Nelson Boulder Bank Historic Area

Boulder Bank, The Glen (Glenduan) to Fifeshire/Arrow Rock, NELSON

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The Nelson Boulder Bank (the Bank) is a long coastal spit which lies a few kilometres offshore of Nelson City. The Bank has grown to around 13.5 kilometres long and is considered to be the largest formation of its kind in the world. The Bank was formed from the five kilometre-long cliff face of Mackay Bluff, between Cable Bay and the Glen. Over thousands of years rock fragments have fallen off the cliff face, to be caught up by sea currents at the base of the bluff. The rocks were then swept south and ultimately deposited on, and moved along, the Bank. The Bank separates from the cliff-face at the Glen, then for the first five kilometres is bounded on its inland side by drained swampland (the Wakapuaka Flats). From here it detaches from the mainland and extends as a lineal offshore barrier. It is severed by a major navigation channel before terminating at Haulashore Island. Arrow (Fifeshire) Rock lies to the immediate south of Haulashore Island. Between it and Haulashore Island lay the original marine passage to the settlement of Nelson. The Boulder Bank (Te Taero a Kereopa /Te Tahuna a Tama-i-ea) is of cultural importance to Maori. It features strongly in a number of local traditional stories and legends, including the legend of Te Taero a Kereopa who escaped the wrath of Kupe by paddling towards Nelson’s shore while Kupe’s waka was held offshore by a growing barrier of boulders. Rangitane, Ngati Apa, and Ngati Kuia were the tangata whenua of Te Tau Ihu in the 1820s and 1830s, when Kawhia–Taranaki tribes migrated to the district. Ngati Koata settled as a result of a tuku [gift of land] and other northern iwi migrated after a series of battles and victories, and settled alongside Ngati Koata and the defeated Kurahaupo peoples. There has been intermarriage between all eight iwi, and they are bound together by whakapapa, co-residence, and overlapping customary rights. From early times Maori used the Bank and its environs as a significant seasonal base for harvesting food. They also carried boulders from the Bank up to the argillite (pakohe) quarries and used them as hammerstones to break off pieces. This material was worked into tools which were traded around the country. In a European context, the decision to establish the colony of Nelson on the shores of Nelson Haven (a coastal lagoon) was the direct result of the discovery of the Boulder Bank in 1840 by an expeditionary party associated with the New Zealand Company. Haulashore Island was so named because it was used for ‘hauling ashore’ vessels for repair. In 1906 it became a permanent island, not just a low-tide island, when a shipping channel (the Cut) was dredged through the Bank. Over the years a number of structures have been erected on the boulder platform, of which a small number remain. New Zealand’s second permanent lighthouse was erected on the Bank in 1862, which became one of the earliest automated lights in the country. The Bank or Haulashore Island have, at various times, also been home to two cannon, a flagstaff, tide signal station, workmen’s huts, lighthouse keeper’s residential complex, powder magazines, and structures associated with the dredging of the Cut. Four of the six baches remaining on the Bank date from the late nineteenth century. From the 1860s to the 1970s parts of the Boulder Bank were used by local authorities as a source for boulders, and, when crushed, for basecourse material for the road and rail network. More recent changes to the profile of the Bank have come from the tunnelling for outfall pipes, illegal extraction of boulders and tracking from four-wheel drive vehicles. The Bank has always been popular for recreational pursuits, such as fishing, surfing and beachcombing. The Boulder Bank is very significant in a wide variety of ways. The history of Nelson is integrally bound up in the safe embrace the Bank provides to the Haven. Early Maori used the Boulder Bank as a significant resource base, and this association has imbued the landscape with histories that remain integral to the tribal identity of mana whenua. In addition, the Boulder Bank has outstanding social and aesthetic values. Both the Boulder Bank and Arrow/Fifeshire Rock beside it, feature strongly in local artwork and marketing material for Nelson. The Boulder Bank, in particular, has become an icon for Nelson City. The baches still remaining on it are intriguing in their construction, but the installation of the lighthouse on its boulder matrix is a technological marvel. Similarly, dredging a marine passage through its very resistant landform sorely tested the capabilities of the early harbour engineers, but this laid the foundation for the growth of a vigorous port and contributed to the success of the colony.

Nelson Boulder Bank Historic Area. 2001 View looking north towards Mackay Bluff with Haulashore Island in the foreground | Paul Rasmussen | Paul Rasmussen
Nelson Boulder Bank Historic Area. Fifeshire Rock. CC BY-ND 2.0 Image courtesy of www.flickr.com | Mike Locke | 10/05/2008 | Mike Locke
Nelson Boulder Bank Historic Area. The Lighthouse and keeper's residence complex at it's most extensive c.1910. Image courtesy of Nelson Provincial Museum, F.N Jones Collection 1/1-009414-G | Frederick Nelson Jones | Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington

Location

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List Entry Information

Overview

Detailed List Entry

Status

Listed

List Entry Status

Historic Area

Access

Able to Visit

List Number

7821

Date Entered

8th August 2013

Date of Effect

8th August 2013

City/District Council

Nelson City

Region

Nelson Region

Extent of List Entry

This historic area consists of an area of land that contains a group of inter-related historic places. The identified historic places that contribute to the values in this historic area are the Nelson Boulder Bank lighthouse and lighthouse station remains (O27/150); Nelson Boulder Bank baches; O27/50 Midden; O27/52 Midden; O27/146 Midden; O27/147 Midden and historic artefacts; O27/148 Midden; O27/149 Historic midden; O27/51 Midden; O27/13 Midden and ovens; O27/144 Powder Magazine; O27/162 Wharf; O27/163 Foundations of building and winch; O27/153 Original part of Haulashore Island; O27/151 Midden and argillite roughout findspot; O27/152 Cultural soils and shell; O27/56 Shell midden; and unrecorded shipwreck remains of at least ten ships known to have been wrecked within the area (Refer to Appendix 1 for maps of these historic places and to Appendix 6 of the Registration Report for further information). The area of land that encompasses these historic places extends to the marine depth (5 metre) contour along the outside of the Boulder Bank. The boundary of this area is shown in the Extent of Registration Map in Appendix 1 of the Registration Report. The land within this historic area boundary is described as Pt Sec 1, Secs 2 and 3 SO 14733 (NZ Gazette 1992, p. 2186); Sec 1132 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL55/205); Secs 1-7 SO 15161 (NZ Gazette 1994 p. 2793); Lot 1 DP 14762 (NL9B/576); Sec 1100 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL72/175); Sec 1099MR CITY OF Nelson (NZ Gazette 1958 p. 1379); Secs 1097-1098 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL72/176); Pt Sec G CITY OF Nelson (NZ Gazette 1962 p. 594, see GN 83553); ARROW Rock Crown Land (under action) CITY OF Nelson; Pt Seabed; Nelson Land District. Within the boundary of the historic area there are places that do not contribute to the values of the historic area and are therefore excluded from the group of inter-related historic places that form this historic area. These places include NZAA sites O27/11 and O27/12 which have insufficient location evidence to support an assessment of archaeological significance, and the dredged navigation channel through the Cut (as shown on the LINZ chart NZ6142 of Port Nelson which identifies the channel's location, width and depth as at August 2013) because any remains of shipwrecks are likely to have been removed from this shipping channel. (Refer to Appendix 1 of the registration report for further information).

Legal description

Pt Sec 1, Secs 2 and 3 SO 14733 (NZ Gazette 1992, p. 2186); Sec 1132 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL55/205); Secs 1-7 SO 15161 (NZ Gazette 1994 p. 2793); Lot 1 DP 14762 (NL9B/576); Sec 1100 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL72/175); Sec 1099MR CITY OF Nelson (NZ Gazette 1958 p. 1379); Secs 1097-1098 CITY OF Nelson (RT NL72/176); Pt Sec G CITY OF Nelson (NZ Gazette 1962 p. 594, see GN 83553); ARROW Rock Crown Land (under action) CITY OF Nelson; Pt Seabed, Nelson Land District.

Location Description

The Boulder Bank beach formation runs along the foot of the extensive cliff-face of Mackay Bluff (though this mainland component is often not identified as being part of the Boulder Bank proper). The Boulder Bank spit formation commences at the southern end of Mackay Bluff, next to the small settlement of the Glen (Glenduan). From here the Bank continues southwards as a border to the reclaimed Wakapuaka Flats. It then splits off from the mainland and stretches as a lineal spit approximately 1-2 kilometres offshore, dividing Tasman Bay to the northwest from the lagoon of Nelson Haven in the southeast. Its southern termination is Haulashore Island, to the south of Port Nelson. Arrow/Fifeshire Rock lies to the immediate south of Haulashore Island, not far offshore of Rocks Road on the mainland.

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