Portal:New Zealand

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New Zealand
Aotearoa (Māori)
A map of the hemisphere centred on New Zealand, using an orthographic projection.
Location of New Zealand, including outlying islands, its territorial claim in the Antarctic, and Tokelau
ISO 3166 codeNZ

New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.

A developed country, it was the first to introduce a minimum wage, and the first to give women the right to vote. It ranks very highly in international measures of quality of life, human rights, and it has low levels of perceived corruption. It retains visible levels of inequality, having structural disparities between its Māori and European populations. New Zealand underwent major economic changes during the 1980s, which transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy. The service sector dominates the national economy, followed by the industrial sector, and agriculture; international tourism is also a significant source of revenue. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, UKUSA, OECD, ASEAN Plus Six, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Community and the Pacific Islands Forum. It enjoys particularly close relations with the United States and is one of its major non-NATO allies; the United Kingdom; Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga; and with Australia, with a shared "Trans-Tasman" identity between the two countries stemming from centuries of British colonisation. (Full article...)

This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment at Awapuni Racecourse 8 August 1914

The Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment was a mounted infantry regiment from New Zealand, raised for service during the First World War. It was assigned to the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

The regiment, with an establishment of twenty-six officers, 523 other ranks and 600 horses, was formed from three squadrons belonging to pre war Territorial Force regiments; the Queen Alexandra's 2nd (Wellington West Coast) Mounted Rifles, the 6th (Manawatu) Mounted Rifles and the 9th (Wellington East Coast) Mounted Rifles. It also included a small headquarters and, until 1916, a Maxim machine-gun section. The Maxim guns were withdrawn but the regiment's fire-power increased during the war, by the end of which each squadron had four Hotchkiss machine-guns, one per troop. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various New Zealand-related articles on Wikipedia.

More Did you know? - show different entries

...there are more Māori people of Ngā Puhi descent than there are of any other iwi?

...that there are three different rivers in New Zealand called Waiau River?

...that many of New Zealand's cricket pitches use soil from Kakanui, near Oamaru?

...that cricketer Lee Germon captained the New Zealand cricket team in his very first international?


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Te Whanganui-A-Hei (Cathedral Cove) was the first marine reserve established on the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, in the Department of Conservation's Waikato Conservancy. It was established in 1992 to preseve the marine habitats found between and around Motukorure, Moturoa, Motueka and Mahurangi Islands.

The Māori name Te Whanganui-A-Hei (the Great Bay of Hei) refers to Hei, a tohunga from the Te Arawa waka. According to tradition, Hei chose the area around Mercury Bay as home for his tribe, proclaiming ownership by calling Motueka Island "Te Kuraetanga-o-taku-Ihu" (the outward curve of my nose.)

Cathedral Cove is named after the cave located there linking Mare’s Leg Cove to Cathedral Cove. Gemstone Bay and Stingray Bay are also located within the reserve. The area is very popular with tourists, and receives around 150,000 visitors a year. The cave and beach was used as the tunnel through which the Pevensie children first re-enter Narnia in the movie version of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. (Full article...)

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Mt. Sugarloaf
Mt. Sugarloaf
Mt. Sugarloaf by Lake Heron, South Island, New Zealand

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