Location Map
Nelson is New Zealand's sunniest city and the Nelson-Tasman region is a major fruit growing area.
Nelson lies between the northern edge of the Southern Alps and Tasman Bay on the northern coast of the South Island and the Nelson/Richmond conurbation is New Zealand`s tenth largest city and fourth busiest Airport while retaining small town informality and friendliness.
Like most of New Zealand, Nelson lies in a region with a high incidence of earthquakes.
Centre of New Zealand
Nelson is the geographical centre of New Zealand but, (confusingly for private pilots who sometimes take off from Wellington Airport,
mistakenly head South instead of West and then run out of fuel and crash in the Pacific Ocean), Nelson is actually very slightly North
of a line drawn due West from New Zealand's capital situated on the North Island.
Nelson is home to many festivals and has a flourishing Arts and Crafts community that gave rise to the famous World of Wearable (WoW) Art Awards.
The World of Wearable Art museum is a must-see in Nelson!
Cycling
More people cycle to work in Nelson (5.5%) than in New Zealand generally (1.9%) according to the 2006 census.
The whole Nelson region tries to maximise cycling opportunities, as this excerpt from the Nelson Mail indicates:-
"Nelson police are donning their bike shorts to kick off what is thought to be the country's first bicycle bobby patrols."
Four specially designed bicycles, in police livery with lights and sirens mounted on the handlebars, have hit Nelson's streets.
The riders will have special uniforms, the shorts have arrived, and helmets are also decked out in police livery.
After falling out of favour for many years, police bicycle patrols are now
common in urban areas overseas, where among other advantages, they make officers more approachable to the public.
Senior Sergeant Tony Bernards said the idea initially arose in response to the high number of cycle crashes in the Nelson area, which because of its great
weather, wonderful scenery and many level cycle paths, had more cyclists than other New Zealand regions.
He did not think police were getting as involved as they could be, and looked overseas, where many forces have 24-hour bike cop patrols, for inspiration.
"If I had my way, I would probably have guys on rollerblades going around the waterfront if that got us closer to the public and got us talking to them a wee
bit more," he said.
The idea of a bike patrol was popular, and 17 officers volunteered to get on their bikes.
Funding for the bikes came from government agencies.
The special lights and sirens can be ordered from the United States for about $US300 ($NZ520), but police had rigged their own up for about a 20th of the cost.
The siren was more like an air horn than those found in police cars, and would definitely grab people's attention.
Seven officers have been through the required training and two are expected to be out on their bikes in the Nelson area at any given time.
Police involved with school groups on bicycles had already nabbed two offenders - in one case a policeman had been able to come up on a drug dealer without him hearing, and a shoplifter had been chased.
A spokesman for police national headquarters said it appeared the bikes unit was the only one of its type in the country. It was a Tasman district initiative and other districts were free to adopt it if they felt it was appropriate.
Abel Tasman, Nelson Lakes and Kahurangi National Parks
Nelson is unique in being surrounded by no less than three National Parks and our region offers a lavish and beautiful variety of landscapes including some of the best beaches in New Zealand, the Abel Tasman National Park and Alpine terrain in both the Nelson Lakes and Kahurangi National Parks.
Nelson Lakes has the Rainbow Ski field and a 'mainland island' nature recovery project at Lake Rotoiti with great trout fishing.
Kahurangi National Park is enormous and populated by Nikau Palms (the worlds most southerly Palm tree) which makes this temperate area look tropical. Kahurangi contains New Zealand's most extensive forest stretching right up to the tops of the Mount Arthur Range. The Sumo wrestlers of the mollusc world, the carnivorous Powelliphanta superba prouseorum snails, slither through the ferns hunting giant earthworms. Weighing in at weights that a Hamburger would be proud of they can measure nearly nearly 4 inches (90mm) across and are yet another NZ evolutionary oddity. Kahurangi is variously interpreted as `treasured possession' or `precious jewel'.
Farewell Spit, the most northerly point of the South Island, is a long sandbar which stretches out 35km from the very tip of the South Island and is notorious for whale strandings and Israeli backpackers.
In the pristine Kahurangi National Park, a massive range of limestone has metamorphosed into hard marble containing the deepest dry cave systems in the Southern Hemisphere. At the base of these cave systems, lies the resurgence of the Pearse River whose crystal clear waters erupt from the base of the mountains.
On Wednesday, 21 March 2007, a team of international cave divers set a new record by diving to a depth of 177m (more than 580 feet below ground level) in the Pearse Resurgence near Mount Arthur.
The record depth was reached after the team spent 10 days diving in this amazing cave system located about 40 miles west of the area that the NCP patrols.
A spokesman for the group said that diving in the Pearse system was fantastic as the caves were so large it wasn't claustrophobic.
"It's like diving down a railway tunnel. The water is actually gin clear, it's like you are not in water - it's like being in air."
The spokesman said it took Rick Stanton of England about 20 minutes to get down to 170m. However, the ascent took six hours as it had to be done slowly to allow for decompression with the divers using special "rebreather" tanks (allowing them to stay underwater for up to eight hours) and wearing heated vests and thick thermal clothing under their dry-suits to stay warm. There were problems with lights imploding because of the extreme depths.
Another member of the team, Mr Harris, said diving in the Pearse was completely different from other cave dives he had done.
"This cave is particularly spectacular because of the size of its passages and the clarity of the water. But the cold makes it a pretty forbidding place as well."
The Mount Arthur range had large, dry cave systems and the next challenge was to find a link from the Pearse Resurgence into other systems in the area, he said.
World time differences from Nelson
Population
People in Nelson tend to be slimmer than the rest of the New Zealand population which is rather fat.The OECD Health Data 2009 report nominates Godzone as the third fattest nation in the developed world!
(These figures may be skewed by accuracy. The fattest reported countries submit figures based on actual measures of people’s height and weight, while estimates for most other countries are based on self-reported data.)
However, a recent Nelson Marlborough District Health Board report shows that folks in the Top of the South have less than half the clinical obesity rate of New Zealand taken as a whole.
The health board's Nutrition and Physical Activity programme (NPA) was started in 2006 to combat obesity locally.
The programme's manager, Helen Steenbergen, stated that Nelson's lifestyle contributed to the trim figures: "The people that live here make the most
of the environment and a lot of people are able to access good quality fruit and vegetables." Nelson's statistics should set an example for the rest
of the world."
"We have incredibly good health statistics. We believe Nelson-Marlborough can be the first district in New Zealand, and one of the first in the world,
to turn around the obesity epidemic."
Figures released on 23 April 2007 by Statistics New Zealand showed that 3774 people born in the United Kingdom and Ireland lived in the Nelson City Council area and made up 9.1 per cent of its population - the highest proportion of residents from the North East Atlantic Archipelago in New Zealand - with another 9.5 per cent of Nelson residents born overseas in other locations outwith New Zealand.
While Britons remained the biggest migrant group in New Zealand as a whole, 2006 saw China overtook Australia for the first time to come in second on the list. There were 202,401 people born in England living in New Zealand, 78,117 born in China, and 62,742 from Australia - while Scotland dropped to eighth place from its previous fifth place New Zealand ranking.
In the 2006 census, 1,297,104 people (34.7 percent) stated that they had no religion.
New Zealand became increasingly ethnically diverse between the 2001 and 2006 censuses and saw an almost 50 percent jump in the number of Asian people living in the country. People identifying as Filipino increased by 52.7 per cent to 16,938 persons - in fourth place after China (40.5% increase), India (68.2% increase) and Korea (61.8% increase).
Neither the City of Nelson nor Tasman district saw quite as big an increase, although there was a 23.7 percent rise in the number of Asians living in Nelson and a 35.4 percent rise in the number in Tasman district.
Nelson's total population rose from 41,568 in 2001 to 42,888 in 2006, while Tasman district's rose from 41,352 to 44,625.
One of the world's longest place names
(Taumata-whakatangihanga-koauau-a-Tamatea-pokai-whenua-ki-tana-tahu in Maori)
is just south of Dannevirke, in the North Island, on the bilingual maori map of New Zealand below:
Driving times and distances from Nelson
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NOTE: • Times are only a rough guide for a direct route and don't allow for any stops. • Allow more time if driving in a campervan and when driving conditions are less than ideal. | ||||||||||||||
Unlike most of the drivers, New Zealand roads are of a reasonable quality, but with no clues as to the severity
of bends provided by centre line spacing.
New Zealand drivers typically follow much too closely and stupidly regard the open road speed limit of 100km/h as a target rather than exercise their own
judgement.
Police very rarely ticket inconsiderate and dangerous drivers that do not afford cyclists and horses the two clear metres of space they need, concentrating instead in a monomaniacal way on enforcing the counterproductive cycle helmet rules. Considering the beautiful scenery, the many places of interest along the way and the number of drunken and incompetent drivers on the roads that consider overtaking to be either a spasm manoeuvre or a calculated insult to the passed driver's manhood, you may find that you take much more time than you had planned for. Please take your time and keep to the left. Unless you're in a one way street, it is a criminal offence to stop on the right of the road. You should also be aware of this stupidly unique Kiwi priority rule that means you may be only a blown indicator bulb away from a collision. |
Fuel Economy Calculator | |||||||||||||
Interactive Google map:-
plan routes; times and distances
New Zealand WeatherClick on a place name to view detailed information and a one week forecast. |
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Currency Converter |
NZ tide times and marine forecasts |
International Dialling Codes Graph of sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for Nelson |
FM Radio Stations in Nelson, New Zealand
| FM Frequencies with loud and clear reception in Nelson are in bold |
Radio Station |
| 88.1 | Southern Star |
| 88.2 | Visitor Radio |
| 88.4 | Mainland FM |
| 88.7 | Life FM |
| 89.0 | The Edge |
| 89.8 | Classic Hits |
| 90.6 | Hauraki - classic rock |
| 91.4 | Concert FM |
| 93.0 | More FM |
| 94.6 | The Rock |
| 96.2 | Radio Live |
| 97.0 | Today's Hit Music ZM 97.0 |
| 97.6 | Radio Pacific |
| 97.8 | The Breeze |
| 98.3 | Life FM |
| 98.6 | Solid Gold |
| 101.0 | National Radio |
| 104.8 | Fresh FM |
| 107.0 | Mainland FM |
| 107.2 | BBC World Service |
| 107.4 | Radio Robot |
| 107.5 | Tourist FM |
| 107.7 | The Overcomer Ministry |
Nelson Community Patrol (NCP)
Webpage version 0.089, 20 December 2009|
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