The gazetteer · 131 places
Every place the chart names
Hover or tap a name on the map and it shows a line or two about the place. Each of those is here as a page, from Aoraki to Oban.
Peaks
Taranaki Maunga, 2,518 m. A near-perfect volcanic cone; last erupted around 1790.
Ruapehu, 2,797 m. The North Island’s highest peak, an active volcano with a crater lake.
Tapuae-o-Uenuku, 2,885 m. The highest peak outside the Southern Alps, in the Inland Kaikōura Range.
Hikurangi, 1,752 m. The first mainland peak to see the sunrise; sacred to Ngāti Porou.
Tititea / Mount Aspiring, 3,033 m. The “Matterhorn of the South”.
National parks
Aoraki / Mount Cook, 3,724 m. The highest mountain in the country.
Fiordland National Park: 12,600 km², the largest in the country, part of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Area.
Kahurangi National Park: the second largest, with the Heaphy Track and the Ōpārara arches.
Mount Aspiring National Park: glaciers, the Matukituki valley and the Routeburn Track.
Westland Tai Poutini National Park: Franz Josef and Fox glaciers run from the alps almost to the sea.
Arthur’s Pass National Park: the alpine crossing between Canterbury and the West Coast, a park since 1929.
Paparoa National Park: limestone country, the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki and the Paparoa Track.
Nelson Lakes National Park: where the Southern Alps begin, around lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa.
Abel Tasman National Park: the smallest national park, golden beaches and the Coast Track.
Tongariro National Park: the country’s first, gifted by Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1887; a dual World Heritage site.
Whanganui National Park: lowland forest around a river that has held legal personhood since 2017.
Te Urewera: the largest native forest in the North Island, a legal person since 2014, home of Tūhoe.
Waipoua Forest: the largest kauri forest left, and Tāne Mahuta, the biggest living kauri.
Waitākere Ranges: Auckland’s rainforest, and the west-coast surf beaches Piha and Karekare.
Rakiura National Park: about 85% of Stewart Island, where kiwi outnumber people.
Lakes
Lake Taupō, 616 km², the largest lake in the country. The caldera of a supervolcano; it last erupted around 232 AD.
Lake Te Anau, the largest in the South Island and 417 m deep. The gateway to Fiordland.
Lake Wakatipu, 80 km long. Its water rises and falls about 12 cm every 27 minutes, a standing wave called a seiche.
Lake Wānaka, 192 km², the fourth largest. That Wānaka Tree stands in it.
Lake Hāwea, raised 20 m in 1958 to store water for the Roxburgh power station.
Lake Pūkaki: turquoise with glacial rock flour, looking straight up the valley to Aoraki.
Lake Manapōuri, 444 m deep. The 1970s campaign against raising it began modern conservation here.
Lake Tekapo: glacial blue under a dark-sky reserve; the Church of the Good Shepherd stands on its shore.
Lake Rotorua: a caldera about 240,000 years old, with Mokoia Island in its middle.
Lake Wairarapa: broad and shallow, rarely deeper than 2.5 m, a wetland of international importance.
Lake Hauroko, 462 m deep — the deepest lake in the country.
Lake Waikaremoana: formed by a landslide about 2,200 years ago; a Great Walk circles it.
Te Waihora / Lake Ellesmere: a wide coastal lagoon, opened to the sea by machine to manage its level.
Lake Benmore: the largest artificial lake, behind the biggest earth dam in the country.
Lake Ōhau: glacial, part of the Waitaki hydro chain.
Lake Coleridge: powered the country’s first state hydro station, in 1914.
Lake Dunstan: filled in 1992 behind the Clyde Dam on the Clutha.
Lake Poteriteri: remote Fiordland water, reached on foot or by float plane.
Lake Monowai: raised for hydro in 1925; the drowned trees still stand at its edge.
Lake Rotoroa: the larger of the two Nelson Lakes, ringed by beech forest.
Lake Rotoiti: the smaller Nelson Lake, at St Arnaud, where the Travers Range starts.
Landmarks
Milford Sound / Piopiotahi: a fiord, not a sound. Mitre Peak rises 1,683 m straight from the water.
Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua: where the Tasman meets the Pacific, and spirits leave for Hawaiki.
Kapiti Island: a bird sanctuary since 1897, now free of predators.
East Cape: the easternmost point of the mainland, under its lighthouse.
Marlborough Sounds: drowned river valleys holding about a fifth of the country’s coastline.
Mount Tarawera: split open in 1886, burying the Pink and White Terraces.
Farewell Spit / Onetahua: a 26 km sand spit and a wetland for migratory birds.
Boulder Bank: 13 km of granodiorite boulders moved down the coast by the sea, sheltering Nelson Haven.
Cape Palliser: the southernmost point of the North Island, with a fur seal colony.
Cape Kidnappers / Te Kauwae-a-Māui: the largest mainland gannet colony in the world.
Banks Peninsula: two eroded volcanoes. Akaroa began as a French settlement in 1840.
Kaikōura: whales feed in a canyon that drops 1,000 m within sight of the shore. The 2016 quake lifted the coast.
Franz Josef / Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere: a glacier that reaches down into temperate rainforest.
Doubtful Sound / Patea: Cook doubted he could sail out again. The deepest of the fiords, 421 m.
Otago Peninsula: the only mainland royal albatross colony, at Taiaroa Head.
The Catlins: rainforest to the sea, a petrified forest at Curio Bay, and yellow-eyed penguins.
Coromandel Peninsula: gold-rush country, Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach.
Hokianga Harbour: where Kupe left for Hawaiki. Giant dunes face the kauri forest.
Kaipara Harbour: one of the largest harbours in the world by area.
Cape Egmont: Taranaki’s western tip, and a lighthouse moved here in 1881.
Castlepoint: a lighthouse on a rock, and a horse race on the beach every March.
Māhia Peninsula: where Rocket Lab launches from.
Cape Foulwind: named by Cook for the weather. A fur seal colony lives below the walkway.
Puysegur Point: the south-west corner of the mainland, and its lighthouse.
Nugget Point / Tokatā: rock stacks like gold nuggets under a lighthouse lit in 1870.
Cape Campbell: the eastern tip of Marlborough. The 2016 quake moved it about two metres.
Bluff: the oldest European town, oysters, and the signpost at the end of State Highway 1.
On the water
Māui A: a gas platform 35 km off the Taranaki coast, producing since 1979 from the Māui field.
Kupe: gas and light oil from a platform 30 km off Manaia, ashore by pipeline since 2009.
Whakaari / White Island: New Zealand's most active volcano, 48 km off Whakatāne.
Kaikōura Canyon: the sea floor drops to 1,200 m within a few kilometres of the shore.
Hikurangi Trench: where the Pacific plate goes under the North Island, over 3,000 m down.
Inter-Island link: three cables across Cook Strait carry South Island hydro power north, since 1965.
TEV Wahine: the ferry struck Barrett Reef in a 1968 storm and capsized within sight of the city; 53 died.
MV Rena: a container ship grounded on Astrolabe Reef in 2011 — the country's worst maritime spill.
Poor Knights Islands: a marine reserve since 1981, warmed by a subtropical current.
Foveaux Strait: Bluff oysters are dredged from these beds between March and August.
Hauraki Gulf Marine Park: 1.2 million hectares of sea from the Coromandel to Aotea.
Tūhua / Mayor Island: a dormant volcano whose black obsidian was traded the length of the country.
Pegasus Canyon: a submarine canyon cutting the shelf off Banks Peninsula.
Named for Abel Tasman, who sighted the West Coast in 1642. It lies between New Zealand and Australia.
The ocean east of New Zealand. Next land is Chile, about 9,000 km away.
The strait between the North and South Islands. Cook sailed through it in 1770.
The strait between the South Island and Stewart Island / Rakiura.
The gulf east of Auckland, between the Coromandel and Aotea / Great Barrier.
The wide east-coast bay Cook named in 1769 for Sir Edward Hawke.
The bay north of Banks Peninsula, named for HMS Pegasus in 1809.
A drowned valley of about 144 islands in the Far North. The Treaty was signed at Waitangi in 1840.
Cities & towns
Whangārei: the north's only city, on a harbour with a 26 m waterfall inside the town.
Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau: 1.7 million people on an isthmus between two harbours, over 50 volcanoes.
Hamilton / Kirikiriroa: the Waikato River's city, with the country's largest inland population.
Tauranga: the country's busiest port by cargo, under Mauao at the harbour mouth.
Rotorua: geysers, boiling mud and hot pools in the middle of town; the smell is sulphur.
New Plymouth / Ngāmotu: under Taranaki Maunga, with a 13 km coastal walkway.
Gisborne / Tūranganui-a-Kiwa: the first city in the world to see each new day, and where Cook first landed in 1769.
Napier: rebuilt in Art Deco after the 1931 earthquake, which lifted the sea floor into land.
Palmerston NorthManawatū-Whanganui
Palmerston North: a university and agricultural science town on the Manawatū plains.
Wellington / Te Whanganui-a-Tara: the capital, the world's windiest city by average speed.
Christchurch / Ōtautahi: the South Island's city, rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake.
Dunedin / Ōtepoti: Scots-built on a harbour; Baldwin Street is the world's steepest.
Queenstown / Tāhuna: on Lake Wakatipu under the Remarkables, where commercial bungy jumping began in 1988.
Invercargill / Waihōpai: the southernmost city, a few kilometres from Bluff.
Blenheim / Waiharakeke: the town at the middle of the Wairau Valley's vineyards.
Taupō: the town on the lake's northern shore, where the Waikato River begins.
Whanganui: a river-mouth city on the Whanganui, one of the country's longest navigable rivers.
Hastings / Heretaunga: Napier's inland twin, on plains planted in orchards and vines.
Timaru / Te Tihi-o-Maru: South Canterbury's port, built on the rolling flows of an old volcano.
Greymouth / Māwhera: the West Coast's largest town, at the mouth of the Grey River.
Whakatāne: a river-mouth town in the eastern Bay of Plenty, often the country's sunniest.
Masterton / Whakaoriori: the Wairarapa's main town, over the Remutaka Range from Wellington.
Oamaru: a Victorian port town built in its own creamy local limestone.
Wānaka: the town at the foot of the lake, the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park.
Kerikeri: the Bay of Islands' main town, among citrus and kiwifruit orchards.
Kaitaia: the Far North's main town and the last stop before Cape Reinga.
Thames: a gold-rush town at the foot of the Coromandel Peninsula, on the Firth of Thames.
Cambridge / Kemureti: a Waikato River town known for its thoroughbred horse studs.
Tokoroa: a forestry town on the South Waikato plateau, built for the Kinleith pulp and paper mill.
Ōpōtiki: the last town before the road sets off around East Cape.
Wairoa: a river town in northern Hawke's Bay, halfway between Napier and Gisborne.
Hāwera: South Taranaki's main town, in the dairy country under the mountain.
Levin / Taitoko: the main town of Horowhenua, between the Tararua Range and the sea.
Picton / Waitohi: the South Island's ferry port, at the head of Queen Charlotte Sound.
Motueka: a Tasman Bay town among hop gardens and orchards, near the Abel Tasman coast.
Hokitika: a gold-rush port of the 1860s, now the town for pounamu carving.
Ashburton / Hakatere: a farming town in the middle of the Canterbury Plains.
Te Anau: the lakeside town where the road to Milford Sound begins.
Alexandra / Manuherikia: a Central Otago town on the Clutha, among the driest and hottest in the country.
Gore / Maruawai: a Southland town on the Mataura River, famous for brown trout.
Balclutha / Iwikatea: South Otago's main town, where the road crosses the Clutha.
Oban: Rakiura's only town, a few hundred people around Halfmoon Bay.
The places are decoration on seventeen lots — the regions of New Zealand, each with a board of paid listings. Who holds what on the map, or back to the map itself.