Potato enthusiast

Those are some fine and plump buns you have.

Despite the panic, people tried to normalize life. Markets reopened, wharves were patched, and sermons reminded everyone of God's wrath etc etc.

And the sound of hammers and saws and rebuilding filled the air

After the quake, Wellington looked like a city in a blender. Streets were cracked, chimneys lay like toothpicks, and fences leaned at impossible angles.

Settlers scrambled to check on neighbors. Some were carrying babies, others furniture, and a few were like "this goat is mine now"

Wellington, 1860

wellington.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/3...

Lambton Quay, looking north, 1856

natlib.govt.nz/records/2306...

This was just the start of a long stretch of council-led land grabs, shaping Wellington waterfront for decades to come. The city literally rose from the quake.

But the new Wellington Provincial Council saw opportunity in disaster. Private waterfront land was now in flux, and reclamation projects kicked off in 1857.

The wetlands around Wellington's rivers drained away, wrecking ecosystems. Māori who relied on them for food and resources suddenly faced even more pressure.

Then came 1855. Boom. An 8.2 magnitude earthquake ripped through the region, lifting the seabed and waterfront land by up to 1.5 meters in spots.

Rūaumoko was showing no mercy.

Meanwhile, many Te Ati Awa had left Wellington by 1848 to protect ancestral land at Waitara, soon to be the spark for the First Taranaki War. Others left because disease and livestock were taking over.

Licensed watermen ferried goods between ships and wharves on lighters, earning their fees while keeping the trade flowing. The harbour was alive, busy, and shaping the city economy.

Lambton Harbour was the lifeline of the lower North Island, shipping wool (New Zealand’s cash crop) and other goods. The Wellington waterfront was lined with twelve private wharves from Pipitea to Te Aro.

By the early 1850s, Wellington was bouncing back. Even without the New Zealand Company, it had become a buzzing port town with about 4,000 people calling it home.

Okay, where was I... Oh. Yes the thing that sent a whole lotta settler packing up and moving to Australia.

Kitchen still broken. Gonna cook some late lunch.

Aaaaaaaaand.... Deep below Wellington the fault line all ready for the next big event in Wellington.

Unemployment soared, and the dream of a thriving colony fizzled. By 1850, the company was done for.

The Company was crushed under debt and forced to hand over more than a million acres to the Crown.

News of the Wairau disaster and the grim colonial conditions tanked immigration numbers. By 1844, The New Zealand Company stopped hiring settlers just to dodge bankruptcy.

Nz Company men tried to evict Te Rauparaha, his nephew Te Rangihaeata, and Ngāti Toa from land they wrongly claimed. The fight left four Māori and twenty-two Pākehā dead.

Then came the Wairau Affray

The first armed conflict between Pākehā and Māori, in June 1843 near modern-day Blenheim. It was the breaking point.

With no real development, the New Zealand company had to hire as workers the same settlers it had been paid to bring over.

Food ran short, and desperate settlers resorted to hunting birds to survive.

Meanwhile, The New Zealand Company was flat broke. Too many land speculators had bought sections without ever planning to move or build. The classic colonial bubble.

Waikato-iwi were forced off land at Waitara by armed constables, and land clashes in Nelson made it clear that things were starting to unravel fast.

Across the country, tension was brewing. The Hutt Valley saw a murder and revenge killing, Whanganui was running out of food, and Kororāreka’s Government House went up in flames.

In Pipitea, the pā and gardens were reshaped into a patchwork of markets, barracks, and native reserves. A jail popped up behind the pā, and even the police and court set up shop inside the kāinga.

By 1841, New Zealand Company settlers were pouring into Port Nicholson. Within a year, they outnumbered Māori, with the population hitting 2,500 and jumping to 4,000 by 1843.

Kicking the settlers out would've been...politically unpopular

So, Spain took a middle road: Māori would be compensated instead of getting their land back.

By 1843, the Acting Governor approved a plan to pay Māori for land that hadn't been "properly alienated."

Colonial bureaucracy at its finest.

Basically, the sale of Te Whanganui-a-Tara had been a giant game of broken telephone. Spain concluded The New Zealand Company’s claim to the harbour was totally flawed.

Spain then called Dicky Barrett to testify (the guy who’d supposedly "translated" the original land deal) Turns out, Barrett barely understood the terms himself.

Once he realised Spain meant business, and that the outcome might not go his way, Wakefield flipped. He boycotted the whole thing and started throwing public tantrums.

He used his media connections to roast Spain and Hobson in the press, calling them out like a 19th-century petty influencer feud.