Jump to content

New Zealand

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ClaudeMuncey (talk | contribs) at 04:26, 15 April 2002 (adding national parks link). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

New Zealand (Aotearoa in the Maori language) is a temperate country located in the South West Pacific 1600 km south-east of its nearest neighbour, Australia.

New Zealand is composed of two main islands and a number of smaller islands. The South Island is the largest land mass, and is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Mount Cook, at 3754 metres. There are eighteen peaks of more than three kilometres in the South Island. The North Island is less mountainous than the South, but is marked by volcanism. The tallest North Island mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2797 metres) is an active cone volcano.

The total land area of New Zealand, 270 500 km2 is somewhat smaller than that of Japan and the British Isles, and slightly larger than Colorado in the USA. The country extends more than 1600 km along its main, north-north east axis.

The capital city is Wellington. Other major cities include Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The climate throughout the country is mild, rarely falling below 0°C or rising above 30°C. In Wellington the average minimum temperature in winter is 5.9°C and the average maximum temperature in summer is 20.3°C. The amount of rainfall varies greatly in different parts of the country, with the most rain falling on the west and south coasts of the South Island.

New Zealand is an independent parliamentary democracy governed by a 120 member unicameral parliament, from which an executive cabinet of about 20 ministers is selected. This cabinet is led by the Prime Minister, currently (January 2002) Helen Clark of the centre-left Labour party, which governs in coalition with the further-left Alliance party. Currently six parties are represented in the New Zealand parliament. New Zealand's head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who is represented by the Governor General, Dame Silvia Cartwright.

New Zealand was one of the most recently settled major land masses. Polynesian settlers arrived, probably some time between 500 and 1300 AD, and established the indigenous Maori culture. The first European explorers to reach New Zealand were Abel Janzoon Tasman, who arrived from the Netherlands in 1642, and James Cook, whose extensive surveys starting in 1769 lead to significant European colonisation from the 1790s on. Although the majority of the New Zealand population is now of European origin, Maori and Pacific Islanders are the second and third largest ethnic groups, and Maori culture is a significant feature of New Zealand's public life.

New Zealand is a party to the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States. In 1985 New Zealand refused to allow U.S. nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships to enter its ports, causing the US to abrogate its ANZUS responsibilities to New Zealand in 1986. New Zealand has not formally withdrawn from the treaty.

New Zealand is a modern, industrialised country. Its primary export industries are agriculture, horticulture, fishing and forestry. There are also substantial manufacturing, tourism and service industries.

A small sample of the beauty of New Zealand's landscape was displayed throughout the Xena and Hercules television series, though it really doesn't do it justice. A substantially more accurate picture is provided in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. (see also: National parks (New Zealand)

New Zealand's most popular sports are rugby (primarily rugby union but also rugby league), cricket, netball (the sport with the most players), golf, tennis and rowing as well as many water sports and snow sports, which are all easily accessible. The country is perfectly suited to lots of fishing and hunting with an abundance of fish in the lakes and rivers, and all around its beautiful coastline, and lots of game in the many hills, forests and breathtaking mountains, including red, sika and fallow deer, elk, chamois and thar.

Further Reading

  • Statistics New Zealand, "The New Zealand Official Yearbook, 1998", GP Publications, Wellington, 1998
  • Rice, Geoffrey W (Ed), "The Oxford History of New Zealand, Second Edition", Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1992.

From the CIA World Factbook 2000. Not Wikified.

Notice, don't remove: An earlier version of the above article was posted on Nupedia. This article is open content.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Zealand&oldid=52992"