passage to New Zealand.

Trams and railway lines shaped Auckland's rapid expansion in the early first half of the 20th century. However, after the Second World War the city's transport system and urban form became increasingly dominated by the motor vehicle. Arterial roads and motorways became both defining and geographically dividing features of the urban landscape. They also allowed further massive expansion that resulted in the growth of urban areas such as the North Shore, especially after the construction of the Auckland Harbour Bridge in the late 1950s, and Manukau City in the south.

The face of urban Auckland changed when the government's immigration policy began allowing immigrants from Asia in 1986. The assertiveness of Pacific Island street culture and the increasing political influence of ethnic groups contributes to the city's multicultural vitality.

More information: Te Ara-The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

I'm a Kiwi. I'm from a beach suburb called Takapuna, 

which is on the north shore of Auckland in New Zealand. 

Lorde