Page 62 - Ultimate Australia

National Holidays: New Zealand

In addition to the holidays listed below, New 01/02 Day after New Year’s
Zealand celebrates a number of national
02/06 Waitangi Day
holidays that follow a lunar calendar, such
as Easter, the Queen’s Birthday, and Labor 04/25 Anzac Day
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during these holidays, please visit www. 12/25 Christmas
timeanddate.com/holidays.
12/26 Boxing Day
01/01 New Year’s Day

Historical Overview of New Zealand
Early History

New Zealand’s history is divided into two distinct phases: Pre-European settlement by the
Maori and their ancestors, and European settlement from the 18th century onward.

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Islands. Their landing on the beaches of the North Island in about 1300 A.D. signaled the end
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cool temperate rain forests, snow-frosted mountain peaks, aquamarine lakes, and spurting
geysers composed a landscape the likes of which they had never seen on their tropical South
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brought from their homelands, like kumara (sweet potato) and yams, were planted to augment
this easy supply of food. Over time, as the moa population dwindled, farming took on a more
important role. Since the crops would not grow in the cooler southern areas, the emerging
Maori culture settled predominantly in the warmer North Island and began a “golden age” of
agricultural settlement.

Villages sprang up, often with a central marae (village common) and elaborately carved whare
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and priests were employed by a people who no longer had to spend all their time hunting
and gathering food. But as the population increased, so too did the desire for good farmland.
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warriors.

Though Abel Tasman, a Dutch navigator working for the Dutch East India Company, was the
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broke out that left four of the Dutch crew dead, and as a result Tasman set sail and never

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