Wellington

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 153, 24 March 1939, Page 12 (Supplement)

Wellington

CAPITAL CITY AND COMMERCIAL CENTRE OF NEW ZEALAND

A HUNDRED years ago a party of tall-hatted, dignified gentlemen landed on a sandy beach of Port Nicholson, and bargained with a tribe of tattooed cannibals for the land on which they stood. Today, a great and prosperous city, capital of New Zealand, and commercial and cultural centre of this Dominion, has grown up round that harbour where their sailing ship cast anchor and furled weather-beaten canvas. That harbour, the southern terminal port of the great sea-route, reopened by the Dominion Monarch’s maiden voyage, is now the main port of a country famous for her trade. Millions of tons of shipping come and go annually in the Port of Wellington. The trade of a country famous for its exports of farm and dairy produce is shipped and transhipped at the Wellington wharves. The tourist traffic of the Seven Seas ebbs and flows through the harbour mouth. Famous business houses make their headquarters in the streets above the port, while, where a century ago the savage chiefs sat in conclave, today the grave and solemn politicians legislate for the Dominion’s governance and welfare. To this queen city of a young and progressive Dominion comes now as a matter of course the queen liner of a great shipping company, throwing open the floodgates of a new stream of freight and passenger traffic coming and going through the port. Thus, a far cry from the musical-comedy transaction of the New Zealand Land Company with the Ngatiawa chieftains, the ramifications of the city’s trade have extended through a brief century to embrace the farthest corners of the world.