A 13-part series bringing together the voices of our country, past and present, to tell an incredible story.  The voices of those who found and shaped the land, of witnesses to momentous and terrible events, and of participants in our greatest celebrations and triumphs.

Together they weave a rich and dramatic picture, from our geological origins to the arrival of the 21st Century.  It is a story of war and peace, ecstasy and despair, and the key people, turning points and events which make us who we are today.

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The Series

Episode One: The Last Place on Earth
Millions of years ago the largest islands of the South Pacific rose from the ocean to become home to specialised plants and animals adapted to a unique environment.  In more recent times Polynesian voyagers crossed the Pacific to finally make landfall on the shores of the 'long bright cloud'.

Episode Two:  Treasure Islands - 1250 to 1769
In New Zealand, the Polynesians faced a new environment, but one teeming with food - fish, seals and birds.  Over the next five hundred years, they re-shaped the land and developed a sophisticated Maori tribal society.

Episode Three:  When Worlds Collide - 1769 to 1839
Early contact between Maori and European was filled with danger and promise for both sides.  Whalers, sealers, traders and missionaries arrived.  But the muskets they brought would lead to terrible tribal wars and mass internal migration.

Episode Four:  Flags and Nations - 1839 to 1850
The treaty signed at Waitangi in 1840 was welcomed by some Maori, but not all.  In its wake came settlers, lots of them, and the first conflicts between the new government and Maori. 

Episode Five:  The Explosive Frontier - 1848 to 1882
Maori trade, economic success and fertile lands caused envy among the rising tide of settlers.  Fighting erupted in Taranaki and quickly spread across the North Island.  Maori defeat would cost them their independence and mana and more than a million hectares of land.  But resistance would continue. 

Episode Six:  Rush to be Rich - 1848 to 1882
As war consumed the North Island, gold was discovered in Otago.  The best (and wildest) of times for the South Island had arrived.  Soon the south would be the most populous and wealthiest part of the country. 

Episode Seven:  God's Own Country - 1880 to 1913
In the 1880s the New Zealand economy collapsed.  Poverty and unemployment replaced prosperity.  But the 'Long Depression' gave rise to a political and social revolution, the birth of the welfare state and votes for women.  And Maori, dismissed as a dying race, began their great revival.

Episode Eight:  The Price of Empire - 1897 to 1918
At the dawn of the 20th Century, New Zealand was a loyal member of the British Empire, the home of 'better Britons'.  Identity and pride were tied to victory on the rugby field and a rush to fight in Britain's wars.

Episode Nine:  The Rise and Fall of Happy Homes - 1918 to 1935
The horrors of World War 1 were followed by the 'black flu' pandemic.  Then the 1920s promised a better life in modern times.  Home ownership increased and  American music and films arrived.  But the bright lights were dimmed by another great depression, causing widespread ruin and despair.

Episode Ten:  Hope and Heroes - 1935 to 1949
In 1935 Depression-battered New Zealanders elected their first Labour Government and began a decade of radical social and economic reform.  But even as they grasped at security, a new threat emerged - another world war, and this time one of the enemies was in the Pacific. 

Episode Eleven:  The Golden Weather - 1949 to 1965
With the 1950s came a period of economic expansion and prosperity built on the sheep's back and farming innovation.  The population drifted north and Maori moved to the cities and set up vibrant social clubs.  There was full employment, endless sporting success, relentless suburban spread, and a massive programme of power schemes for the new homes and industries. 

Episode Twelve:  Generations - 1965 to 1984
When New Zealand troops were sent to fight in Vietnam, the divisions emerging in society broke into the open.  The country took to the streets.  They marched in protest about the Vietnam war, nuclear testing, the environment, women's rights, sporting links with apartheid South Africa and the place of Maori in modern New Zealand. 

Episode Thirteen:  Breaking Free - 1984 to the present
The 1984 election introduced another reforming government, one prepared to cut loose a heavily regulated economy and challenge old alliances.  But change came at a price.  'New Right' policies began dismantling 50 years of economic supports and social welfare.  Maori demanded that long-held grievances be addressed.  And as New Zealand entered the 21st Century a new wave of immigration began.

Gondwana was a super-continent that originally sat at the south of the globe, around where Antarctica is today. 130 million years ago New Zealand was attached to the edge of this mega landmass that included South Africa, India, Australia, South America and Antarctica.

Back then, New Zealand was a very different place to what it is now. The land lay close to the South Pole and temperatures were warm and moist. It was the age of dinosaurs.

When dinosaurs walked this terrain, New Zealand was still forming; Hawkes Bay was under water and had its own Jurassic Park of marine reptiles. Today, palaeontologists excavate the fossils of these ancient creatures from the bush inland from Napier where their bones have to be cut from solid rock.

When Africa and India separated and moved north, Gondwana started to break-up. This was when New Zealand as we know it began. Around 80 million years ago the Tasman Sea began to form and New Zealand began its journey north. It ended up a remote and lonely island around 2,000km from Australia and Antarctica.

Several changes to the New Zealand landmass occurred during this period. It became cooler which made it denser and as a result it started to sink. There was erosion so the mountains inherited from Gondwana were slowly worn down, and global sea levels began to rise. All of these factors contributed to the gradual whittling down of New Zealand.

For millions of years, New Zealand had been adrift on ancient seas and by journey's end the country was an archipelago of isolated islands thousands of kilometres from our nearest major neighbour.

Formation of New Zealand

After breaking away from Gondwana, New Zealand ended up an isolated cluster of low lying islands, an archipelago, straddling a battle zone.

The North Island and part of the South remained on the Indo-Australian tectonic plate whilst the land east of the South Island's Alpine Fault sat on the Pacific plate. These plates grinded against one another creating a high pressure zone that produced earthquakes, volcanoes and mountains.

26 million years ago the plates converged in a staggering act of mountain building called the Kaikoura Orogeny. The spine of the country was uplifted from the sea and mountains were born. This gave rise to the New Zealand landscape of today.

The process is still happening. Only 600 years ago Rangitoto appeared almost overnight on the Auckland horizon. The city still sits on an active volcanic field, the cones lie dormant and probably won't erupt again but experts believe there could be more volcanoes in the future.

Geologist Harold Wellman was the first to work out that New Zealand was in constant motion. He later linked his discovery to the idea that the earth's surface is floating on huge plates that are always in opposition with each other, colliding and drifting apart.

Wellman was New Zealand's most significant geologist of the 20th Century. In the 1940s, as part of the war effort, he was sent to find mineral resources on the West Coast. A year later he made his landmark discovery, an immense geological fracture in the South Island that ran for almost 700km. He saw that the South Island was split from Fiordland to Nelson by an enormous fault line along the foot of the Southern Alps. He named his finding the Alpine Fault.

Wellman went on to discover that once the top of the South Island had been alongside the bottom. He theorised that two places, both coincidentally called Red Hills, in Nelson and Otago would have once been part of the same ancient geological formation that was separated by the Alpine Fault.

He concluded that the Alpine Fault was in constant motion and that the plates converged about the rate fingernails grow. Their giant clashes created our mountain chains, volcanoes and earthquakes and along with glaciers and rivers, they shaped New Zealand.

Harold Wellman's discovery explained why New Zealand was prone to earthquakes and was fractured by geothermal hotspots. His ideas were rejected until the 1960s when science finally recognised that the earth's surface did move and deform from floating on tectonic plates. This is what Wellman had seen in the South Island. He had witnessed the latest chapter in the story of the creation of New Zealand itself.

Today we have become accustomed to a landscape with broad open vistas and rolling hills, but this is almost entirely man-made. New Zealand was originally covered in tall dense forest that was rich with unusual wildlife.

The reasonably mild climate of prehistoric New Zealand encouraged an array of flora and fauna. The distinctive geological characteristics and pre-human isolation meant the land preserved a unique link to its ancient plant and animal life.

Primitive plants of Gondwana like mosses and ferns were stranded on New Zealand and had to evolve in isolation over millions of years. Other plant life arrived by sea drift, wind or transportation by birds. Today, huge native trees like the may kauri link back to these ancestral forests.

It was widely believed that New Zealand never had dinosaurs inhabiting it after its break from Gondwana until amateur palaeontologist, Joan Wiffen, discovered their fossils near Napier in 1979. Vertebrates like the tuatara are the last descendents of this ancient, now extinct, group of reptiles.

Nearly every creature in New Zealand migrated by swimming, floating, flying or drifting. This is one reason why we lack many groups of vertebrates like land mammals, tortoises and snakes. Mammals began to evolve elsewhere but New Zealand's natural water barrier only allowed for those that could fly, like bats.

New Zealand was virtually unique with its lack of ground based predators. With nothing to eat them or take their food, New Zealand's wildlife began to develop in remarkable ways. The animals had extended juvenile periods, tended to live longer, didn't breed as quickly and could reach large sizes.

Many birds became poor fliers or flightless and some, like the moa, grew enormous. Insects descended onto the forest floor and also became flightless, sluggish and huge. The giant leaf eating weta, for example, can grow up to 8.5cm long. One of our few native mammals, the short tailed bat, also had an unusual response when it largely abandoned flight to scuttle and climb along the forest floor looking for insect prey.

Before human contact New Zealand's forests were teeming with life, it was a vibrant land of giants. But the land would soon be discovered, the frontier would be crossed by humans and New Zealand wildlife would never be the same again.

Ancient Birds

Home to dense forest, New Zealand was a land of birds. Thousands of species filled the trees and shoreline, taking the place of absent mammals. One of our animal icons, the kiwi, with burrowing and scratching feet, lack of wings and acute sense of smell acted more like a wombat or badger than a bird, whilst large fruit and leaf eating birds like pigeons and kokako filled the role of possums or koalas.

The kiwi was a late arrival. It made its way to New Zealand around 70 million years ago by island hopping from the north. It had to cross water so may have flown here. With no predators to eat it or take its food, the kiwi, like many other birds, became a poor flyer.

Like numerous New Zealand creatures, some birds grew gigantic. The most remarkable was the moa. There were several known species of moa ranging from about the size of a pukeko to the largest, Giant Moa (Dinornis), which was over two metres tall and weighed about 200kg. The moa was the T-Rex of New Zealand.
 
Moa were named by a pioneering British anatomist Richard Owen who had previously coined the term Dinosaur (terrible lizard). Owen theorised the existence of moa from a single bone that had been sent from New Zealand, he called it Dinornis (terrible bird).

Early museum displays exaggerated the moa's posture by exhibiting specimens with the necks at full stretch. Scientists now think that moa walked with their heads forward and held out in front. One of the most unusual aspects of moa physiology was the recent discovery that the females were often bigger than the males, in the Dinornis group they were roughly twice the size.

Moa were one of the predominant birds in our prehistoric landscape but if they were the top herbivores, they were not the top of the food chain. Moa had one predator, Haast's eagle, one of the largest eagles the world has ever seen.

Haast's eagles weighed up to 13kg and could have a three metre wingspan. This massive predator was fierce and preyed on large birds including the fully grown moa. It had powerful talons about the size of a lion's and would attack a moa by landing on its back, penetrating its organs and leaving it to bleed to death. Haast's eagle was the lord of the forest and was New Zealand's airborne equivalent to the sabre-tooth tiger.

The Lapita people were ancestors of the people of Polynesia and the direct ancestors of those who became Maori. They were some of the greatest seafarers the world has ever seen and were skilled in navigation, tool making, gardening, hunting and fishing.

Around 4,000 years ago the ancestors of the Lapita people left their ancient home of Taiwan or Southern China and migrated through the islands of South East Asia. Later they travelled vast distances in small wooden canoes and discovered hundreds of remote islands across the Pacific Ocean.

Lapita voyagers navigated between islands of the Pacific for generations. Some would stay to establish villages whilst others continued to journey. They went on to settle much of Melanesia and all of Polynesia.

The Lapita people had an agricultural lifestyle and grew yams and taro and kept pigs. Many iconic Pacific plants like coconut and bananas were transported by Lapita sailors who brought them and domesticated animals on their voyages. Everywhere they went they made gardens and altered the landscape.

Lapita people were the finest potters in the Pacific. Their beautiful pots were many shapes and sizes and were decorated with intricate patterns. Thousands of pieces of pottery have been found in places where the Lapita people lived.

Recent excavations of a Lapita burial site in Vanuatu uncovered that the large Lapita pots were used as burial urns. The broken pot pieces, bones and other objects found in the graves told the archaeologists about the lives of the people and how they interacted with their environment. Many had suffered injuries like broken bones and others had degenerative diseases like arthritis and rheumatism, most probably from gardening. The bones also showed evidence of strong upper arm muscles, probably from a large amount of canoe paddling.

One of the great legacies of the Lapita people to the Pacific was their spoken language. It was part of a huge family tree of languages called Austranesian which covers one fifth of the world's spoken languages from Taiwan to Madagascar and all of Polynesia. Echoes of Lapita language can still be heard in te reo Maori today.

Over time the world of the Lapita colonists began to change, they sailed further into the Pacific to find Samoa and Tonga. Their culture evolved and what would emerge would become the distinctive culture of Polynesia. Then, around 2,000 years ago the Lapita people began their most audacious voyages. They crossed the vast Pacific Ocean to find the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Easter Islands, Hawaii and eventually New Zealand.

Ancient Pacific Voyages

The Pacific is the world's largest ocean with a surface area greater than the total land area of the world itself. It was this ocean that was first crossed, hundreds of years ago, by ancient navigators. They had no maps to plot their routes and no instruments for navigation, yet they went on to discover and settle nearly all the land that was to be found in the Pacific.

Polynesian traditional deep water canoes were large, fast and safe. Every island group had its own design. Canoes in Polynesia generally had two hulls whilst those in other places had one hull with an outrigger. They were made of wooden planks sewn together and could be 20 metres long. In good conditions these canoes could reach speeds of eight knots and average a hundred sea miles over 24 hours.

The great skill of the ancient navigators was their ability to read the sky. By day they would read the state of the sea, sun, and clouds and the movements of birds. By night, their eyes would have been fixed on the stars. The rising and setting points of bright stars and planets and their relationships to islands were memorised. This acted as a star compass that guided navigators around the ocean as surely as any road map.

When the sky was overcast, navigators would use other aids. The Pacific Ocean has prevailing winds that push up swells in a constant direction for most of the year. Canoes would be kept at a particular angle to these swells so any change in the motion or sound of waves on the vessel would signal a change of direction.

Major voyages were timed for different seasons. Navigators had a great knowledge of the changing winds and currents throughout the year and would plan their voyages to coincide with preferred weather patterns. For generations the direction of expansion was against the prevailing winds. In the tropics, trade winds came from the east but Polynesian settlers sailed from the west. It is thought they travelled into the wind to look for land so they had the option of sailing downwind to get home.

Many long voyages would have been made via intermediary islands that acted as stepping stones. This is probably how New Zealand was discovered. The explorers would have used stepping stones such as Norfolk and Kermadec Islands which display evidence of having once being settled, then abandoned.

Intermediary islands were important for maintaining communications and trading posts and were fundamental for return voyages to Polynesia. It is likely that Maori used them when sailing back into the Pacific once they had found New Zealand.

The Polynesian triangle has sides of nearly 6,500km long. Its northern point is Hawaii, its eastern point is Easter Island and at its southern end is New Zealand.  A huge number of diverse Polynesian cultures rich with oral traditions and knowledge of the sea developed within the triangle but they all shared many things in common.

Like their ancestors who lived off the sea, the Polynesians were at home on the ocean. They were Neolithic but had mastered the use of stone for tools and their wood carvings, adzes and shell fish hooks combined art with function. Religion and spiritual ideas guided all aspects of life and huge statues were built to communicate with the gods.

In small kin-based societies everyone had a place in the hierarchy of individuals and kin groups. Chiefs were the kingpins, controlling land and sometimes the distribution of food. The closer one was to the chiefly line, the higher their rank was likely to be, so knowing whakapapa or genealogical connections was important. Chiefs were usually men who had inherited their title from their father and were often imbued with a mystical power, sometimes called mana.

Some Polynesian societies, like Tonga, had formal organisation with classes and aristocracy similar to European kingdoms. Polynesian chiefs were often ambitious and warfare was endemic. Territorial disputes were common and dynasties could rise and fall rapidly. The great Hawaiian King Kamehameha, for example, once unified almost all the Hawaiian Islands under his personal rule.

The Polynesian economy was based on intensive fishing and gardening. The people were sophisticated agriculturalists growing plants like taro, yams, bread fruit and bananas that were inherited from their Lapita ancestors. Gardening in the Pacific was usually easy as the land was fertile. A key agricultural practice was slash and burn but this was not as successful in New Zealand because the land was slower to regenerate.

Polynesians almost certainly travelled to South America and took cargo home with them as evidence of their encounter. One import was kumara which thrived elsewhere in the Pacific. Kumara would be one of the most important things that Polynesians would eventually bring to New Zealand.

About 800 years ago all three points of the Polynesian triangle had been discovered. Around that time New Zealand's first settlers were preparing for their journey south. They would bring their whole lives with them, taking the animals, plants, customs and values of Eastern Polynesia to the last frontier of the Pacific. These settlers would leave their footprints on New Zealand and begin our human story.

First Arrivals, Pre-European Maoris

Polynesians were the first discoverers of New Zealand. No one knows exactly when they first arrived or where they landed, but they did come to colonise. The first waka brought men, women and children and carried domestic animals and plants intended for new gardens.

The navigators may have been following sailing directions from earlier explorers who had found these islands and had returned home to pass on their knowledge. Their three to four week voyage from Eastern Polynesia was guided by stars, sea currents and flights of birds and would have required much courage and skill. The short trip meant plant seedlings, kumara, yams and taro easily lasted the journey. But the coconuts and bananas wouldn't survive in the colder climate.

One new arrival that did survive was the Pacific Rat or kiore. It was the first exotic animal to be brought here by man and evidence from its favourite food indicates the landing date of the first waka. By radiocarbon dating kiore teeth marks on preserved seed cases, scientists found that they were in New Zealand around 1250AD - 1300AD. It is likely that the first waka arrived sometime around this date too.

Scientists, like David Penny, believe that the founding population wasn't very large. Using genetic science to compare the unique DNA sequences of Maori with other DNA from the Pacific has produced a conservative estimate that the total population was around 100-200 people. Out of this it is thought that 50-100 of them were women. This shows that they were organised colonists planning to begin a new viable population. They knew something about where they were going, what they were going to find and that they intended to stay.

One of the first things the Polynesians did when they landed was explore. New Zealand was beyond their wildest dreams with strange creatures, massive mountain ranges, lakes and rivers. The land was full of forest, food, large birds, and fish. By the new century the settlers had explored and named most of the country.

It's possible that several different canoes from several different islands came to New Zealand. The first landfall is unknown but the east coast of the North Island from North Cape to East Cape is the location favoured by archaeologists. Most Maori tribes have their own traditions about where canoes arrived and these sites remain important tribal landmarks. Understanding ancestors is important for Maori and being associated with a particular waka connects a tribe to an area and creates a sense of belonging.

Living isolated in New Zealand for over 500 years, Maori created a complex, creative and sophisticated culture. Carving, weaving, hunting, horticulture and warfare were all adapted to the new land. Over years of Maori story telling, the explanations of where people came from, both human and super human, were woven together into rich tribal traditions, folklore, song and art. The base for these stories is whakapapa or ancestry.

The first Polynesians to arrive in New Zealand around 1250AD were mainly hunters and gatherers who lived off the bounty of the land. Increasingly, Maori developed their skills in gardening and horticulture to grow several types of plant. They found that in New Zealand, crops didn't regenerate as quickly as in other Pacific Islands because of the cooler climate and thinner soils.

The kumara which they had brought with them on the waka grew well and became an important part of the Maori diet. Large areas of bush, like the Wairarapa Coast, were cleared to cut kumara gardens. At Wairarapa, remains of the garden's stone walls have been carbon dated to 1300AD.

Once grown, kumara was gathered and eaten. A problem Maori faced was how to store it in the off-season. Kumara had to last until the spring, which was a long time to keep a root vegetable in New Zealand conditions, but they soon mastered a new technology, the climate controlled storage rua or roofed underground storehouse.

Maori cleared the bush by burning it to create space for kumara gardens and to foster greater turnover of scrubs and wetland life. The burnt scrub encouraged new plants like bracken fern to grow. Bracken fern was a key part of the Maori diet as it was one of the few sources of wild starch. The underground plant was edible and it would be dried for long-term storage, roasted and then beaten to get the fibres out.

Within a few decades of human arrival much of the New Zealand bush was gone. The change in vegetation from dense forest to fern and scrub made the land a living food basket for Maori. Over generations they adapted their gardening and horticulture techniques to master all the land had to offer.

Decline and Extinction

When Polynesians first arrived in New Zealand around 1250AD, the land was covered with dense forest that was rich with wildlife. Birds had thrived in the thick trees and with almost no natural predators some grew large and others lost the ability to fly.

A tragedy of New Zealand settlement was the demise of a most remarkable bird species, the moa. There were several known species of moa, ranging from about the size of a pukeko to the largest, Giant Moa (Dinornis), which could be over two metres tall and weigh up to 200kg.

Moa appeared to have no fear and Maori could stalk them easily and spear them with simple weapons. At Wairau Bar in Marlborough, Maori established one of many moa-hunter villages and butchered up to 12,000 there.

A victim of its own lack of defences and slow rate of reproduction, the moa population decreased rapidly.  It took a very short time to exterminate them and in only 200 years there were none left in New Zealand.

The moa wasn't the only monstrous bird in New Zealand's primeval bush. The Haast's Eagle, which could weigh up to 13kg and have a three metre wingspan, was a fierce predator that preyed on large birds like the fully grown moa. Maori would have learnt to fear this bird that could easily have killed them with its powerful talons. But once the Haast's Eagle's main food source, the moa, had gone it soon followed into extinction.

Fur seals also provided an easy food supply and were hunted extensively. There were huge amounts of them and Maori found that they were mild and easily killed. Their numbers soon declined and they began to disappear from the North Island.

During this period, the predatory Pacific Rat or kiore that came on the first waka was also responsible for the extinction and decline of other, smaller New Zealand birds and animals.

The actions of man and introduced animals had a devastating effect on New Zealand wildlife. As numbers started to fall, it took time for the colonists to realise that even large populations of animals could be over hunted.

In the 17th Century places like Tamaki-makau-rau (modern Auckland) showed the full flowering of Maori culture. The rich marine resources of Auckland's two harbours and fertile volcanic soil made it attractive to settlers. Kumara fields were vast and spread over 2,000 hectares with villages dotted around the gardens.

As the Maori population expanded, social organisation developed and conflict increased. Fortified pa building followed with each volcanic cone in Auckland supporting at least one. A fortified pa was placed on the top of a hill where its houses or whares could easily be defended by tall fences and wide ditches. One such great Maori settlement was Maungakiekie, or One Tree Hill.

Maungakiekie, or One Tree Hill, was first occupied at least 500 years ago. In times of war over a thousand people may have taken refuge there. The land around the pa was cultivated with crops which were stored in pits. The highest defended part of the hill sat behind rings of fortification and people lived in clusters of houses on points of its slopes that had been built up over the centuries.

Almost every square inch of One Tree Hill was built, dug out with wooden tools. The inhabitants would have moved soil from higher elevations to lower elevations to make broader terraces down the slope. Thousands of cubic meters of soil were moved in a massive engineering undertaking that resulted in one of the greatest made landscapes of the Pacific.

Maungakiekie represents power, respect, ancient mana and status and is still one of the most sacred places for Maori in New Zealand.

Use of Stone

Pre-European Maori lived in a time where stone took the place of metal. New Zealand was a treasure trove for stone hunters with different types of stone quarried in different parts of the country.

On D'Urville Island, at the top of South Island, an industrial operation was set up to turn rocks into adzes which were then exported to Maori throughout the rest of the country. They were made of argillite, the second hardest stone in New Zealand, and the whole process to make one adze could take up to 200 hours.

The stone chips left behind from making the adzes remain on the beach today and indicate that over 15,000 were made there.

The most precious stone to Maori was pounamu or greenstone. It had spiritual and physical properties that were immensely important as symbols of power and authority. Pounamu was hard and kept a sharp edge so was used to make tools, ornaments and weapons. Pounamu crafters made some of the most beautiful objects ever fashioned in New Zealand.

In the South Island, Maori set up a network of trails over mountains and rivers of ice to extract the pounamu and trade it with others across the country. This resulted in some of the greatest trading trails New Zealand has ever seen, going right up the West Coast of the South Island and across the high passes of the Southern Alps.

Maori were a warrior race and tribal identity based on whakapapa shaped the conflicts that increased dramatically from the 16th Century onwards. As population pressures grew the competition for resources intensified and possessions could only be held as long as they could be defended.

Maori fighting was influenced by spiritual beliefs, in particular, mana and utu. The fighting skills of a Maori warrior were a test of their mana (authority, power and prestige) and the respect given to them by their society.

Mana was central to another ritual of warfare, the eating of the vanquished. Cannibalism existed all over the world in early societies, especially where there were shortages of meat for protein. In Maori society it was a means of diminishing someone else's mana whilst enhancing ones own.

Laws of utu (reciprocity) governed more than just revenge; it was the return of like with like. Utu demanded hospitality returned with hospitality and injury returned with equal or greater injury until balance had been restored. Utu had to be sought even if it took years and feuds could last generations. The principal of utu kept balance in society, if a law was broken then the community would exact the appropriate punishment.

Warfare was central to Maori life but one group chose to abandon it. They were the Moriori, a group who around 1400AD left mainland New Zealand for the Chatham Islands. Why the Moriori left is still unknown. The Chatham's were desolate and horticulture was impossible so they became true hunter-gatherers.

Moriori survived by protecting bird and fish sources and by castrating male infants to keep population numbers low. In 1835 their values of peace and refusal to resort to war led to their downfall. They were invaded by mainland Maori and after refusing to fight back, were slaughtered.

Reverend Samuel Marsden preached New Zealand's first Christian service on 25 December, 1814. After that he and other missionaries actively started mission stations throughout New Zealand.

Missionaries became agents of change in New Zealand and the Bible would be as effective as the musket in the transformation of the Maori way of life. From missionaries Maori learnt about Christianity, farming techniques, trade, reading and writing.

Whilst some missionaries, like Thomas Kendall, came to accept and even adopt Maori ideas, most were single-minded in "civilising the heathens." One of their first tasks was to teach Maori how to read the Bible. When the printing press arrived in 1834, over 5.5 million pages of the Word of God were printed.

Missionaries tried to be self-sufficient but they relied heavily on their Maori benefactors for food and protection. Soon these benefactors started to demand payment of muskets. Marsden had forbidden the sale of muskets in 1815 but in order to survive many missionaries had no choice but to trade them with Maori.

Maori had their own religious beliefs and weren't easily converted. They engaged in intense discussions with missionaries over ethics and spiritual views. Even when conversions occurred, it was on their own terms. Maori neither rejected traditional ways nor fully accepted the new. However, cannibalism did start to decrease and a day of rest on the Sabbath was adopted.

By 1840, over 20 mission stations had been established and in the following decades more missionaries from different countries and different creeds would come to New Zealand shores.

In the 1820s and 1830s the Musket Wars and introduced diseased had decimated the Maori population. The upheavals of the age drove some Maori to seek the protection of the British government. In 1831 a group of northern chiefs wrote to the British King for help under a collective known as the "Chiefs of New Zealand."

In 1833 Britain decided to appoint a low ranking official called James Busby to be British Resident at Waitangi. The arrival of Busby marks the first step on the road to colonization.

Busby called a meeting with a group of leading chiefs to consider a document drafted by him. On 2 November 1835 around 40 chiefs signed a declaration (written in English and Maori) that recognised their independence.

The Declaration of Independence was a declaration to the world that some have called "a statement of independent nationhood and sovereignty", the first New Zealand had ever made. It was significant because it meant the British recognised New Zealand's independence.

In the end, the Declaration of Independence was overshadowed by the arrival of Governor William Hobson and the meeting held in February 1840. This meeting would produce a document quite different from the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Waitangi.

Today some Maori still use the Declaration of Independence to back claims for Maori sovereignty. They see it as their foundation document, the Treaty as its affirmation, and the Flag of United Tribes of New Zealand (1834) as the visible symbol of their independence.

The New Zealand Company's Wellington Settlement

The first seven ships carrying 1,300 New Zealand Company immigrants arrived in Wellington a week before the Treaty signing in 1840. A mix of British society came with idealistic images of their new home that the Company's propaganda had created.

E.G. Wakefield's brother, William, had arrived earlier to prepare for the new immigrants. But when they arrived at Petone they found there was no wharf so all their possessions were tossed on the tide as they scrambled ashore.

A town plan had been made in England for a settlement straddling the Hutt River but this land was almost entirely swamp. The settlers became reliant on local Maori for food and shelter and although welcoming, Maori were concerned about the number of new arrivals.

There were soon disputes over land. Wakefield believed he had brought the region from Te Rauparaha, the dominant chief of the area. Several tribes occupied the area and to immigrants who owned which land was unclear. Maori felt they had agreed for settlers to use the land as long as they retained ownership of it. There was much misunderstanding between the two parties who had different views about what ownership meant.

Storms and floods swamped the struggling Petone settlement. The settlers shifted to Wellington where the best land was occupied by Maori. Wakefield's claims that he had brought the land were disputed. With the possibility of violence, Wakefield ordered an impressive demonstration of cannon fire from Company ships to show Maori who was boss.

Problems soon developed within the settlement. Labourers had been given free passage with the offer that they could buy land once they had earned some money. But there were too few wealthy settlers in Wellington and, with many labourers living off the Company's guaranteed wages, there was not enough land being sold to make the enterprise profitable.

Despite all the problems, some of the settlers were determined to succeed. When the Company was running out of money Wakefield suggested they go into the Hutt Valley and clear the bush to make farms. They did so, became landowners in their own right and became relatively prosperous. Here at least, some settlers found a country with far more opportunities than they would ever have found in Britain.

There was a lot of excitement with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840. But the convoluted story of how the Treaty was drawn up began a few days before the grand signing took place.

William Hobson was instructed by the Colonial Office in London to get the free and intelligent consent of Maori to the Treaty, particularly from those who had signed the Declaration of Independence in 1835. Surprisingly, his instructions did not include a draft of the Treaty so he had to devise the text himself.

Hobson began to write the first draft but became ill, so passed it on to British Resident James Busby to complete. Busby was concerned that there were no guarantees for Maori to retain their customary resources. He thought they wouldn't sign unless their land and other precious resources were protected.

On 3 February Busby wrote a new draft containing three articles. Article One provided for Maori to give up sovereignty to the British Crown. Article Two included a guarantee that Maori would retain possession over their land, forest and fisheries. Article Three offered Maori the protection of the Crown and all the rights and privileges of British subjects.

The text was then given to Reverend Henry Williams to translate into Maori. His son helped as he'd grown up speaking the language and was said to speak it better than his father.

In Article One when Williams translated the part where Maori agreed to cede sovereignty he should have used the word "rangatiratanga", which most Maori would have understood to mean that they would be kings in their own land, fully independent chiefs. The word "rangatiratanga" was used in the Declaration of Independence, but Williams substituted "kawanatanga" - the right to govern in a more distant, abstract sense.

In Article Two, where Maori were given control over resources, Williams did use the word "rangatiratanga" to mean chiefly independence. This one word made a difference in the meaning of the articles. Article One ceded the right to govern whilst Article Two confirmed Maori in their independence.

So there were two versions, one in English and the other in Maori. In this uncertain way, and in just a few days, the founding document of our new nation was put together.

Signing the Treaty of Waitangi

On 5 February 1840 Maori canoes and settler boats started towards Waitangi. They had been invited by William Hobson to attend the ceremony where the Treaty would be presented to the chiefs. For many who attended this was the most unforgettable day in New Zealand's short history.

Once the chiefs had gathered Hobson explained and read the Treaty in English. Henry Williams then read and explained the Maori version, not pointing out differences between the two.

For five hours the chiefs spoke for and against it. Northern chief Te Ruki Kawiti suspected the motives of the missionaries who urged the chiefs to sign. Others spoke in favour of the Treaty, including the young chief Hongi Heke.

By late afternoon Hobson began to think the meeting was going against him. Then, the great Hokianga chief Tamati Waka Nene stood up and supported him. At this point Hobson decided to adjourn until 7 February.

That night a group of Maori chiefs camped by the Waitangi river mouth and debated whether or not to sign. The majority decided they would.

The next morning, Thursday 6 February, most of the chiefs still at Waitangi were keen to sign so they could go home. Missionaries suggested another meeting so Hobson was summoned.

The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi took place in a tent and although Hobson is often depicted in full regalia, he came ashore without his official uniform. Hobson was adamant that there be no more discussions, just signatures.

Hongi Heke was the first to come forward. About 46 Maori chiefs and 6 European witnesses signed the Treaty of Waitangi. After each chief had signed Hobson shook his hand and said, "He iwi tahi tatou (we are now one people)."

Over the next six months copies of the Treaty were taken around the country. In most cases it was the Maori version that was presented and agreed to. At around 50 locations over 500 chiefs signed.

Some areas were missed and in many the Treaty was received with the same mixed reception that it had received in Waitangi. Some chiefs refused to sign but as far as London was concerned, New Zealand was now part of the biggest empire in the world - the British Empire.

The narrow isthmus of land known by local Maori as Tamaki-makau-rau had two fine harbours and had been fought over for generations. After the Treaty of Waitangi signing, Ngati Whatua chief Apihai Te Kawau invited Governor William Hobson to settle there.

The Ngati Whatua had been decimated by the Musket Wars and thought if they could get the most powerful Pakeha on their side, it would give them security from attack.

Hobson arrived in Tamaki-makau-rau from the Bay of Islands in 1840. He named the city after his patron, Lord Auckland, the First Lord of the Admiralty. In December, Hobson cheaply purchased around 1,200 hectares of land from Ngati Whauta. This would become downtown Auckland, the most highly priced land in the country.

Under the Treaty, only the government could buy land from Maori and on-sell it. This was called "Crown Pre-emption." Soon after he arrived, Hobson announced one of the biggest real estate auctions in our history.

At the first land auction in 1841 the government set a reserve price of 100 pounds per acre. Speculators pushed up this price to over 550 pounds per acre. Maori were stunned at the prices paid for only a fraction of the land they had sold for the equivalent of 280 pounds. It was an early lesson in capitalism and how the government's control of land sales could work.

Hobson moved the capital from Russell to Auckland 1841. Life was easy there compared to the conflicts and hardships of the New Zealand Company settlements in the south.

Auckland's prosperity was a source of jealousy but undeterred it rapidly transformed itself from capital city to city of capital. Young entrepreneurs like John Logan Campbell and Robert Graham started to emerge.

Auckland's economic bubble burst in 1842 when it plunged into recession. The settlers were so dissatisfied with Hobson's economic management that they petitioned London for his recall. But Hobson, who had been ill ever since arriving in New Zealand, died of a stroke later that year.

The new governor, Robert FitzRoy, arrived to inherit a crisis. The country was broke and relations between Maori and Europeans were worsening.

Wairau Affray

The next New Zealand Company settlement was founded in Nelson in 1842. It was administrated by another Wakefield brother, Arthur, who soon found that there wasn't enough agricultural land to go around. To make matters worse, a further 700 settlers soon arrived.

For the settlement to survive, Wakefield had to find more good farmland. He set his sights on the thousands of hectares of land in the Wairau Valley, 60 kilometres away. 

Surveyors were sent to Wairau. It seemed to be empty and had good farmland. William Wakefield claimed to have bought the land from Te Rauparaha, but the chief insisted that he had not sold it.

In June 1844 Te Rauparaha and some other Ngati Toa chiefs objected to the surveying and evicted the surveyors off the land. In response Arthur Wakefield and some Nelson settlers tried to arrest Te Rauparaha on trumped-up charges.

On 17 June 1844 the two sides met across the Tuamarina stream near Blenheim. Shots were fired and both settlers and Maori fell. Realising that they were out-gunned, the settlers surrendered.

Te Rauparaha's nephew Te Rangihaeata, whose wife had been killed, demanded utu. The helpless prisoners, including Arthur Wakefield, were bludgeoned to death. Four Maori and 22 Europeans were killed in the affray.

The Nelson settlers demanded that Te Rangihaeata be hanged but Governor Robert FitzRoy took no action. This earned the new governor the undying enmity of the Nelson settlers. They campaigned for his recall which eventually occurred in 1845.

The raid on Russell in 1845 led to the Northern War of 1845-1846. This would bring the British army to New Zealand in force, as Imperial troops garrisoned in New South Wales crossed the Tasman to join the war in Northland.

The British forces first engaged Hone Heke at his pa near Lake Omapere in May 1845. They landed at Oniwhero Bay and had an arduous march inland. The British lacked artillery and could only fire rockets that were more entertaining to Maori than effective. The results were inconclusive but both sides gained respect for one another.

In June the Ngati Hine war chief Te Ruki Kawiti, who had supported Heke, built a pa at Ohaeawai. He reasoned that it would divert the British from attacking his people in undefended villages.

Kawiti expected artillery so prepared for it. The pa had cleverly designed bunkers with firing positions at ground level. The palisades were covered with flax to shield the holes in the wall so the British couldn't see if there was a big enough breach to risk an assault.

On 1 July, the British commander, Colonel Henry Despard, ordered his men to charge the pa. The Maori defenders were behind palisades with one or two trenches in front so the troops coming at them had no chance. The Maori were outnumbered six to one but beat the army of the world's greatest empire.

Six months of uneasy truce ensued. Governor FitzRoy came under pressure from settlers to act decisively. He offered Kawiti and Heke a peace deal which included the confiscation of their land. Not surprisingly, they refused.

The final battle of the war was at Ruapekapeka pa in January 1846. Ruapekapeka, "the bat's nest", was described as a masterpiece of military construction. Here underground defenses could withstand shelling for many days.

On 11 January 1846 the British attacked the pa but found it empty except for the dead and wounded. The Maori defenders had gone into the bush behind hoping to draw the British into a trap. Some troops were killed but others continued to hold the pa. This allowed the new Governor, George Grey, to proclaim himself the victor of Ruapekapeka.

The Northern War eventually petered out. Governor Grey turned his attentions elsewhere as fighting erupted near Wellington where land disputes had escalated into full scale conflicts.

Settler Government

By the 1850s more immigrants had arrived in New Zealand and there was a shift in the balance of power to the newcomers. Maori New Zealand was becoming Pakeha New Zealand. The settlers wanted to control their own affairs and demanded self government.

In 1853 New Zealand held its first elections. The following year our first parliament was set up in Auckland. To Europeans it seemed like a dream come true. Farms, towns and a fully functional society had been carved out of the primeval bush in less than half a generation.

Some Maori sensed their dream of prosperity and partnership with the newcomers would turn into a nightmare. Vast tracks of land that had once been theirs was now in either Crown or private ownership.

An infant nation was emerging from the bush of the frontier. Soon the proposition that said we were now one people would be tested.

In the next decade Maori would decide to hold onto the land that was left. To do so they would challenge the power of the settler government and the Queen herself.

In the early 1850s the New Zealand economy was booming. Maori were successful entrepreneurs, selling foodstuffs to the immigrants flooding into the new towns of the North Island.

Soon the new waves of settlers began to want more land and the Maori were reluctant to sell. The government was under enormous pressure by the increasing demands for land. The frontier was becoming explosive, the golden age was over.

A land dispute in the Taranaki village of Waitara was the spark that led New Zealand to war. In March 1859, a junior chief named Te Teira offered to sell 600 acres in Waitara to the government's land purchasing officer, Donald McLean.

The sale was strongly opposed by senior chief Wiremu Kingi who lived there. When Governor Gore Browne ordered the land to be surveyed, Kingi led a section of the tribe to prevent the surveying. He was determined to stop the sale. It is here that the New Zealand wars began.

In 1860 Governor Browne declared a state of Marshal Law in Taranaki and the 2,500 inhabitants of New Plymouth prepared for war. By March, nearly a thousand Imperial troops had come to defend the town.

Victory wasn't as easy as the British anticipated with Maori raiding settlers' homes and burning their farms. The conflict went on for a year with no clear winner. There was sporadic but continuous conflict between Maori and Imperial forces.

A ceasefire was called in March 1861 and Browne decided to look again at the Waitara Purchase. In April 1861, fighting was brought to an end with a negotiation of a truce brokered by Wiremu Tamihana.

The war in Taranaki was the country's first real taste of the deadly struggle over who would rule New Zealand. Peace in Taranaki would be short lived. Fighting broke out again in 1863, prompting the returning governor, George Grey, to get more troops from the British Government.

Waikato War

In the 1850s Auckland settlers increasingly feared an attack from Waikato tribes. To reassure them, Governor George Grey built a series of military forts and a military road, the Great South Road, which pointed directly at the Waikato. Grey aimed to undermine the Maori King and his supporters.

Waikato Maori responded to the military threat by declaring the Mangatawhiri Stream an aukati (a boundary). The Maori King had defined his ground for the first time and if the Great South Road crossed the aukati, it would be seen as a declaration of war.

In 1863, more fighting broke out in the Taranaki, prompting Grey to get more troops from the British government. Soon he would have thousands of experienced Imperial soldiers at his disposal. The Waikato Maori could only mobilise a quarter of the soldiers that Grey could call on.

Lieutenant General Duncan Alexander Cameron, regarded as one of Britain's finest soldiers, was in command of the Imperial forces. In July 1863 Grey ordered Cameron to move against the Maori King. On 12 July Cameron sent his British regiments across the aukati and invaded the Waikato.

Cameron attacked a series of pa, moving deeper into the King's territory. His troops advanced up the Waikato River supported by a small fleet of armoured gun boats. As the troops pushed south they were involved in a series of battles against Maori forces that supported the King Movement. In November, Meremere pa was taken.

In late March 1864, after the victory at Rangiriri pa, Cameron and his colonial troops arrived at Orakau pa. The battle that followed was seen as a last stand for the Waikato Maori and their allies. After a three day attack, the British were ultimately victorious. Orakau would become the iconic battle of the New Zealand wars.

By April 1864, only nine months after the start of the war in the Waikato, it was over. Much of the Waikato was now under military occupation. The Maori King and his followers retreated into the heartland, the heavily forested and impenetrable land that became known as the King Country. They set a new aukati and Pakeha were warned that if they crossed it, they would be killed.

Retribution came in 1946 when the government awarded on-going monetary compensation to Waikato tribes. Later, in 1995 the government took responsibility for the invasion and apologised in a deed of settlement with Waikato tribes.

Today, the site of Rangiriri pa is split by State Highway One. In 1863 it was a place where about 500 Maori held a strong defensive line (in a small strip of land between the Waikato River and Lake Waikare) against attacking Imperial forces.

On 20 November 1863 Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron and his British troops moved up to Rangiriri and attacked the pa. Cameron sent gun boats up the river so troops could land behind, whilst those in front assaulted Maori defences with the first of three attacking parties.

This type of fighting was new to many of the Maori defenders. They were up against about 900 troops supported by artillery. Despite great determination, the British soldiers were forced back by the equally strong-willed Maori defenders.

When the Maori side became low on ammunition they asked the British for more so they could continue the fight. When the British refused, the Maori decided to negotiate and raised a white flag of truce. But Cameron's troops marched in and the battle was won.

The British losses were higher than expected, with 47 known deaths on each side. The troops called it "Bloody Rangiriri", as it was the greatest number of British killed in any of the battles of the New Zealand wars. With Rangiriri won it wasn't long before the whole of the Waikato was unlocked for Cameron's army and the settlers who followed close behind.

Seige of Orakau

In late March 1864, a few months after the victory at Rangiriri, Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron and his Imperial troops arrived at Orakau pa. The battle that followed was seen as a last stand for the Waikato people and their allies and became the iconic battle of the New Zealand wars.

Orakau pa was still unfinished when it was attacked by the 1,100 British troops. Over 300 defenders resisted for from 30 March - 2 April, led by the charismatic Rewi Maniapoto.

After three days of fighting and with little food or ammunition left, the defenders were in trouble. Cameron gave them the chance to surrender but the defenders were defiant and resorted to using peach stones as bullets.

On the third day Cameron gathered reinforcements. The defenders were desperate and decided to run to the river. It was at this point they suffered their highest casualties. In the cavalry charge that followed around 80 Maori were killed but many of the defenders, including Rewi Maniapoto, managed to escape across the Puniu River.

In April 1864, only nine months after the start of the war in the Waikato, it was over. The whole of the Waikato was now under military occupation.

The Maori King and his followers retreated into Rewi's heartland, the heavily forested and impenetrable land that became known as the King Country. They set a new aukati and Pakeha were warned that if they crossed it, they would be killed.

The Hauhau Movement

After the Waikato war, the New Zealand government wanted to get more control over their affairs so the British regiments began to leave. Fighting flared up all over the central North Island. Settlers and Maori allies took on more of the combat role and the fighting looked increasingly like a civil war.

As the tide of war turned against Maori, many tribes looked for hope in the direction of spiritual leaders. Many tried to stop the spiralling violence. One of them was Te Ua Haumene, a Christian prophet from Taranaki. Te Ua founded a new religion called Hauhau, after Te Hau (spirit of God), that was guided by principles of Pai Marire - goodness and peace.

Te Ua's followers believed that they were communicating with God through the winds and they erected huge poles with flags that they could dance around. Te Ua declared a Pai Marire zone as a new aukati, a zone of peace.

Hauhau members began travelling around the North Island where they converted many to the new faith. But if Te Ua preached peace, his followers used the beliefs to justify war and soon began to clash with government forces. In 1864 Te Ua's followers launched attacks in Taranaki and Whanganui.

In June 1866 the Hauhau were attacked in Gisborne by the combined forces of European soldiers and their Ngati Porou allies. After the battle a large number of Hauhau supporters were taken prisoner and exiled to the Chatham Islands (among them was Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki, the future military leader and prophet.)

Te Ua was one of several prophets to emerge in New Zealand during this tremulous period. The Hauhau movement was a reflection of the experience of colonised indigenous people all over the world.

The combination of traditional Maori beliefs and Christianity was a way of coping in a changing world. The people turned to the spiritual or supernatural for salvation and this is what Pai Marire offered.

At the start of the New Zealand wars, Maori still controlled most of the land in the North Island but even then it was slipping out of their hands.

In 1852 a new constitution was set up. It provided for a settler government and for self-governing Maori districts. However, Maori were largely excluded from Parliament because voting was restricted to men owning or renting property. No self-governing Maori districts ever came into being.

In the 1860s the settler government began passing legislation to seize more Maori land. Under the New Zealand Settlements Act, 1863, vast tracks of the best Maori land were confiscated from tribes who had fought against the government.  Half a million hectares were taken from Waikato and a million more from Taranaki, Bay of Plenty and the Hawkes Bay.

The legal explanation was that land was taken as punishment for rebellion. In reality it was the land that was wanted that was taken. The good land was confiscated and a large amount was set aside for military grants, rewards for serving in the colonial army. Soon new settlements were established in many frontier areas of the countryside. Land speculators took advantage and bought large areas of land cheaply.

Some reserves were set aside for those Maori who could show that they weren't part of the rebellion, but they were insignificant compared to their previous holdings. In many cases land confiscation was unfair and unjust with either the wrong people targeted or everyone put together regardless of whether or not they supported the Crown.

Using the law to separate Maori from their land continued from 1865 with a new engine of destruction, the Native Land Court. While the size of the initial land confiscations were enormous, they were nothing compared to what Maori lost through the Court.

By the end of the 19th Century most Maori land had gone. They lived in poor health, bad housing and high unemployment, the legacy of a defeated people.

Parihaka

From the mid-1860s a group of Maori in Taranaki took a new approach to resisting land confiscation - they became pacifists. Two religious leaders, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, led a highly effective protest that would inspire future generations of Maori.

Even after most of the fighting was over, Maori were still being displaced from their lands. Te Whiti and Tohu had experienced violence in the past and realised the only thing they could continue to protect was a sacred peace.

They established Parihaka, a Maori settlement where protecting sacred peace became as important as holding onto land. According to Te Whiti and Tohu's followers, the Holy Spirit descended on Parihaka in the form of an albatross, leaving a feather approving the path of peaceful resistance.

The site on which Parihaka stood was technically confiscated land. The government wanted it and ordered surveys. Te Whiti and Tohu's followers politely escorted the surveyors off the land. Te Whiti wanted justice, so he came up with a series of non-violent actions to prove his point. He ordered his men to plough up the land; settlers were outraged and flooded the government with telegrams demanding action.

The police began arresting ploughmen and around 200 were shipped to Dunedin where they worked on constructing a causeway. Working mostly in water, the bad conditions killed an average of one person per fortnight. Such imprisonments continued until 1898.

The government passed more harsh laws. New acts meant that Maori could be arrested for damaging a survey area, erecting a fence or just digging in the ground. No warrants were needed and prisoners could be detained indefinitely.

As the non-violent protests continued, Minister of Native Affairs John Bryce decided to move on Parihaka. Bryce assembled a force of 1600 armed men and gave Te Whiti 14 days to submit.

On 5 November, 1881 the massive force advanced on the peaceful village. The troops were met by a crowd of singing and dancing children. Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested, charged with intending to disturb the peace and led away.

Despite no Maori resistance, troops sacked and looted the village, destroyed most houses and crops and raped several women. The people were marched off the site and the two leaders were exiled to the South Island.

The events of 1881 have left painful memories for Te Whiti and Tohu's followers. Today, they continue to keep alive their leaders' memories and non-violent philosophies on their marae at Parihaka.

A few years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the government and E.G. Wakefield's New Zealand Company purchased around half the South Island from the Ngai Tahu tribe. The buyers wanted to fill the empty landscape with people.

Organised settlement began in the 1840s and continued into the 20th Century. Two of the earliest groups of immigrants were the Scottish Presbyterians in Otago and the English Anglicans in Canterbury.

The Scots started to arrive in 1848, led by the tough and religious Captain William Cargill and Reverend Thomas Burns. The Scots were hoping for a more moral and religious society than the one they left behind.

When the first ships arrived in New Zealand, some surveying had been done but very little else. In Britain the settlers had been given glowing reports of their new home and some expected an already established town with a mild climate. But they arrived just before winter and had a miserable first few months living in primitive barracks that lined the main street.

Further north, a successful new English settlement was soon developing around Banks Peninsula and the Canterbury Plains. John Robert Godley was the man who made the Canterbury settlement a reality. Godley believed in the class system and wanted to settle a full slice of English society in Christchurch. Godley, his wife and a group of labourers went to prepare Lyttelton for the first four ships. When the settlers arrived in December 1850 the settlement was reasonably well prepared.

Lyttelton was the port of entry but the Canterbury settlement was to be on the other side of the Port Hills. This was not to be the best place to build a city. Unlike other main cities of New Zealand, Christchurch was built on a swamp.

When economic development began to slow, Godley sought to encourage growth by supporting large-scale sheep farming. He dropped the price of land dramatically and settlers came, armed with capital, and Canterbury took off.

The decision to open up the land for large-scale sheep farming ensured the economic survival the Canterbury settlement. In Otago, Cargill reluctantly followed Godley's lead and lowered the price of land. Here too, sheep farming brought growth and stability to the struggling settlement. The South Island became an economic powerhouse and for three decades more people would live there than in the North.

In the mid-19th Century New Zealand was caught up in the grip of a worldwide gold fever. On 23 May 1861 Australian prospector Gabriel Read discovered gold in a river valley in the Tuapeka district, west of Dunedin.

As news of Read's find spread, men abandoned their jobs and headed to Gabriel's Gully. By early August a tent town had sprung up with 2,000 diggers working their claims. The gold rush created an influx of diggers. In six months Otago's population rose from 13,000 to 30,000 and Dunedin became New Zealand's first real city.

New goldfields in Dunston and around Cromwell and Lake Wakatipu were found and each discovery produced a bigger rush of fortune hunters.

Gold was also discovered on the West Coast. In 1864 Hokitika had nearly 5,000 inhabitants and was the sixth largest town in the country.

A few miners struck "pay dirt" and left the goldfields as wealthy men. Some Maori also got the fever. One, Raniera Ellison, was prospecting along the Shotover River when his dog was swept downstream. Upon retrieving the dog Ellison saw gold in the crevices and gathered 300 ounces, worth around $120,000 today. The area became known as Maori Point.

For every digger that struck gold, there were hundreds that struggled to even make a poor living. Life as a miner was hard and just getting to the diggings was a test of endurance. Miners would travel by foot, horse or wagon across rivers, hills, gullies and swamps. They would carry everything they needed, like food, tents and equipment.

The greatest threat to the diggers, other than the dangerous work itself, was nature. Many drowned in fast flowing rivers, in winter others froze to death or were buried under avalanches. Frostbite took its toll, as well as scurvy, diphtheria, scarlet fever and hunger.

Pick, pan and shovel were initially the simplest way to find gold but as it got harder to extract, more sophisticated methods were established. As equipment costs increased, miners banded together to form companies.

At the height of the gold rush up to 400,000 ounces per year came out of Central Otago.

Chinese Gold Miners

When the West Coast gold rushes began in 1864 the Otago goldfields started to go into decline. The authorities became anxious about the downturn in the economy so invited Chinese miners, who were already prospecting in Australia, to come to Otago.

The Chinese miners were usually relegated to sifting through what the Europeans had left behind. To minimise their disadvantages of language and capital, they had to be more systematic. They would work together in groups under a leader who spoke English and costs would be kept to a minimum.

The success of the Chinese was a source of jealousy among other miners. The Chinese experienced racial prejudice and sometimes resentment would erupt into racist attacks.

This racism became government policy when a heavy tax was placed on every Chinese immigrant. They were being punished for just being in New Zealand, despite having been invited by a provincial government.

These men were part of a huge stream of Chinese emigrants who left Southern China in the 19th Century. They sought work and fortune all over the world. They did not come as settlers but with the aim of getting capital to take home.

A few Chinese miners did decide to stay. One of the most notable was Choie Sew Hoy who built a revolutionary gold dredge in 1888. His dredge was the direct prototype of the New Zealand gold dredge that swept the world.

Today many Chinese tourists make the pilgrimage to New Zealand to see where their ancestors lived and worked. Throughout the goldfields are the graves of Chinese miners, many of which are empty. It was the last wish of the Chinese to be buried in their homeland so mass exhumations were made and their bodies were taken home.

In the 1870s Britain was suffering the stresses of the industrial age. Many cities had depressed economies and the agricultural structure had become dire. The rural population had increased 50 percent from earlier in the century and there were more labourers than there was work.

During the 1860s and 1870s common lands were often enclosed by landlords who turned them into commercial agriculture. This shut off the opportunities of rural labourers for additional sources of food and income.

Helston, Cornwall was the centre of the Cornish tin mining belt but job losses in the industry sent many migrants to New Zealand in the 1860s and 1870s. Further north, in the countryside of Oxfordshire, poor farmers were also forced to migrate after jobs were hit by the enclosure of fields, taking away their plots and common lands.

Union activity increased. A prominent activist, Joseph Arch, rallied workers and became the leader of the rural labouring unions of the 1870s. He helped set up a national union for farm workers to pressure employers to increase wages. Arch also encouraged migration to New Zealand as an alternative to rural poverty.

For many, it was hard to go after living in England for generations but they were left with few options. Labourers who came to New Zealand came with powerful memories of the harshness of the English class system. They were determined never to be tenant farmers again and were committed to the idea of individual farming families on their own land.

Almost 200,000 people had come to New Zealand in the gold rush years of the 1860s. In the 1870s another 200,000 would arrive. They came from all over the British Isles and in some years the New Zealand population would increase by over 30,000. By the end of the 1870s the Pakeha population had almost doubled.

By the 1880s New Zealand was a mixture of different accents, cultures and traditions. The immigrants who came from Britain were people who wanted to break the bonds of the Old Country's class barriers and restrictions. The attitudes they brought with them were the formative attitudes that would shape Pakeha society over the next 50 years.

Immigrant Ships

For 19th Century immigrants the trip to New Zealand would have been the greatest adventure of their lives. The journey was one of the more difficult because the minimum length of sailing was three months and sometimes much longer.

The passengers knew that once they made the journey they probably would never return. It would have been a difficult decision to make and it is an indication of the desperation of the people concerned that they were willing to make that choice.

Most of the immigrant ships were simply converted cargo ships with temporary accommodation in the hold for the passengers. When the ship was on the immigrant run the hold would have been bursting with baggage, bunks and people. The space was divided by flimsy partitions so each passenger only had a couple of metres to call their own.

There was noise, heat, smell and the ever-present threat of disease. Many of the ships' doctors were not very well trained and couldn't always be relied upon. Quite often there were deaths from various causes.

There was a class distinction on board immigrant ships. Steerage passengers were not allowed on the poop deck which was reserved for the first class passengers. This caused immense resentment.

Storms were an ever-present danger and even ordinary weather could upset some people who had never sailed before. But the daily concern of passengers was the food. The long voyage meant that fresh food was often in short supply. Passengers could supplement their rations by catching fish or birds.

Boredom and cabin fever stretched passenger nerves to breaking point. But that could be alleviated by going to church services, reading and writing, or by going to concerts and dances on the deck.

In the 1870s Auckland was an economic boom town. Many people had prospered with the growing economy and property speculation. The marketplace was frantic with people trying to get rich quick. The wealthy Auckland elite like John Logan Campbell, Joshua Firth and Thomas Russell all had vast estates and stately mansions.

The speculators who had become extraordinarily rich were about to see their extravagant lifestyles end, as wool exports and property speculation began overheating the economy.

In 1878 the Bank of Glasgow collapsed and sent financial shockwaves around the world. Soon New Zealand's economic boom went bust and the Long Depression began.

Companies all over the country were in trouble, loans couldn't be repaid and businesses folded. The Bank of New Zealand lost 800,000 pounds which is over 90 million dollars today. Some blamed the commercial elite who had profited so well from their speculations. John Logan Campbell, who had a huge business empire, took a big hit.

Whoever was to blame, the Long Depression alarmed colonists who thought they'd left such poverty and unemployment behind them. People who had begun to find security in the new colony were now seeing their dreams shattered.

The newly formed Salvation Army set up New Zealand's first soup kitchens. Crime, drunkenness and prostitution increased and some husbands deliberately left their wives and families so their children could get taken care of by charitable institutions.

Hundred of unemployed swaggers roamed the countryside looking for work or food. Even for those with jobs, life wasn't easy. As the economy was squeezed further, farmers tried to lower wages and in industries like clothing factories and woollen mills, men were replaced with women and boys.

People worked long, tedious hours for low pay in dirty, overcrowded conditions. These factories became known as 'sweatshops'. Victorian England which the migrants had left behind seemed to have somehow followed them to New Zealand.

During the Long Depression the ferment of new ideas like feminism, socialism and unionism would have a huge impact on life in New Zealand. It was time for a change and it would come in 1891 with one of our most astonishing governments - the Liberals.

The Liberal Party

In January 1891 an extraordinary new political party, the Liberals, became the government. They would introduce far-reaching new ideas that would become ingrained as part of the New Zealand character.

The party was a mixed group of men led by John Ballance, the founding editor of the Wanganui Herald.  The Liberal Party included: writer William Pember Reeves, a hard-nosed Scot named Jock McKenzie, and a rough pub-owner from the West Coast, Richard John Seddon.

They all shared the same vision, to fight the privileged classes and make New Zealand a better place for ordinary working people. Liberal reforms would turn New Zealand upside down.

As a result of the 1880s Long Depression, the Liberals took a new approach that necessitated a stronger hand for government. Ballance believed that equality of opportunity went to the heart of liberalism; this was a vigorous new idea for a new era.

But the government had a problem. At that time there were two Houses of Parliament. New laws had to pass through an unelected upper house or Legislative Council (similar to the British House of Lords) which was occupied by well-off, conservative men. The upper house was essentially a brake on the government's plans.

The Governor, Lord Onslow, refused to follow Ballance's advice to appoint some Liberal supporters in the upper house. Eventually this blockage was cleared and Ballance put his own men into the upper house and opened the door for Liberal reform.

When John Ballance died in 1893, his place was taken by Richard Seddon, who was considered so uncouth that many were shocked to see him in Cabinet. Seddon became caretaker Premier and then Premier from 1893 to 1906.

Seddon saw in the first awakenings of the welfare state and helped raise New Zealand to one of the highest standards of living in the world. Joseph Ward succeeded Seddon after his death in 1906 and the party remained in power until 1912.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in 1885 and had a whole range of concerns it wanted to address. Initially focusing on 'temperance', the restraint or outright prohibition of alcohol, they soon found that without the vote, they were empty voices. So they turned their focus to the fight for women's suffrage.

Kate Sheppard became New Zealand's leading suffragist. She launched a country-wide petition from her Christchurch base. Sheppard's loudest critic was the Dunedin Mayor, Henry Fish, an advocate for the brewery industries. Fish was alarmed at the threat the women's vote might pose to what he saw as the natural order of things and particularly to the sale of liquor.

Premier Richard Seddon was also vehemently opposed to the vote for women, but there was so much support for the cause that he was forced to compromise. Finally, in 1893 the largest petition yet was unrolled before the House. It contained over almost 32,000 signatures, demanding women's suffrage.

The Bill to give women the vote was put before Parliament. It got over the first hurdle when it passed through the lower house but Seddon was still opposed and planned to stop it in the upper house.

Seddon hoped that by nominating certain people to the Legislative Council and then asking them to vote against the Bill, he would be able to achieve its failure. But several key members were outraged at Seddon's plan and voted for the Suffrage Bill even though they actually opposed it.

So in this strange and almost accidental way, New Zealand became the first nation in the world to grant the vote to everyone over the age of 21.

The Reform Party

After Premier Richard Seddon died in 1906, national unity declined. The factions that were he held together now saw how different they really were from each other and a new ruling class was on the rise.

Under the Liberals rural growth had been astonishing. From 1891 to 1911 the number of dairy farmers, mostly in the North Island, grew from just 450 to 15,000. This created a new class of farmers and by 1911 the North Island was not only more populous but now more prosperous than the South.

A new political party, the Reform Party, led by wily farmer William Massey started to talk for this new rural sector. Massey also courted the increasing numbers of middle class white collar workers in the towns. These people also didn't like the radical unions who had grown strong under the Liberals.
 
At this time the unskilled were joining unions in large numbers. The two camps created enormous tension within the Liberal caucus. The increasing numbers of small farmers and unionised workers began to rethink their political options.

Massey led the Reform Party to power in 1912 and he remained Prime Minister until 1925.

Federation of Labour

In 1901 the Farmers Union was founded, partly to keep an eye on the industrial unions. They had the backing of William Massey's Reform Party and they demanded the abolition of the arbitration system. Some workers themselves were unhappy with the arbitration system.

In 1908 in the mining town of Blackball, Nelson-born miner Pat Hickey helped precipitate the most serious strike the country had seen in more than 15 years. Blackball miners were determined to get a half hour lunch break, instead of the usual quarter hour. The strike lasted three months and the workers eventually got the extra time.

The Blackball strike was big news around the Empire as New Zealand was supposed to be free of strikes because of arbitration. In the aftermath of Blackball, Hickey and Australian Robert Semple worked to strengthen the unions.

Semple was born on the New South Wales goldfields in 1873.  He was a flamboyant speaker and a handy boxer. He worked in mining and unionism in several states in Australia before being blacklisted and coming to New Zealand under an assumed name.

Here Semple helped set up the Federation of Labour in 1909 and Hickey became the voice of the more militant union.

The 'Red Feds', as its members were called, were many unskilled workers and invariably socialist. They had contempt for all political parties and promoted a growing belief in the idea of revolutionary unionism.

The 'Red Feds' were involved in industrial unrest in Waihi in 1912 and in the waterfront strikes of 1913. Some of the Federation's founding members, including Semple, later entered Parliament and eventually became members of the first Labour government of 1935.

In the North Island town of Waihi gold miners were fighting against the practice of competitive contracting that divided workers on the basis of their strength and age.

Life as a miner was tough. Work conditions were difficult and safety was non-existent.

In 1911 the Waihi miners withdrew from the arbitration system and enlisted the support of the Federation of Labour or 'Red Feds'. The following year they shut the mine down.

The mining company retaliated by bringing in non-union labour and enlisting the support of William Massey's new Reform government.

The company, backed by the new government, decided to send in the police. Soon ten percent of the nation's police force, over 80 policemen, were posted to Waihi.  The presence of the police provoked violence and one striker, Frederick George Evans, became the country's first unionist to die for his cause.

On 12 November 1912 Evans was attacked when 'scabs' and the police made a rush at the union hall. He was chased down an alleyway and was badly beaten. He died later in hospital. Unionists recall the day as 'Black Tuesday' and every year they still remember Evans as their martyr.

In 1912 industrial unrest was spreading and Waihi became the spark for some of the most destructive civil conflict the country has ever seen.

Waterfront Strikes

Throughout 1912 and 1913 industrial unrest spread fast. The unions called stop work meetings and wild-cat strikes. The government retaliated with repressive anti-union laws. The Employers Federation, the farmers and a lot of the militant workers were looking for a fight. Class war had been declared.

In October 1913 there were strikes on the Auckland and Wellington wharves.

William Massey's government enrolled farmers and white collar workers in a special police force known to the strikers as "Massey's Cossacks." The farmers that came into town on horseback were tough strike-breakers.

In Wellington things rapidly got out of control. There were massive crowds in the streets and wild excitement.  The wharves were shut down and the harbour was jammed with ships waiting to unload.

The government's hard man, Police Commissioner Cullen, threw his men into the fray. Mounted police and baton-wielding "specials" charged into the Wellington crowds.
 
On 8 November 1913 a general strike began in Auckland that continued for weeks.

But the "specials" took control of the Auckland and Wellington wharves and were able to work the ships. After this, the collapse of the nationwide strike was inevitable. The strikers were defeated.

These events left a legacy that would profoundly shape the future of New Zealand. Throughout 1912 and 1913 left wing groups staged a number of conferences. One of these created the forerunner of the Labour Party, which was itself established in 1916.

Boundless imperial fervour took New Zealand into our first overseas war. In South Africa the descendants of Dutch settlers were resisting the expansion of the British Empire into their independent Boer republics.

Britain wanted to control all of southern Africa, especially after gold was discovered in Johannesburg. And when war broke out in 1899, New Zealand knew which side it was on.

In September 1899 Premier Richard Seddon proposed in Parliament that New Zealand send a contingent of mounted troops to fight alongside the Mother Country. MP's rose to their feet and sang "God Save the Queen."

Even Seddon's 19 year old son, Richard junior, went to fight in South Africa.

Departures were festive affairs. The troops were looking forward to a great adventure. New Zealand's oldest surviving piece of film (held in the Film Archive in Wellington) shows the Second Contingent leaving Newtown Park, Wellington, in January 1900.

Over the next three years 6,500 men would head to South Africa to fight the Boer. The mounted New Zealanders rode across the South African veldt. The British had suffered a series of defeats but, in difficult conditions, our troops helped the army to push the Boers back. 

The Boer fighters became expert in hit-and-run guerrilla warfare.  To deny them supplies and shelter, the British burned farms and homes. The Kiwis, obeying orders, joined in with the looting of livestock and the burnings. This became a war that ensnared civilians as well as soldiers. Women and children were taken from their land and herded into a new British invention, the concentration camp.

By the time the New Zealand troops returned home, we knew for certain that we were good at war. The troops received a hero's welcome. Our loyalty to the Empire had been tested and not found wanting. We had survived our first overseas campaign with just 230 dead.

1905 All Blacks

In 1905 New Zealand seized a new chance to prove that we were 'Better British'. The All Black 'Originals' went to test themselves on the playing fields of British rugby and stunned the Motherland with innovative tactics that became hallmarks of New Zealand rugby.

Boer War soldier and leading Auckland provincial rugby player, Dave Gallaher, was captain of the team. He was in his mid-twenties when he went to the Boer War. He wrote about the war as an exciting, if sometimes dangerous, escapade.

As a rugby captain he fused army discipline with his natural ability, leading the team to 30 victories from 31 matches in Britain.

The 1905 tour was the triumph of a junior colony over the Motherland. Prime Minister Richard Seddon, nicknamed Minister of Football, was there to welcome the team home, along with over 20,000 Aucklanders who crowded the wharves.

By the start of the 20th Century the elements of a New Zealand popular culture had started to form. It was deep rooted in outdoor physical teamship. There was compulsory introduction of rugby, particularly in the elite secondary schools of the country.

Rugby was also seen as training for the battlefield. Outside New Zealand, the clouds of war were gathering and soon the sportsfield would be exchanged for a new field of conflict with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Dave Gallaher fought in the war and was killed at the battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

Outbreak of the First World War

In the first years of the 20th Century Europe was divided into two great alliances. On one side was Russia and France, supported by Britain; on the other was Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The alliances protected countries that feared neighbouring powers could destroy them. If one of the alliance partners was ever attacked, the others would rally to its defence.

In New Zealand we knew that a threat to Britain was also a threat to ourselves. As well as emotional ties to the Mother Country, our prosperity depended on the British economy. Britain was our major market for meat, wool and dairy products.

In the early 1900s the tensions were growing between the old empires of Europe. By 1914 the clouds of war were gathering.

As war loomed, the New Zealand government stepped up military training for young men. The Boer War had stimulated interest in school cadets, which was made compulsory for all boys.  By 1914 25,000 cadets were trained in 'square bashing' and military duties.

When their school days were done, they could continue their military training in the Volunteer Force. In 1910 the Government, acting on British advice, replaced the Volunteers with a new organisation, the Territorial Force. By April 1914 thousands of men were in the Territorials.

In August 1914 the political tensions in Europe finally erupted. An apparently isolated event, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, by a Serbian terrorist, set the great system of alliances grinding into action.

As soon as Britain declared war on Germany, New Zealand's Prime Minister William Massey announced that we would stand alongside the Mother Country.

New Zealanders rushed to enlist. 14,000 volunteered in the first week. They were eager for adventure, to see the world, to fight for King, Empire and Country.  With the low casualties of the Boer War, few had thoughts of death.

The main New Zealand Expeditionary Force left in October 1914. Ten troopships sailed with 8,500 men. It was the largest military contingent ever to leave New Zealand at one time. The troops thought they were heading for Europe to fight the Germans, but the fortunes of war would take them to a surprising first port of call.

While on their way to Europe, news arrived that Turkey had joined the war on Germany's side. The Kiwis and fellow Australians were ordered to disembark in Egypt to protect the Suez Canal. It was also an opportunity for extra training.

The British High Command then decided to try to knock Turkey out of the war. This required controlling the Gallipoli peninsula and advancing on the Turkish capital, present-day Istanbul.

The plan was bold in its conception but dangerously incomplete. On 25 April 1915 the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the 'Anzacs', landed at Gallipoli, along with British and French forces.

Trouble began right from the start when our troops were put ashore on the wrong beach, landing them at the base of a very steep set of hills and gullies. The Turks proved to be fierce defenders of the Gallipoli peninsula and few advances were made.

Taranaki farmer William Malone was commanding his Wellington Battalion. Malone and his men captured the high point of Chunuk Bair. This was one of the few brief victories of the whole campaign.  But after showing great courage, Malone was killed. Soon Chunuk Bair was lost.

Just before Christmas 1915, after seven months of bitter fighting with no success, the High Command withdrew the Allied forces from Gallipoli. Thousands of New Zealanders had been killed or wounded there. Nothing had been gained.

Gallipoli was a severe test of our loyalty to the Empire and our ability to cope with defeat. It would leave a terrible mark in New Zealand's history, but the spirit of the Anzacs would live forever in memory. Anzac Day, first commemorated in 1916, was recognised as a national day soon after the war ended.

The Home Front

In New Zealand there was open hostility to anything German. Propaganda about German atrocities in Europe only increased the hysteria. In 1915 3,000 Wanganui citizens, fuelled by rumours of disloyalty, went on the rampage. They attacked several businesses with German names.

The government classified Germans and Austrians living in New Zealand as enemy aliens. Many would spend the war interned in camp on Somes Island in Wellington Harbour.

During the war a coalition of the Reform and Liberal parties led New Zealand.  Reform's William Massey was Prime Minister. Sir Joseph Ward of the Liberals was Deputy PM and Minister of Finance. It was an uneasy alliance, neither liking nor trusting the other. When one went to Europe to attend wartime conferences and visit the troops, the other tagged along.

From August 1916 Massey and Ward spent more time overseas than in New Zealand, making so many visits the soldiers called them the "Siamese twins." Massey revelled in his role as a statesman and also found time to chat to wounded soldiers, including his own son, George.

As the war continued the demand for reinforcements was high. By late-1916 the government had introduced conscription and by the war's end, around 32,000 conscripts had joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

These measures were not universally popular, provoking a strong reaction from some religious and philosophical groups. Harsh treatment was often meted out to conscientious objectors.

But by 1917 many men were refusing their patriotic medicine. 10,000 never registered or failed to respond after being balloted. About 1,500 were caught, while others took the oath and the uniform and then deserted.

People increasingly began to realise that war was a dangerous pursuit. Some men went bush or worked for farmers who did not question their papers. Some chose the close-knit West Coast mining and forestry communities where sympathetic locals protected them.

Maori reaction to war depended largely on tribal allegiances.  Those who had fought alongside the colonial troops in the wars in 19th Century New Zealand were keen to serve, but others were more reluctant.

Although the British Government ruled that native troops would not be used in a conflict between European races, the policy soon changed once Indian troops set off for France.

A Maori contingent was recruited, trained, and set sail for the war.

A plan to enlist greater numbers of Maori to boost recruitment was endorsed by the Maori MPs, led by Apirana Ngata and Maui Pomare. Just as Pakeha had opted for 'Better British', Pomare too had tried to shepherd his people away from their pure tribal links to a wider patriotism, as citizens of the Empire. Many Maori were happy to serve.

But other Maori retained painful memories of Empire. The iwi who had felt the full force of land confiscations after the New Zealand Wars, especially in the Waikato, opposed any participation in this war. The government's response was harsh.

A number of young Waikato men who resisted conscription were imprisoned at Narrow Neck camp in Auckland. The Waikato leader, Te Puea Herangi, sat outside to show the tribe's support.

Fortunately, the war ended before any of Te Puea's people could be forced to serve overseas.

Women's Role in War

Back home New Zealanders watched the tragic events from a distance. Apart from sending soldiers, our main job in the war was to supply food and wool to Britain and her armies.

Britain agreed to buy all our meat and dairy products. But with so many men fighting, there were too few to keep agriculture and industry going. Some women moved into men's jobs in government, industry and services. It was assumed that they would vacate these positions when the men came home.

To help fill the void of absent fathers, husbands and sweethearts, women turned their anxieties to practical use. Hundreds of voluntary patriotic and fundraising groups were set up. Many were championed by Lady Liverpool, the wife of the Governor-General. Women sent food parcels and goods such as knitted socks and balaclavas.

New Zealand nurses were also on the battlefield.  The nursing service was set up in 1915 by Hester McLean. The first 50 nurses officially left from New Zealand for England soon after.

McLean wrote of her charges at Hazebrouck Hospital, France, that they had hundreds of new cases arriving after each assault and how the nurses too suffered from wet, rotten 'trench feet' so badly that they could not wear shoes.

From May 1916 until demobilisation, over 40,000 New Zealanders passed through the hospitals dedicated to their care.

The Battle of Passchendaele

In early 1916 most of the reinforced New Zealand Expeditionary Force were mobilised on the Western Front - a nightmare of trenches, forts and barbed wire stretching 750 kilometres across Belgium and France from the English Channel to the Swiss border.

To the east were the Germans and their allies; to the west the British and French and the forces of their empires. The High Command on both sides sacrificed millions of men with enormous casualties.

By mid-1917 the British generals, led by Sir Douglas Haig, were convinced that the German lines could be broken at Flanders in Belgium. This area, east of the destroyed town of Ypres, would be the scene of a battle that would be terrible even by Western Front standards. It is now remembered as the battle of Passchendaele, named after the ruined village held by the Germans, on a low ridge above Ypres.

Haig's plan relied on a heavy artillery bombardment to blow up the enemy's barbed wire and concrete pillboxes before the infantry advanced.  Initially it seemed to work but as rain fell steadily, the whole region turned into a quagmire. Troops and guns bogged down in thick stinking mud.

In September 1917 Haig inspected the New Zealand Division before the next attacks. The main New Zealand attack began at 5.30 a.m. on 12 October 1917. The New Zealanders moved up the rain-drenched slope but because of the mud, much of the artillery was not in position or firing from stable platforms.

The first New Zealanders killed were hit by friendly fire as shells from our own guns fell on their lines. Still, our infantry rose and advanced, following the barrage as it crept forward.

But the German pillboxes were intact. The barbed wire was not cut or blown apart as planned. The New Zealanders, if they stayed alive to reach the wire, found it impenetrable. Some tried to get through and were killed by machine gun fire. By nightfall the remnants had pulled back.

840 New Zealanders were killed in the attack and nothing was gained.

The battle of Passchendaele was ill-conceived and badly planned. On 12 October 1917 New Zealand lost hundreds of soldiers in the first few hours of battle. It was one of the worst human disasters in our entire history.

When the Germans launched a massive attack on the Western Front in 1918, smashing through the Allied lines, the stalemate of the trenches was broken. By the end of April 1918 the German advance was halted, with terrible loss of life on both sides.

In August the Allied armies began their offensive, using the New Zealanders as shock troops. It was the beginning of the end.

The New Zealand Division pushed on to reach Le Quesnoy, a French fortress town, where the Germans had prepared their defences within the centuries-old moats and ramparts.

Choosing not to destroy the town, the New Zealanders made an infantry assault over the walls, using scaling ladders. As the Germans surrendered, the townsfolk celebrated. Le Quesnoy now has streets and squares with New Zealand names and liberation by the Kiwis is still remembered each year.

All along the front the German army was in retreat. An armistice - in effect, a German surrender - was negotiated. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The First World War was over.

From a total population of just over one million, New Zealand had suffered 60,000 casualties and 18,000 deaths. Anzac Day, first commemorated in 1916, was recognised as a national day soon after the war ended.

In 2004 New Zealand received its last dead from the First World War - a soldier who had died on the Western Front and, like many of his fellows, had been buried in a grave without a name. He returned home as the 'Unknown Warrior', to represent all those who have died in the service of our country.

The First World War was called the 'Great War' and 'the war to end all wars'. The waste of human life was never meant to be repeated. But twenty short years later the lesson remained unlearned, and New Zealand would again answer the call.

When the armistice for the First World War was official, the celebrations were already in full swing. People left work and rushed into the streets. But the celebrating crowds were helping spread a deadly disease, a strain of influenza that was ravaging the world. More than 40 million would die in just four months.

In New Zealand the Spanish flu, as it came to be called, killed more than 8,000 in just a few weeks. New Zealand was in the grip of the worst epidemic it had ever known.

For many of the returning soldiers it was not the happy homecoming they so desperately longed for.

No one knew how the flu came here but people had a suspect. In October 1918 the steamer Niagara arrived in Auckland with flu on board. Also on board were Prime Minister William Massey and his deputy returning from Europe. Unbeknown to the public at the time, cables show Massey was willing to stay offshore in quarantine.

But the ship was allowed to dock and within two weeks thousands died from the deadly virus. Massey was blamed but the flu probably came to New Zealand with returning soldiers. However it arrived, its effects were devastating.

All around the country inhalation stations were set up. People queued to be sprayed with zinc-sulphate. They called it 'fumigation' but it didn't stop the flu. It may even have helped to spread it.

For Maori the flu was catastrophic. Maori were still a rural people, many lived in poor, overcrowded homes and most had lost their land. The Maori death rate from flu was seven times higher than the non-Maori rate. More than 2,000 died.

In the Waikato Te Puea Herangi fought it almost alone. Te Puea's village at Mangatawhiri was decimated. For weeks her launch carried makeshift coffins up river for burial on Taupiri Mountain. She visited villages and took in orphaned children and looked after them at Mangatawhiri.

Suburbia

Although the economy was unstable for much of the 1920s, New Zealand was moving ahead. The government looked to be succeeding at creating a nation of property owners and one of the most visible and enduring changes of this time was the rapid growth of suburbia.

Suburbs became the dominating feature of our towns. Town planning experts promoted a new kind of suburb which they believed would produce healthy, vigorous and patriotic citizens. The home of choice was the Californian Bungalow which set the architectural style in new suburbs like Point Chevalier in Auckland and Lyall Bay in Wellington.

These houses had been invented in California. Builders here copied them from pattern books. They were cheap to build and quickly replaced the colonial villa. The new homes were full of mod cons like electric lights, hot points, built-in cupboards and proper bathrooms and the toilet and laundry moved in from the backyard.

As the new suburbs expanded, more New Zealanders came to realise the city version of the old colonial dream. Owning a house and a piece of land was a sign of security and moving up in the world. It was the image of New Zealand as a 'working man's paradise.'

The bungalow epitomised the 'Happy Home', a catchphrase of the 1920s. This idea saw domestic bliss as the key to a strong and contented society. But the happy homes had a hidden motive. Women enjoyed only some of the freedoms of the time. Newspapers started to include women's pages with practical and sentimental articles about the home and how to make it even happier.

The government took a strong role in cementing the 'home ideal'. Home-craft studies were established in schools. Women were employed in limited types of jobs and were paid less than men. And from this time women could no longer be appointed to permanent positions in the public service. 

But as the 1920s came to an end, our land of happy homes was shaken by the Great Depression, an event that almost shattered our belief in ourselves and in New Zealand as 'God's Own Country.'

The "Roaring Twenties" delivered glitz and glamour and brought big changes to New Zealand. There was a new pace to life and the good times promised at the end of the war had finally arrived. In the 1920s New Zealanders enthusiastically embraced the new age with its new fashions and new experiences.

The expansion of the new suburbs was made possible by the spreading tram lines and bus routes. It was the start of the commuting age with councils subsidising fares and suburban men travelling daily to work in the town centres.

We took to cars almost as quickly as Americans or Australians. Although there were far fewer cars, the road toll in relation to the number of vehicles was much worse than today.

Cars greatly expanded the opportunities for family recreation. They made possible the Sunday drive, the farming family's weekly trip to town, and the start of that great New Zealand institution, the camping holiday.

Our social and cultural life was changing. New Zealanders were enjoying more leisure and joined organisations and sports clubs. We loved sport and there was a big rise in spectator sports.

Rugby was king and with the great 'Invincibles' touring side we had the best rugby team in the world. Young Maori fullback, George Nepia, was a player of immortal fame. Even Prime Minister Coates found time to enjoy his favourite sport, horse racing.

Electricity brought new kinds of entertainment to the home, '78' records, music to listen to and to dance to, like music from early pop stars such as Epi Shalfoon. Epi's band, 'The Melody Boys', played in towns throughout New Zealand. He was as popular as any star today.

Trams and buses also gave families easy access to that other great electric entertainment, the 'pictures.' A trip to the cinema was an escape into a world of fantasy.

The Roaring Twenties was a boom time when New Zealand turned away from our colonial past to truly embrace the 20th Century.

The Great Depression

In October 1929 the US stock market crashed in the most catastrophic collapse in share prices of all time. The Wall Street crash set off a ten-year, world-wide economic depression, the like of which had not been seen since the 19th Century.

In New Zealand the effects were devastating. The security we had come to enjoy in the previous decade was shattered and the 'Great Depression' became a defining period in our history.

Contrary to what most people believed the root cause of the Depression was outside our government's control. New Zealand's economy was dependent on trade and the dramatic collapse of overseas prices for wool, meat and dairy products ruined the economy. The warehouses of Britain, our chief market, filled with cheap products from other countries; ours filled with products we couldn't sell.

Soon after the Depression hit the then Prime Minister, the uninspiring George Forbes, threw in the towel. A coalition was formed. Forbes remained Prime Minister but Gordon Coates was effectively back in charge.

The coalition faced huge problems. The first was to how to pay back all the money we had borrowed from British banks in the 1920s. The government called together all the political parties to help find a solution.

The massive borrowing for public works and those mortgages for 'happy homes' had left the country with huge debts. There was a very real danger that as the Depression squeezed Britain, its banks would call in the New Zealand loans. The government couldn't default because it depended on loans.

Unexpectedly, during the Depression crimes of violence didn't go up but theft did and so did suicide. Even nature added to the distress that New Zealand was suffering. In February 1931 an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale hit Napier and Hawkes Bay, killing 256 people.

The effects of the Depression were uneven. Many people were unemployed. But those with jobs could enjoy the fact that the prices for most things came down. Sales of some products actually rose during the Depression as electrical goods, cars and electricity use in homes all went up.

But the Depression still hurt a lot of people and they were looking for something to give them hope. Their old leaders seemed to have failed them and people yearned for a new vision.

When the Depression hit rock bottom in 1932 New Zealand's registered unemployment rate was 15 percent, far less than some other countries, but its social impact was felt everywhere.

The government's ability to deal with unemployment was limited by a lack of money. But it was also driven by an ingrained belief that there should be no pay without work. The measures it used weren't very successful.

In the 1920's Coates had been part of a government that had helped workers into 'happy homes' with cheap mortgages. Now he stood by as unemployed people had their homes sold up by their creditors. Evictions were often brutal and humiliating.

At first relief schemes were run by local councils. But the number of unemployed rose so fast that councils had to ration the work. They ran out of useful jobs and put men on to pointless tasks and into harsh remote work camps.

Soon after the Depression began, farmers' incomes sank to zero. The government saw that if something wasn't done, farmers would walk off the land or get sold up by the banks. The farming industry would collapse and New Zealand would go with it.

Special laws were passed to allow farmers to defer payments, reduce their interest rates, or even to write off portions of their debt. Gradually production rose and costs fell. The extraordinary measures worked and New Zealand farms were saved and only a few farmers walked off the land.

The government tried to pay back its loans by cutting its own expenditure. The wages of all government employees were cut and so many men were laid off from the Public Works Department that it almost disappeared.

1930's Riots

The Depression years had seen a rise in political activism, but until 1932 things had been largely non-violent. Then, in the 'angry autumn' of April and May of 1932, the despair of the unemployed turned to violence when rioting broke out in all the main centres.

The first and most violent was in Auckland's Queen Street. An orderly protest against wage cuts became militant when it was joined by a group of relief workers. The march exploded into a riot on the steps of the Auckland Town Hall. Shop windows were smashed along Queen Street and goods were looted. Department store Smith and Caughey was the only business on Queen Street that had taken out insurance against riot damage.

In Wellington relief workers rioted along Lambton Quay after a march on Parliament to meet Gordon Coates brought no results. The next day 2,000 people who couldn't get into a union meeting waited for speakers to come out and address them. When they did the speakers were pulled down by police. The crowd threw rocks and the police charged them with batons.

There were further disturbances in Christchurch and Dunedin.

After the riots the government tried to minimise political dissent by setting up work camps that were often in harsh and remote locations.

For New Zealanders, their old leaders seemed to have failed them and people yearned for a new vision. Like many countries we would turn out our old government and go down a different political path.

The Rise of Labour

The establishment of the Labour Party in 1916 brought socialists in Parliament together. Labour had the purest socialist ideals, they wanted every sector of the economy in public ownership and wanted the government to own all land.

In 1919 an Australian socialist, Harry Holland, became leader of the Labour Party. But his ideas weren't well received in New Zealand. Labour's policy of forbidding the private ownership of land was not popular for people who dreamed of owning their own home.

By the end of the 1920s the Labour Party had mellowed and was decidedly less Marxist. It no longer wanted the state to own all the land and supported the ownership of private property. This was a turning point that finally made it attractive to many New Zealanders.

But its leader Harry Holland was still a liability, tainted by his militant and unappealing image. Critics in the party wanted to remove him but he still had a strong personal following. Then fate took a hand.

In October 1933 the Maori King Te Rata Mahuta died. Holland attended his funeral. He arrived from Wellington with other dignitaries including Apirana Ngata. But Holland felt ill. Ngata advised him not to climb Waikato's Taupiri Mountain with the funeral procession. But Holland ignored the advice and soon after the burial he suffered a heart attack and died.

Maori saw Holland's death as an omen and prophesied that this sacrifice would mean the success of Labour at the next election. Like many countries we would turn out our old government and go down a different path that for us would produce a charismatic and revered leader and one of the most defining periods in our whole story.

In the middle of the 1930s New Zealand was just catching up with the jazz age. There was new hope. We had survived the Great Depression and it was time to look ahead.

On Wednesday 27 November 1935 New Zealand held its 25th general election. It was one of the most important days in our history. By late evening people had gathered in the main centres. They crowded outside newspaper offices to watch as the election results were posted high on huge notice-boards, like cricket scores.

In houses with radios family and neighbours were gathered around the sets. On the election hustings they had heard radical promises, so people listened to the voices through the static. What they heard now was a revolution.

The New Zealand Labour Party swept to power. They took 53 of the 80 seats in Parliament and their supporters were jubilant.

And New Zealand had a new saviour in Michael Joseph Savage, an unlikely man to be Prime Minister. An Australian, Savage came to New Zealand and got involved in unions and politics. In 1933 he became leader of the Labour Party and would have a deeper personal impact on ordinary New Zealanders than any Prime Minister in our history.

Savage arrived in Wellington 5 days after the election. His welcome was tumultuous as thousands of people packed the streets. Everyone wanted to see the man who would change their lives.

Savage gathered talented men around him like Peter Fraser, Bob Semple and Walter Nash. These men had been waiting a long time for this moment. Many had been activists in their youth. Now they could put their radical ideas into practice. It's been said a new class had taken over the government.

The Welfare State

The first thing the Labour government did was give a Christmas bonus to the unemployed and a week's holiday to people on relief work.

Savage wanted to promote the state as the chief caregiver and source of welfare for all the people. His promises to assist Maori were part of Labour's wider campaign to radically change New Zealand.

Labour believed that everyone had the right to live in a decent house. So it moved quickly to provide state rental housing. 12 Fife Lane in the Wellington suburb of Miramar was the first designated state house. It was the government's show home. When the McGregor family moved in on 18 September 1937, the Prime Minister and Cabinet were on hand as furniture movers.

Labour's greatest achievement was the introduction of 'social security'. It put into practice its belief that the state should support all citizens from the cradle to the grave. The Social Security Act, 1938 gave a pension to everyone at the age of 65. Eventually legislation would provide free maternity services, family benefits, and free visits to the doctor. This was the all-caring welfare state.

To the government this was practical socialism, or applied Christianity. To the National Party it was applied lunacy. The next election in 1938 was fought over the issue of social security. Labour produced a campaign film with a catchy title, "New Zealand: History in the Making."

The election result was a massive endorsement for Labour. It won 56 percent of the total vote. But after the jubilation and celebration there would be a price, both public and private, which the nation would have to pay.

Labour's reforms and a foreign exchange crisis meant the government was short of money. In 1939 Finance Minister, Walter Nash, went cap in hand to the British banks. They drove a hard bargain but, after lecturing him on Labour's excesses, they provided a 16 million pound loan.

Fortunately the economy had been growing since the mid-1930s and unemployment was falling. New Zealanders were spending again.

Radio listenership had exploded since the mid-1920s and radios became one of the most popular consumer items. By 1939 almost every house in New Zealand had one. For the Labour government radio wasn't just a source of entertainment, it was a propaganda tool and a way to counter the anti-government views of the conservative newspapers.

In 1936 the government decided that it would run broadcasting, so it took over nearly all the previously private radio stations. Savage kept an eye on everything that was broadcast. The news bulletin was effectively written in the Prime Minister's office and broadcast without addition or alteration.

Savage announced that Parliament would be broadcast on radio. He proclaimed that the people could then get the truth straight from Parliament.

The government had two networks, an upmarket national programme and a broad appeal commercial network.

The national programme was under the control of James Shelley, the country's best known academic. He was a hands-on broadcaster, performing in radio plays and even reading the nightly news bulletin. Shelley's influence on our culture was profound. Under his guidance the Symphony Orchestra was founded, local drama blossomed on radio, and "The Listener" began its long run as our most successful magazine.

Running the commercial service was Colin Scrimgeour, another Labour appointee. 'Uncle Scrim', as he was known, was a populist and one of our first radio stars. In the early 1930s he'd set up a popular non-denominational radio church called the Friendly Road.

Scrimgeour shared many of the social concerns of the new government. A few days before the election that brought Labour to power Scrim's broadcast had been jammed. George MacNamara, the Postmaster-General, had sent one of his technicians to Auckland with orders to jam 1ZB as soon as Scrim started to talk about the election. Scrimgeour found the offending jamming apparatus the next day and a real political furore began.

Scrim promoted the career of another radio star, Maud Basham or 'Aunt Daisy'. She was a very successful broadcaster and would be on air for years with her homespun advice, handy hints, and numerous recipes.

Centennial

The 1930s ended with a spectacular outpouring of patriotic nationalism. In 1940 the country was a hundred years old and to celebrate, a huge centennial exhibition was planned.

On a 22 hectare site, in a windy Wellington suburb, the government built a series of exhibition halls to showcase what had happened in the country since the Treaty of Waitangi had been signed a hundred years before. They also had sideshows for the kids.

During the six months it was open the centennial exhibition had more than two and a half million visitors. This was almost a million more than the country's entire population.

Maori also celebrated the centennial, though many still had misgivings. In the hundred years since the British had annexed the country Maori had seen their culture all but extinguished. However, a new meeting house was carved for the Waitangi Treaty grounds and opened under the eye of elder statesmen, Apirana Ngata.

But the shine of the centennial was dimmed by shocking news. In March 1940 Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage died.

Outbreak of World War Two

In the 1930s Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were preparing for war and began re-arming Germany. Britain and France tried to appease Hitler, but in September 1939 his forces invaded Poland. Britain declared war on Germany and where Britain went, we went too.

New Zealand was poorly prepared to fight a war. The army had been run down in the 1930s and couldn't put a fighting force into the field. Despite this, young New Zealander's volunteered in their thousands to form an army division.

This time most Maori tribes supported going to war and wanted to join the fight. Apirana Ngata argued again that service and sacrifice were the price of citizenship. But Ngata and the other Maori MPs demanded that Maori form a fighting battalion of their own and not serve as labourers, as had happened in the First Word War.

Peter Fraser, who was Deputy Prime Minister, became Prime Minister after Savage died in 1940. He was a tough-minded, able, and intelligent Scot who had his own vision for New Zealand. For him equality of opportunity meant equality of sacrifice.

Despite the numbers pouring into the recruitment offices Fraser decided to introduce conscription. During the First World War he had gone to jail for opposing conscription. Now, in 1940, he changed his mind. Some New Zealander's resisted conscription but Fraser was undeterred. Objectors who didn't get exemptions were put into detention.

Fraser knew that the Second World War would be different and that the Western allies would have to make a total commitment to war if they were to beat the Nazi dictatorship.

In early 1941 the New Zealand division was training in Egypt before finally going into action. In March they were sent to Greece to help protect the country from a threatened German invasion. But the Allies were so outnumbered that defeat was inevitable.

Eventually thousands of soldiers were taken off the Greek mainland before the German armies overran them. Every available ship was crammed with soldiers and men were ordered to abandon their possessions to save weight.

Many of the Kiwis who escaped off the mainland recovered on the island of Crete. For the first few weeks Crete was like a holiday. But the Germans had a daring plan to invade the island by air, using their elite parachute regiments.

Such an invasion had never been tried before. When British code-breakers learned of the plans Winston Churchill decided that the Germans should be given a bloody nose. General Freyberg became the senior officer commanding Crete. He was told to prepare to defend the island. This was a big job as he had fighting men but he was short of planes, tanks, and radios.

The key to holding Crete was the island's airfields. The German's would need to capture at least one of them to succeed. A New Zealand battalion and some units in reserve held the airfield at Maleme. This would be where Crete was won or lost.

The German attack began on the morning of the 20 May 1941. Thousands of German assault troops glided in from over the sea and filled the air with parachutes. They were sitting ducks but some Germans did reach the ground alive and began fighting back.

At Maleme airfield the Germans gained a foothold. The Kiwi defenders were stretched and by nightfall the battalion commander felt he could no longer hold on. His brigadier, Southland farmer and MP James Hargest, was exhausted and out of touch with the action so agreed to abandon the airfield.

This action was the turning point of the battle. The Germans took Maleme airfield and poured in reinforcements. Soon the Kiwis were fighting for survival. The invaders gained the upper hand and Crete was lost.

Freyberg had to order another evacuation. His men were soon retreating over the Cretan mountains to the south coast for rescue again by the Royal Navy.

Prime Minster Peter Fraser was waiting in Egypt to meet the rescued troops. He was furious that the New Zealand government hadn't been fully informed about the campaign. More than 2,000 Kiwis had been killed or wounded in Greece and Crete and 4,000 left behind to be captured, all for no apparent purpose.

Home Guard

On 7 December 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and invaded Malaya. By early 1942 the war was moving into home waters with the Japanese closing in on Australia. Japanese troops were island hopping across the Pacific and their planes were bombing Darwin.

Aussies and Kiwis alike felt the enemy was at the gate. Australian soldiers overseas were sent back to defend the homeland. But Winston Churchill convinced Peter Fraser to keep our troops overseas.

American troops came to New Zealand and provided a sense of security. But we also made a huge commitment to our own defence. All along the coast pill boxes and gun emplacements were built. Thousands of men were called up and trained to repel an invasion and soldiers patrolled the beaches waiting for the enemy.

Maori also contributed on the home front. They were led by the Maori War Effort Organisation, formed at the instigation of the Ratana MPs. The organisation followed custom and tradition. It was autonomous, Maori working with Maori, solving problems in their own way. It set up tribal committees to recruit volunteers for the Maori Battalion.

It was hoped that the Maori War Effort Organisation would continue after the war, but politicians feared a resurgence of Maori nationalism and the organisation was absorbed into the government's Department of Maori Affairs.

Women too were increasingly brought into the war effort. They enlisted in the Army, Navy and Air Force. And like many men, women were 'man-powered'. This was the term used by the government for its direction of labour into essential industries.

As the war continued, New Zealand became increasingly drawn into the long and bitter Pacific campaign.  The Army sent a division, the Air Force its squadrons, the Navy most of its ships.

By early 1944 New Zealand was overcommitted on all fronts. So the decision was made to withdraw our troops from the Pacific and send some of them to the main New Zealand force, which was now fighting on a new front in Italy.

In 1941 and 1942 the New Zealand army division in the Middle East helped stop the German advance in Libya and Egypt. Later they would play a significant role in the battle of El Alamein.

In a carefully planned offensive the New Zealand division punched through the enemy lines. As the Germans and Italians retreated, the British army pursued them. For six months our division harried the enemy across the vast expanses of North Africa.

It was a 3,000 kilometre chase, which finally ended in Tunisia when the German and Italian forces surrendered. It was General Freyberg and his division's finest hour, a great victory in which we'd played a significant part.

In 1943 the New Zealanders were flung into the treacherous fighting on the Italian peninsula. The Italian countryside was criss-crossed by rivers and mountains. It was a defender's paradise. Our division suffered heavy casualties in unsuccessful assaults at Orsogna and in the town beneath the old Benedictine monastery at Cassino.
 
After months of fighting, the German lines were broken and the Kiwis took part in the slow advance north. All across Europe the Germans were in retreat.

Finally the Germans surrendered. Victory in Europe, VE Day, was celebrated on 8 May 1945. Three months later the war with Japan was over. The 'Empire of the Rising Sun' surrendered after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.

After six years of war New Zealand was exhausted, but we celebrated and prayed and gave thanks that no more of our young New Zealand blood would be spilled.

From all over the world ships were crowded with returning servicemen and women. 200,000 New Zealander's had served in the armed forces during the war. About 140,000 went overseas and nearly 12,000 were killed. Thousands more returned with injuries and wounds, many had psychological scars which would be slow to heal.

After the war everyone wanted to settle down and get back to ordinary life. Getting a job and a family were high priorities. Most people wasted no time doing both.

By 1949 the Labour government looked increasingly tired and out of touch. The National Party, led Sid Holland, became more vocal and demanded more freedom of choice, and an end to excessive bureaucracy. But National was wise enough to accept the Welfare State. The voters wanted a bright new tune and National romped home to victory in 1949.

By the early 1950s the Second World War was beginning to recede into memory. The entire country was re-making itself. There were new jobs and new families and New Zealanders were early adopters of modern styles flowing in from overseas.

But as one 'hot war' ended, a new 'cold war' was beginning. New alliances and enemies had emerged and resulted in a new world order that was split along an 'iron curtain'. The Soviet Union and her allies were on one side and the United States and her allies on the other.

With the threat of a third world war and the fear of the atomic bomb, New Zealand stood alongside Britain and the United States. We spent almost three times as much on defence in the 1950s and 60s as we did in the 1980s.

And there was a new war to fight. After the Second World War the Korean peninsula had been split into two separate Koreas. In 1950 North Korea, supported by China and Soviet Union, invaded its southern neighbour.

New Zealand sent 4,700 volunteer troops to Korea as part of a Commonwealth division. Our troops, known as Kayforce, would spend three years fighting on the peninsula.

But it was a war few people back home cared much about. After it was over the troops came to be considered the 'forgotten force'. When the fighting came to an end in 1953, 33 New Zealanders had lost their lives.

New Allies

The Cold War between the great powers was a source of tension for New Zealanders who feared they wouldn't be safe even at the bottom of the world.

Until the 1950s Britain had always been the mainstay of our defence policy. But now we were worried about our own safety and were beginning to ask if we could depend on our traditional ally for security and leadership.

We began to shift our gaze from Europe to the Pacific, where the United States was playing a growing role. New Zealand wanted the protection offered by a world superpower.

This came first in the shape of the ANZUS alliance, formed when the Pacific Security Treaty was signed in San Francisco in September 1951. The partners were Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Britain, our traditional ally, was not part of the alliance.

Each partner agreed to regard a threat to the security of one of them as a threat to all.

The need for a superpower ally was made more urgent as the arms race escalated. Nuclear testing in the Pacific brought the danger right to our own back door and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 seemed to bring us all to the brink of annihilation.

On our own shores some people were looking for enemies within. Links between communism and unions were seen to be especially ominous in New Zealand.

1951 Waterfront Dispute

In New Zealand links between communism and unions worried many people. The Watersiders Workers Union was seen as the most sinister of all. They had been on strike many times in recent years and the new National government aimed to get tough.

In early 1951 the watersiders and the government clashed in one of the worst industrial disputes in New Zealand's history.

When there was a disagreement over pay in 1951 the watersiders union banned working overtime. Their employers retaliated by locking them out. The National government saw a chance to show who was in charge and it became a bitter, drawn-out struggle.

Prime Minister Sidney Holland came down hard on the wharfies. The government declared a State of Emergency. It imposed drastic restrictions on union activity, curbed free speech and made it an offence to help locked-out workers or their families.

These measures incensed many who thought the government had gone too far. The wharfies were joined by miners, freezing workers and seamen. More than 20,000 workers downed tools.

Undaunted by the scale of the dispute, Prime Minister Holland continued his campaign. He deliberately set worker against worker by forming 'scab' unions from men who wanted to return to work. He used the army and the police to protect these men from the fury of the militant workers.

As the government set out to prove that they could control the unions, their members clashed with police in a series of ugly incidents where tempers frayed and blood flowed. But the real fight was for the opinion of the public. The unionists could not put their side of the story because the government made sure they had no voice.

As the ships lined up on the wharves and farmers couldn't get their wool away, a frustrated public were overwhelmingly against the wharfies. Union leaders such as Jock Barnes and Toby Hill were demonized by the press and became hated and feared. Faced with extreme resistance, the unions eventually caved in and the men limped back to work.

The bitterness would last for years. But one thing had become clear - militant unionism would have no place in the still conservative fabric of New Zealand life.

In the 1950s life in New Zealand was racing ahead. We had one of the highest standards of living in the world. A boom in sheep numbers was almost matched by the boom in babies.

From the late-1940s on, a desire for a return to normality and a flood of young men returning after the war brought a marriage boom. Getting married was quite the thing throughout the 1950s and 1960s and at a younger age than ever before.

The just-married set about enthusiastically having children. More than a million New Zealanders were born in the 20 years after the war. The generation later to be known as the 'baby boomers' were arriving.

Everyone wanted a home of their own. Dad was the bread winner, Mum was a housewife, and babies and young children were everywhere.

Through the late-1940s and 1950s women moved back to the home after filling men's roles during wartime. Hospitality culture was prized and most women's fashions emphasised the maternal and the feminine.

In 1957 the country's first supermarket opened in Auckland. It was an instant success and would change the way we did our shopping.

Dad's domain was the pub and the sportsground and rugby was the measure of a man. When the Springboks toured here in 1956 New Zealand had never beaten them in a series. The rugby public hungered for victory and this tour is known as one of the most exciting and brutal contests the All Blacks have ever taken part in.

Our chance to triumph came in the fourth and final test at Eden Park, when New Zealand were ahead two victories to one. For many New Zealand men this ultimate victory confirmed our place at the top of the world.

Throughout the fifties this world-beating energy characterised the nation. Edmund Hillary climbed higher than anyone had ever been reaching the summit of Mt Everest in 1953. Yvette Williams jumped further than any woman. In the 1960 Olympics in Rome Peter Snell got gold in the 800 meters. An hour later Murray Halberg broke away to win the 5000 meters. It was the most golden hour in our whole sporting history.

Development

Between 1949 and 1965 New Zealand's sheep flock grew from 33 million to 54 million. The export of meat, wool and dairy products fuelled major growth across the economy and farm output doubled in 20 years.

The Korean War triggered a wool boom. Almost overnight prices trebled and the money came pouring in. Wool was like gold.

When Godfrey Bowen sheared 456 sheep in nine hours in 1953 he was on top of the world and so was New Zealand. We had prosperity and growth such as we had never known and began to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world.

Farming was on a roll. New chemicals and better farming methods led to impressive growth. The biggest boost to farmers was the invention of aerial topdressing, a world first. Soon daring young pilots were flying Tiger Moths on a mission to fertilise more and more farmland.

As farming made us wealthy the government set about spending. Development was the buzzword in the 1950s and 1960s, as we built modern services for our growing population. Factories were built, roads made, bridges erected, forests were felled and natural resources were harnessed.

Jobs were readily available - the official number of unemployed in March 1950 was 21; a year later it was down to 12. A joke went round that the Prime Minister personally knew the names of everyone who didn't have a job.

All this expansion created a new demand - power. Hydro-electric power stations became a major focus for development. In the North Island the Waikato River was the hub. In 1964 the completion of the Aratiatia dam ended 20 years of construction on the river.

In the South Island major dams were built on the Waitaki and Clutha rivers. The logistics were incredible. Benmore was just one of many places where a whole town was built to house the workers and Otematata sprung up almost overnight in the remote Waitaki Valley.

Benmore formed the southern end of the new Cook Strait cable which siphoned power from the South Island to the North. In 1965 Prime Minister Keith Holyoake flicked the switch on the biggest direct current project in the world.

Urbanisation

With the economy booming and the population increasing rapidly, New Zealand cities flourished. Auckland grew relentlessly. Roads, motorways and the harbour bridge went up and commuting to work became a way of life.

After having largely stopped during the war, the government began building state houses again.

North of Wellington, bulldozers and graders toiled for a decade from the mid-1950s. They were building the largest planned town ever created by the New Zealand government, called Porirua. People began to move in while the raw new suburb sprouted around them.

Among those flocking to the cities were thousands of Maori. For the most part, Maori were missing out on the golden age of agriculture enjoyed by Pakeha farmers. Many tribes were left with only poor quality land, often in multiple ownership. So for the young the city lights beckoned.

Maori began to move to the city in droves, leaving behind the security of their families and their home marae. A massive re-location saw Maori change from a rural to a largely urban people in just one generation.

There was plenty of work but also a great deal of dislocation. Maori in the city had to find new organizations, new leaders and new ways of doing things. To help, a Maori Community Centre was set up in central Auckland.

Maori urbanisation during this period would change Maori society forever. But individuals were blissfully unaware of this as they joined the hordes of others streaming into the big cities in an atmosphere of excitement and growth.

In the 1960s our comfortable New Zealand society was starting to experience new stresses. In South East Asia a war was drawing us into its grip. Vietnamese communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, were fighting American forces who were propping up a Western-friendly government in South Vietnam.

Prime Minister Keith Holyoake never questioned the morality of sending troops to South Vietnam, but he was cautious. He was worried about casualties and the impact of the war on politics at home. But like other politicians, he didn't want to offend our military allies, especially our ANZUS partner, the United States. And like many people, Holyoake believed that if we didn't fight communists on the Mekong Delta, we could be fighting them on the Waitemata Harbour.

Holyoake refused to follow the example of the Australian government and send conscripts to Vietnam. On 27 May 1965 he announced our first major commitment to Vietnam, a four gun artillery battery of 120 men.

Earlier we had sent a medical team and some engineers but the gunners were our first combat troops. It was a decision that Holyoake had struggled with. Eventually, nearly 4,000 men would serve in Vietnam, but there would never be more than around 500 there at any one time.

In 1967 two infantry companies joined the gunners in Vietnam. For some young soldiers it looked like an exciting time. But the reality of combat on foreign soil would soon sink in.

Television had started in New Zealand in 1960 and with it came images of the war. Vietnam became the first war to be fought on television. Viewers saw a graphic and horrifying conflict, causing protests in New Zealand to become more vocal.

The last New Zealand troops in Vietnam were brought home by the new Labour government in 1972.

Anti-Vietnam War Protests

Some New Zealanders were opposed to any New Zealand involvement in the fighting in Vietnam. Initially numbers were small and they came from the older protest groups like radical unionists, Christian pacifists and local communists.

With the advent of television in 1960 images of the war were brought into New Zealand living rooms. Viewers saw a graphic and horrifying conflict and soon protests in New Zealand became more vocal.

Now young people were the ones holding the banners. The first 'baby boomers' were at university and were being encouraged to think for themselves. They were beginning to question the values of their parents and wider society.

The Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) was founded by students wanting more radical protest actions. They published youth manifestos and believed that young New Zealanders could batter down the doors of 'the Establishment.'

However, the majority of people still supported the Establishment. When US President Lyndon Johnson visited Wellington in 1966 he was met by huge enthusiastic crowds.

In 1967 two New Zealand infantry companies joined the gunners in Vietnam. Back home the protests were intensifying. They reached their peak when US Vice President Spiro Agnew visited in January 1970, bearing some moon rock from the successful moon landing six months before. Outside his hotel 200 police confronted over 500 demonstrators. The PYM was in the front line.

The last New Zealand troops were brought home by the new Labour government in 1972, but by then the protest movement had spread far beyond the single issue of Vietnam.

Today New Zealand projects its clean green image all around the world, but in the 1970s that was an idea that was just beginning to grow. It was one of many ideas that was energised by the Vietnam War protests.

By 1970 many New Zealanders were thinking about the environment and a new concern was about to be born. One of the most pristine parts of the landscape, Lake Manapouri in the Fiordland National Park, was under threat.

In the 1960s the government had invited Comalco, an international aluminium consortium, to construct a plant in Southland. It would use cheap South Island electricity and was seen as an important part of New Zealand's broadening economy.

In 1970 Comalco needed more power. To provide it, the government did a deal with the company to raise the level of Lake Manapouri. This would produce 4.5 percent more power but it would also desecrate one of our most unspoilt natural places.

Scientists like Alan Mark showed that the proposed 8.4 metre rise would drown 160 kilometres of shoreline, engulf whole valleys and forever destroy the lake's delicate ecology.

The driving force behind the protest was a Southland farmer named Ron McLean who left his farm and took the Save Manapouri campaign on a national tour. McLean persuaded a big cross section of New Zealanders to share his passion for the lake. Their efforts, including a petition of 250,000 signatures, seemed to be in vain. The government was adamant that it couldn't overturn the contract with Comalco.

Manapouri helped focus many people on the environment and increasing numbers of young people became involved. In the early 1970s the Forest Service wanted to selectively log South Island beech forests. The Beech Forest Action Committee was set up in Auckland with a radical plan to oppose the logging.

A few years later they were in action in the Pureora Forest in the central North Island. They tried to stop the logging of ancient native trees that were almost the last remaining habitat of the kokako. Botanist Steven King and 13 others camped out in a treetop vigil to save the birds. They were successful and the logging was stopped.

By the 1970s protecting the environment was at the heart of a new 'Green' movement. Many New Zealanders would embrace the new philosophy. And a new government would unexpectedly take the lead. 1972 was election year and the Save Manapouri campaign was just one of the issues.

The third Labour government, led by Norman Kirk, came to power. Kirk saw that Manapouri represented a significant shift in attitudes to the environment. Labour changed the contract with Comalco and Lake Manapouri was 'saved.'

Feminism

By the early 1970s New Zealand was a society with change on its mind. The younger generation were exploring new definitions of freedom, family and society. They were also learning about sexism, and a new generation of women was there to teach them.

Previous generations had placed the suburban, nuclear family at the heart of our traditional value system. Mum was supposed to do the shopping and stay home and look after Dad and the kids. There was a generous Family Benefit and home ownership was growing.

But women began leaving their suburban homes and going to work. By 1971 a quarter of married women were in fulltime work although most didn't fare as well as men. They were politically under-represented and the majority of female workers were in the lowest paid jobs. The National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women set up an enquiry into equal pay.

The established medical profession was also slow to change. The Pill became available in the early 1960s but doctors were advised by their medical association not to supply contraceptives to unmarried women. Consequently, many women had little knowledge of birth control and attitudes to illegitimate births were still very critical.

Women were now openly concerned about many issues. By the mid-1970s unprecedented numbers of women were getting together at 'United Women's Conventions' to talk in a way never heard before.

The big issue of the day was abortion. When a remit was passed supporting a woman's right to choose abortion, the anti-abortionists marched out. Thousands of illegal abortions were being performed and more than 300 women were admitted to hospital each year from complications. The public fight over a woman's right to choose raged for more than a decade. It was the most fiercely fought part of the feminist struggle.

The abortion issue brought out the extremes in people. Eventually, arsonists attacked the Auckland abortion clinic. Even a government royal commission on contraception, sterilisation and abortion failed to satisfy everyone. In 1977 abortion was permitted under restricted conditions and from 1979 effectively allowed under the public health system.

By the 1980s there had been big changes. Women's refuges gave battered women and their children alternative accommodation. The Matrimonial Property Act guaranteed each spouse equal shares of the property accumulated during the marriage. And in 1984 twelve women were elected to Parliament.

After the Second World War Maori had moved into the cities in large numbers and were expected to assimilate into urban New Zealand society. Many did while there were plenty of jobs.

By the mid-1960s there was a widespread view within New Zealand that we had the best race relations in the world. But over the next few years New Zealanders began to develop new ideas about race.

From within the Maori community there was a questioning of the assimilation model and a demand for Maori control over Maori resources. There was a reasserted sense of identity and eventually a vision of Maori sovereignty.

During the 1960s political leadership within Maori society belonged to the Maori Council, which had been established in 1962 by the National Government. But it was sometimes suspected of being a government stooge. Some younger Maori believed something stronger was needed and so Nga Tamatoa, the Young Warriors, was born. They took their radical model from the American Black Power movement.

A key issue was the Maori language. The fight for the language would take years. In 1987 Maori was made an official language of New Zealand.

Waitangi Day became a focus for protest. It had become an official day of commemoration in 1960. Nga Tamatoa staged protests at Waitangi throughout the 1970s.

The Labour Government was determined to give more credence to the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1973 it passed the New Zealand Day Act which changed the name of the day and made it a public holiday. At the Waitangi celebrations in 1973 Norman Kirk expressed his vision for the nation when he took the hand of a young Maori boy.

But this didn't stop the growing protests on Waitangi Day and the growing recognition of the significance of the Treaty for Maori. Minister of Maori Affairs Matiu Rata responded. In 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear contemporary breaches of the Treaty. But Maori were still concerned about the continued alienation of Maori land.

Maori Protests

In 1975 there was a huge land march led by Northland elder, Whina Cooper. The march brought together Maori from many iwi.

It set off from Te Hapua in the far north in September and by the time it crossed the Auckland harbour bridge, numbers had grown to thousands. It arrived in Wellington on 13 October 1975.

Then new issues ignited more confrontation. Bastion Point was on the Auckland waterfront and within Prime Minister Robert Muldoon's Tamaki electorate. Originally the home of Auckland's Ngati Whatua tribe, the land had been acquired by the Crown through a series of compulsory and negotiated purchases.

Some land had been used for state housing and some for a reserve, including the memorial to Michael Joseph Savage. In 1951 there were evictions and the burning of houses at Okahu Bay. In 1977, after the government decided to dispose of 25 hectares of Bastion Point for housing, Joe Hawke led Maori onto the site and occupied it.

Despite a settlement that Muldoon thought generous, Hawke refused to budge. On 25 May 1978, 600 police, backed by the army, forcibly cleared off the occupiers and arrested 230.

The television images of this action came to symbolise the Muldoon government's position. In May 1981 contractors moved onto the site and it was again occupied. Muldoon's response was immediate and all the buildings and people were removed in one day.

Eventually much of the land at Bastion Point would be returned to or vested in Ngati Whatua.

1981 Springbok Tour

There was one major racial issue that divided all the country. This was sporting contacts with South Africa.

Over the years different governments had adopted different policies on playing rugby with the Springboks. By the late 1970s the government had decided on a policy of not interfering with sports bodies.

But the issues intensified in September 1980 when the New Zealand Rugby Union issued an invitation to a Springbok team.

The government asked the Rugby Union not to do so but the chairman, Ces Blazey, wouldn't listen.

Over the 56 days following the Springboks' arrival New Zealander was divided against New Zealander in the largest civil disturbance the country had seen since the 1951 waterfront dispute.

The country was split. On the one side were rugby supporters and a conservative heartland. On the other side, marching every time a game was played, were people who had come to consciousness during the Vietnam War.

They were mainly urban people, many of them tertiary educated, and many trying to promote change in a country half a world away.

The tour had its epic moments, especially the game in Hamilton when the protestors broke into the ground and stayed in the middle, huddling and chanting 'the whole world is watching', while the rugby supporters bayed for blood.

The final test in Auckland saw a full scale riot outside the ground. Yet despite the intensity and despite the injury toll to both police and protestors, not one life was lost.

In the end it was a ritualised conflict of cat and mouse in which certain prohibitions against guns or bombs held firm.

Finance Minister Roger Douglas initially was David Lange's right hand man but he was going to discard traditional Labour policies. A free market and minimal government were his goals and those who lived through his reforms would call it a revolution.

The post-election currency crisis gave Douglas the reason he needed to bring on changes. The first to feel the pinch were farmers. Under Muldoon farmers had been heavily subsidised to break in uneconomic land and grow wool that nobody wanted. Douglas removed most of these subsidies.

Next the manufacturers bore the brunt of the reform programme that became known as 'Rogernomics'. Restrictions on imports were removed and protected local industries were exposed to cheaper goods from overseas.

In the face of this competition workers lost their jobs in droves. The Westport PDL factory was just one of hundreds that closed. It made and exported plastics but it was far away from any large centre or export port and wasn't efficient in Douglas's terms.

But the freeing up of the economy was definitely working for some. A flow of money from the newly deregulated financial sector coincided with a worldwide sharemarket boom and Kiwis rushed to play in the share market.

Greed from the new rich and many small investors propelled the market to impossible heights. But few understood that the whole edifice was based on speculation with many companies existing largely on paper. The demand for shares made our market one of the most overvalued in the world.

Then, on 20 October 1987, 'Black Tuesday', it all changed. Worldwide shares crashed and ten billion dollars were wiped off the New Zealand sharemarket in one day. Corporate high-flyers like Ariadne, Equity Corp, Chase Corp, Judge Corp and many others came down. Some corporate magnates even went to jail.

People realised that gambling on the sharemarket was like gambling on the horses. The fallout hurt many. Lucrative consultancies ended, expensive apartments were sold on the cheap and corporate headquarters moved to Sydney. Retrenchment and consolidation meant job losses and registered unemployed almost doubled in the five years after the crash.

Soon David Lange was beginning to re-think the Rogernomics revolution.

Anti-Nuclear Policy

For many years the Labour Party had had a strong anti-nuclear policy which included banning nuclear ships from New Zealand ports. But after the 1984 election Labour's policy was in conflict with ANZUS, the 30 year old defence alliance between Australia, the United States and New Zealand.

A majority of New Zealanders wanted it both ways. They wanted to keep the protection of the US superpower and be nuclear free. But the Americans feared that the anti-nuclear policy could spread to other countries and undermine their alliance system.

Immediately after the election David Lange had to confront United States Secretary of State, George Schultz. He was here for a pre-arranged ANZUS Council meeting which Lange believed was a calculated attempt to embarrass the new government.

H. Monroe Browne had been American Ambassador for three years before Labour came to power. He attended the meeting between Schulz and Lange and came away believing that Lange would persevere with ANZUS and that American ship visits would continue.

But anti-nuclear was now orthodoxy. Between 1978 and 1984 opposition to nuclear armed ship visits had grown from over 30 percent to over 70 percent of the country. Even small political parties like Social Credit and the New Zealand Party went anti-nuclear.

If Lange wanted to keep the Americans on side, he had a problem. He knew that Labour supporters would not be budged from their anti-nuclear policy. So he suggested his Defence officials find a US ship for a visit that was neither nuclear powered nor nuclear armed. But the idea backfired.

While Lange was engaged on diplomacy on a remote Tokelau atoll, the Americans asked that a destroyer, the USS Buchanan, visit New Zealand. Acting Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer was put under pressure by New Zealand defence officials to say yes.

But Cabinet decided not to let it in. The break-up of ANZUS followed and New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance would soon have more sinister consequences.

New Zealand's anti-nuclear position made the country the natural place for launching protests against French nuclear tests on the Pacific atoll of Moruroa.

In 1985 the Rainbow Warrior, flagship of environmental organisation Greenpeace, sailed into Auckland to join a New Zealand protest fleet. The presence of the Rainbow Warrior at Moruroa would ensure the world was watching. 

The tactic would provoke the French. Just after midnight on 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was blown up at Auckland's Marsden Wharf.

First Mate Martini Gotje and photographer Fernando Pereira were on board when the explosion went off. Pereira could not escape. The French strike had killed an innocent man. Within hours of the sabotage Prime Minister David Lange was advised.

Eventually the police caught two French spies, Dominque Prieur and Alain Mafart. But when New Zealand requested assistance from Australia and the US for help to track the other spies we were refused. The full implications of our anti-nuclear policy now became evident.

The two French spies were each sentenced to ten years in a New Zealand jail. But within nine months France threatened our trade with Europe, and the government was forced to release the prisoners from Mt Eden jail to Hao Atoll in French Polynesia. Within three years they were back in France.

The attack on the Rainbow Warrior was an unexpected plus for the Labour government. New Zealanders now felt proud of their anti-nuclear policy. To show their approval they put Labour back in power at the 1987 election, with an increased majority.

Labour's Second Term

Labour won the 1987 election with an increased majority and it meant three more years for Roger Douglas to make his reforms work. But now David Lange couldn't ignore the social cost of the Douglas agenda, the unemployment in his electorate and the impact Labour policies were having around the country.

The ensuing battle between Lange and Douglas would turn Labour's dreams into a nightmare.

By 1987 Lange's assurances were starting to have a hollow ring as Douglas began turning government departments into State Owned Enterprises, SOEs. Many came into being on April Fool's Day 1987.

For decades the government had used the State sector to minimise unemployment. Now state corporations had to make a profit. The Post Office was divided into three new enterprises, Coal Corp had its staff cut by 50 percent, the Electricity Corporation by 15 percent, and over seven years the Railways lost almost three quarters of its workers.

Privatisation, or selling off the SOEs, was even more controversial. For some it was like hocking off 'the family silver', like our forests and the country's natural resources. The process gave the largest of New Zealand's companies to overseas interests and those 'chummy' with the government, often at bargain basement prices.

But Douglas had even more radical ideas, proposing massive tax cuts. This meant the government would have to sell more assets and there would be less money for social services. Douglas promised the 'trickle down' effect for those at the bottom of the economic heap. Lange was sceptical and feared the rich would get richer and the poor poorer.

Whatever Lange thought, he'd lost faith in his Cabinet colleagues and, like Muldoon before him, he decided his only option was to go it alone.

In January 1988 without consulting Douglas or the Cabinet he scrapped the 'flat tax' package that had already been announced. Now Lange and Douglas were in direct conflict. In December 1988 Lange sacked Douglas as Finance Minister.

But Douglas had always been good at finding support. Within eight months he had made a comeback.

Lange had become a lonely figure. Then on the day after his 47th birthday in 1989 he resigned the office of Prime Minister, one of only a few New Zealand Prime Ministers ever to do so. And although friends gathered it was a sad day in Parliament.

By the end of the 1980s voters were appalled at the disarray in Labour's ranks. They quickly switched allegiance and in 1990 National won the election in a landslide.

But if the country thought there would be a rest from Douglas-style economics, they were wrong. Within six weeks the new Finance Minister, Ruth Richardson, was single-mindedly slashing benefits.

Incredulous voters now saw National going where even Douglas had feared to tread.

The government was cutting social spending and interfering in the workplace. They were weakening the unions by introducing the Employment Contracts Act, which favoured individual workers contracts and made unions less important. The last of the big government departments were finally sold off. Many railway workers were made redundant.

By now everyone was sick of constant change. Many people were opposed to National's 'user pays', especially in health and education. Both Labour and National were detested by the voters. 

In 1993 New Zealanders took their revenge. It would be the country's most radical political change since 1893 when women got the vote.

In a referendum held as part of the 1993 election, the country voted to change the electoral system. Instead of the old First Past the Post (FPP) system, there would be a new way to choose Members of Parliament.

It was Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation, and under it the voters had new strings to pull. The two major parties would now have to make deals with smaller parties in order to govern.

Since 1996 all New Zealand governments have been elected under MMP. After each election the big parties have had to make alliances and accommodations with smaller parties.

Closing The Gaps

Since 1984 the Maori community has seen big changes. By 2001 nearly 1 in 7 New Zealanders, about 15 percent, were Maori.

Maori have found a new sense of self confidence and independence. Maori radio and television today contribute diversity to broadcasting. Maori language has even invaded the most English of settings, the plays of William Shakespeare.

Films also project Maori stories around the world. Maori are no longer just tourist icons and dancing natives. They are now involved in every kind of business, including New Zealand's biggest fishing company. Maori entrepreneurs have changed Kaikoura from a depressed backwater gutted by the loss of railways into a world class whale watching venue.

But Maori still have lower annual income, lower life expectancy, poorer educational outcomes and poorer housing than Pakeha. Over the last decade governments and Maori have tried to close these gaps.

Kura Kaupapa Maori schools have emerged. They teach their subjects in Maori and Maori students can now receive a major part of their education in the Maori language.

A key focus for Maori is still the Treaty of Waitangi. The settlement of Treaty grievances has often polarised a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes resentful New Zealand public.

The settlement process was made possible when the Waitangi Tribunal was allowed to look at claims from the 19th century as far back as 1840. Maori believed this would help revive tribal mana. In 1991 Maori had lodged 200 claims. By 2004 there were over 1,200.

One of the most significant Treaty settlements was with the Waikato Tainui tribe. They had suffered when huge tracts of land were confiscated after the New Zealand wars. In 1995 Queen Elizabeth signed the settlement law herself, the only time she has ever signed a New Zealand law in public.

Maori have never been a docile part of the community and Pakeha have often misunderstood the reasons for the raised voices. Despite a recent backlash from some Pakeha, Maori still seek to have Pakeha understand Maori issues.

The Changing Face of New Zealand

We are re-making ourselves in many ways. But in one way we are not - we are not reproducing fast enough. New Zealand's population reached 4 million in 2003 with most of this increase coming from immigration. We are a society of low fertility and low mortality with low birth rates and many living to an old age.

So today as in earlier centuries we continue to be a people from elsewhere, we are still an immigrant society. Mt Roskill Grammar in Auckland is New Zealand's most multicultural school, with children from 76 nationalities. Mt Roskill itself has been called an 'ethnoburb'.

It is estimated that by 2021 17 percent of the population will identify as Maori, 9 percent as Pacific Island, 13 percent as Asian and 60 percent as European. This will pose an interesting question about what it will mean to be a New Zealander.

Ever since we arrived here we have been changing the country. New Zealand is still a frontier, and it will be as pristine and new to the next wave of immigrants as it was to the first Polynesian and European settlers who arrived here.

The dreams that drive these new immigrants will be the same as the dreams that drove our ancestors to come here in the first place - a dream that in this new country anything could be possible.