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Nelson in the spotlight: is a storm brewing in New Zealand's boho bay?

The Wood suburb in Nelson, New Zealand.
The Wood suburb in Nelson, New Zealand. Photograph: Photography by Tim Bow/Getty Images

Dutch explorer Abel Tasman didn’t get a warm welcome in Golden Bay in December 1642 when, 375 years ago this week, he became the first European to make landfall in New Zealand. The craft he sent to shore to collect water was rammed by Maori waka, and four Dutchmen were killed. The islands remained unvisited by Europeans until Captain Cook’s expedition 130 years later; a half-century further on, the settlement of Nelson, 50km south of the bay, was up and running, becoming New Zealand’s second city after Christchurch by royal charter in 1858. Now a compact city of approximately 50,000 known for the good life (it has three neighbouring national parks), it’s also – as marked up on Botanical Hill – the country’s geographical dead centre.

First encounter

Borrowed by the nearby national park, as well as the administrative district in which it lies, the Tasman name is now receding into a historical hinterland, too. With a mere NZ$25,000 budgeted for four days of activities up in Golden Bay, in collaboration with the Dutch embassy, the anniversary will be low-key. Next door in Nelson, the Dutchman is present, albeit beneath a layer of dust, says Halfdan Hansen, a luxury jeweller based in the city: “He’s there in the place names and the fabric – I went to Tasman Street School – but it’s not so relevant any more.”

That could be because Nelson dates from a later British era of colonisation – and remains very popular with Anglo émigrés today. This seems to be dictating the dominant cultural narrative in the locality: a member of the First Encounter 375 Planning Group responsible for the anniversary points out that local spending on the forthcoming Cook 250th anniversary in 2019 will be NZ$300,000. On a more progressive note, it’s hoped that, for the first time, descendants of the Ngati Tumatakokiri tribe who confronted Tasman will be present at this year’s anniversary.

Nelson in numbers