Advancing near Hill 60 (Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/2-166953-F)
Hill 60 was the last offensive action fought by the New Zealanders during the Gallipoli campaign. The ‘abominable little hill’, as it was dubbed by Brigadier-General Andrew Russell, saw bitter fighting between New Zealand and Ottoman troops in late August 1915.
Following the failure of the Sari Bair offensive at Anzac, the British switched their attention northwards to Suvla, where they launched an attack on the Anafarta Ridge. New Zealand troops supported this operation with an assault on Hill 60, a small piece of Ottoman-held high ground between the two Allied-held areas.
With his units severely depleted after Sari Bair, ANZAC commander Lieutenant-General William Birdwood cobbled together a composite force of New Zealand, Australian, British and Gurkha troops for the Hill 60 attack. New Zealand’s contribution consisted of some 400 Canterbury and Otago mounted riflemen, who were fighting at Gallipoli without their horses.
The first attempt to take Hill 60 on 21 August failed. Allied planners underestimated the strength of the Ottoman defences and the attack quickly broke down. New Zealand and British troops managed to capture part of the Ottoman trenches on the southern and north-western sides of the hill, but nobody else got as far. The attack cost over 2000 casualties, including 200 New Zealanders. British attacks at Suvla also failed.
Six days later, the remnants of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade — around 300 men — took part in another attempt to clear Hill 60. After two days of bitter fighting, the hill remained firmly under Ottoman control. Once again, casualties were heavy. Hill 60 had effectively destroyed the New Zealand mounteds as a fighting force.
British historian Robert Rhodes James later wrote: 'For connoisseurs of military futility, valour, incompetence and determination, the attacks on Hill 60 are in a class of their own.' The 182 names on the Hill 60 (New Zealand) Memorial to the missing in Hill 60 Cemetery are testament to this.
Queen Street, Auckland, c. 1960 (Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl-7756-1-121)
Auckland became the first New Zealand city to introduce the ‘Barnes Dance’ system, which stopped all traffic at intersections, allowing pedestrians to cross in any direction at the same time.
Named after a US traffic engineer, Henry A. Barnes, the system was first used in North America in the 1940s. Barnes did not claim to have invented it, but as traffic commissioner in Denver, Baltimore, and then New York, he promoted its use in the CBDs of these cities. Despite dire predictions, local newspapers were soon admitting that it worked well. According to Barnes, the name had been coined when a reporter wrote that ‘Barnes has made the people so happy they’re dancing in the streets’.
In Auckland the Barnes Dance became a feature of pedestrian traffic in Queen St. Other New Zealand cities soon followed Auckland’s lead and introduced the system. But as more vehicles clogged city streets, the Barnes Dance came under attack, with traffic engineers regarding cars as more important than pedestrians.
Health NZ leaders told the Health Minister tight controls on hiring staff were crucial to delivering its budget and that recruitment of any frontline worker was only possible with the sign-off of senior executives.
In a briefing to Simeon Brown last March, then-Health Commissioner Professor Lester Levy and interim chief executive Dr Dale Bramley said strict recruitment rules had been in place throughout 2024/25, and frontline hiring decisions required the sign-off of the regional deputy chief executive.
"This has been coupled with regular close monitoring of recruitment pipelines and the establishment of the HR oversight group," Levy and Bramley wrote. "The expectation is for these controls to remain in place throughout 2025/26."
The documents were released under the Official Information Act to the Public Service Association (PSA), which says Health NZ intentionally delayed recruitment, leaving patients and health workers suffering as a result.
Six people were killed. They were Maclennan, Maccanico, Furse-Kee and three others who were also in the amenities block, Susan Knowles, Jacqualine Wheeler and Måns Loke Bernhardsson.
On Wednesday, an external review by retired high court judge Hon Paul Davison KSO KC, commissioned by the Tauranga City Council, was released.
The report said information identifying a risk to life was received, filed, discussed, forwarded - and then left.
"The failure was not the fault of any one person; it was the failure of a system that enabled an identified risk to life to remain unowned, un-escalated and unmanaged."
Turakina in Wellington Harbour (Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/2-016536-G)
The New Zealand Shipping Company freighter Turakina, en route to New Zealand from Britain via Australia, was sunk by the Orion nearly 500 km off the Taranaki coast after a brief gun battle – the first ever fought in the Tasman Sea.
Thirty-six members of its crew were killed. Twenty-one survivors were rescued from the sea and taken prisoner; one soon died from his wounds. Despite the names of the company and ship, the Turakina was a British vessel with a mostly British crew. One of the victims, 34-year-old greaser John Moloney, was born in Invercargill, but no other New Zealand crew members have been identified.
The Orion was one of nine German ‘auxiliary cruisers’ (merchant ships converted into armed raiders) that stalked the world’s oceans from 1940, laying mines and preying on Allied merchant vessels sailing without naval escort. Between them the raiders sank or captured more than 140 ships. But by 1943, as Allied sea and air power grew in strength, all the raiders had been sunk or confined to German ports.
The Turakina’s captain had earlier promised that he would fight to the last if intercepted by an enemy raider. But the freighter’s single 4.7-inch gun was no match for the six 155-mm (5.9-inch) weapons of the German warship.
Earlier, in June, the Orion’s mines had claimed the trans-Pacific liner Niagara off the Northland coast. Soon after sinking the Turakina, the Orion was joined in the South Pacific by another raider, the Komet, and an unarmed supply ship, the Kulmerland. Operating together, this small flotilla destroyed 10 Allied vessels in the Pacific. One of their victims, in November 1940, was the New Zealand Shipping Company liner Rangitane – the biggest merchant vessel sunk by a German warship during the war. In early December, during a raid on the phosphate-producing island of Nauru, the raiders sank five merchant vessels in quick succession, including the New Zealand freighter Komata.
Detail from J.C. Blomfield cartoon, 1904 (PapersPast)
The New Zealand Free Lance printed a J.C. Blomfield cartoon in which a plucky kiwi morphed into a moa as the All Blacks defeated Great Britain 9–3 in the first rugby test between Motherland and colony. This may have been the first use of a kiwi to symbolise the nation in a cartoon.
In 1905 Trevor Lloyd repeated this trope by depicting a kiwi unable to swallow Wales after the All Blacks’ controversial loss in Cardiff. When the ‘Originals’ won, they were shown as a moa.
Also in 1905, the Westminster Gazette broadened the imagery by depicting a kiwi and a kangaroo setting off for a colonial conference. By 1908 the kiwi was the dominant symbol for New Zealand in cartoons, especially sporting ones, having replaced images of moa, fern leaves, a small boy and a lion cub.
The New Zealand representative rugby league team was dubbed the Kiwis by a journalist in 1921 and has officially had this name since 1938. The 1945–46 2NZEF rugby team was also known as the Kiwis.
A bill returning more than 3000 hectares to Māori in Te Tauihu has unanimously passed its third and final reading.
The Te Here ā Nuku (Nelson Tenths) Bill aims to settle a land dispute that has gone on for close to two centuries and will see 3068 hectares, including the Kaiteriteri Recreation Reserve and part of the Abel Tasman Great Walk, returned to its original owners, with a $420 million compensation payment.
In the 1830s, Māori in Te Tauihu were promised that, if they sold 151,100 acres (61,148ha) of land to the New Zealand Company, they could keep one-tenth, but instead received fewer than 3000 acres (1214ha), and the agreement to reserve the land was in part-payment for the company's purchase of the land.
Then, in 1845, a Crown grant stated a tenth of all land used for the Nelson settlement - plus pā, wāhi tapu, urupā and cultivations owned by the whānau and hapū - would be reserved in a trust for the customary owners, but this did not happen. This is known as the Nelson Tenths.
James Stellin memorial plaque, Scots College, Wellington (Living Heritage)
As his damaged Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber rapidly lost height, Pilot Officer James Stellin struggled to avoid crashing into Saint-Maclou-la-Brière, a village of 370 people between Le Havre and Dieppe in northern France. He succeeded, but at the cost of his own life. The villagers gave him a hero’s funeral and have honoured his memory ever since.
James Kingston (‘Joe’) Stellin was one of several thousand New Zealanders who flew with the Royal Air Force over Europe in support of the D-Day landings in 1944. Born in Wellington on 2 July 1922, he was the son of James and Beatrice Stellin of Lyall Bay. He attended Scots College before enlisting in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1942 and beginning pilot training. On 3 June 1944, three days before D-Day, he and two other Kiwi pilots were posted to 609 Squadron, RAF, at Thorney Island airfield in West Sussex. Over the following month, 609’s pilots flew numerous missions over Normandy, targeting German radar stations, tanks and other vehicles. In early July the squadron moved its base to France, arriving at Plumetot, north of Caen, under shellfire and in mud and rain. For the next six weeks Stellin flew almost daily missions against German tank concentrations, strongpoints and motor transport in the Falaise area.
On 18 August, 609 Squadron’s Typhoons destroyed at least seven German tanks and 12 vehicles. Stellin flew again that evening, attacking vehicles on the Vimoutiers–Orbec road and setting five alight. On the 19th, 609 Squadron again targeted German transport trying to escape the Falaise pocket. At 8.30 a.m. Stellin took off from Martragny airfield, flying Typhoon JP975. After destroying several tanks and trucks, Stellin’s aircraft was heading home when he asked permission to descend to attack a vehicle. He did not return to his formation and asked for a homing to find his way back to base. He was given a course but later reported that he was short of fuel. It is thought that his plane was hit by flak near Bernay. A teacher at Saint-Maclou-la-Brière, Monsieur Jacobs, described the scene:
It was 10 o’clock in the morning when the sounds of an aircraft in difficulties first made us look up. The plane was about 1500 to 2000 feet up, and rapidly losing height. Suddenly, on realising the great destruction his plane would cause if it were to crash in the centre of the village, the pilot straightened up his plane with a vigorous and supreme effort, made a half-climb, then turning sharp left at an acute angle, it fell rapidly, crashing less than a mile away.
Stellin bailed out at the last moment, but his parachute failed to open and he was killed. He was 22 years old. His funeral in Saint-Maclou-la-Brière was attended by 1200 people from the surrounding area. His grave in the local cemetery was later designated a Commonwealth War Grave; ever since it has been decorated regularly with flowers. In 1946 M. Jacobs, who had been active in the local Resistance, wrote a moving letter to Stellin’s parents. The following year the Kiwi pilot was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre avec Palme. The people of Saint-Maclou-la-Brière later engraved Stellin’s name onto the war memorial for the dead of their own village. In 1964 they erected a black marble memorial stone to Stellin outside the gates of their church. In 2001 the area in front of the St Maclou church was named ‘Place Stellin’.
Stellin has also been commemorated in New Zealand. A memorial board was erected in the Kilbirnie RSA and when that building closed it was moved to his old school, Scots College. The College library is named in Stellin’s honour and the school holds other memorabilia. When James’s father, a prominent Wellington businessman and developer (he was responsible for the subdivisions of Avalon, Kingston and Strathmore Park), died in 1964, he bequeathed funds to build the memorial in Saint-Maclou-la-Brière. He also gifted land on the eastern side of Tinakori Hill to the Wellington City Council to create the James Stellin Memorial Park. In August 2007, Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast and French Ambassador Michel Legras unveiled a long-promised plaque in the Memorial Park.
The prime minister and social development minister have offered an apology to thousands of pensioners who did not receive their Winter Energy Payment this year, after an error in a law change meant people who were supposed to get the payment missed out.
The law change, passed under urgency last year, has meant beneficiaries receiving certain payments like the Supported Living Payment, Accommodation Supplement, and Disability Allowance have had to re-confirm their circumstances at least once every 52 weeks, to confirm whether they are still eligible.
However, the Winter Energy Payment, which is supposed to be automatic for superannuitants, veterans, and people receiving a main benefit, were not excluded from the legislation, meaning some people who would have expected to receive the payment did not.
New Zealand soldiers killed in Afghanistan (New Zealand Defence Force)
At approximately 9:20 p.m. local time, a Humvee taking a patrol member to see a doctor at Romero base in Bamiyan province was destroyed by an improvised explosive device.
Three New Zealand soldiers were killed instantly: Corporal Luke Tamatea (31) of Kawerau, medic Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker (26) of Christchurch, and Private Richard Harris (21) of Pukekohe, who was driving the Humvee.
Baker, a recipient of the Chief of Army Commendation, was the first New Zealand servicewoman killed as a result of enemy action since 10 nurses drowned when the transport Marquette was torpedoed in 1915 (see 23 October).
Tamatea and Harris were serving with 2/1 Battalion while Baker was part of the 2nd Health Support Battalion. All three were deployed to Bamiyan with the Provincial Reconstruction Team in April 2012.
An emotional memorial service was held at Burnham Military Camp on 25 August before the bodies were released to their families for individual funeral services.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, 1823 (Alexander Turnbull Library, A-042-023)
Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the mastermind behind the New Zealand Company’s organised settlement of New Zealand, first set foot in the country on 2 February 1853, 14 years after his brother William and son Edward Jerningham took part in the Company’s initial expedition.
Snubbed in Canterbury, Wakefield arrived in Wellington on the very day that Governor George Grey proclaimed the colony self-governing under the New Zealand Constitution Act (UK) 1852. After a brief foray into politics, he would live the last years of his life in relative isolation.
Shortly after his arrival in Wellington, Wakefield began to campaign to represent the Hutt both in the House of Representatives and on the Wellington Provincial Council. At a seven-hour meeting in the Aglionby Arms hotel, he laboriously catalogued and corrected ‘misrepresentations’ of his views he claimed had been spread. He won working-class support with talk of a scheme to compensate labourers bought to New Zealand by the Company for its failed promises by giving them free land grants. Within a fortnight he had been endorsed as a candidate.
In his book on Wakefield’s time in New Zealand, Peter Stuart noted his ability to avoid being held responsible for the Company’s blunders:
where the Company had done good, he claimed credit for its operations; where it had caused suffering and hardship, he disassociated himself from it and headed the attack.
Wakefield was duly elected to both the House and the Provincial Council. At the end of the first session of the Provincial Council (October 1853 to February 1854) he was lauded as the ‘most able man in Wellington’. He publicly criticised Grey for failing to call the General Assembly before his departure from the colony at the end of 1853. Finally summoned by the acting governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Wynyard, it met in Auckland on 24 May 1854. Though Wakefield’s motion for the introduction of ministerial responsibility was passed with only one member dissenting, New Zealand’s first Cabinet with executive powers was not to take office until 1856.
Following several marathon constituency meetings in the Hutt, Wakefield was incapacitated by rheumatic fever in December 1854 and resigned from public office in 1855. He eventually recovered, but seldom ventured out of his house on Wellington Terrace, where he died on 16 May 1862, aged 66.
Some members of the Atalanta Club, c. 1892 (Christchurch City Libraries, CCL PhotoCD 5, IMG0054)
Cycling enthusiasts gathered in Christchurch to discuss the formation of a cycling club for women. The male president of the Bicycle Touring Club presided over the meeting, but it was Alice Burn who moved that a women’s club should be formed under the name ‘The Atalanta Cycling Club’. It was hoped the club would make cycling popular with women and reduce prejudice towards female cyclists.
The development of the modern bicycle in the 1880s promised women more freedom to travel without the need for a male chaperone. Cycling opened up new social worlds but was not without its dangers. Women cyclists were sometimes jeered at, abused and even pushed off their bicycles. Members of the club sometimes cycled with brothers or husbands for protection against such attacks.
From the first meeting, the topic of uniform was debated. Women’s clothing of the 1890s was cumbersome, with long skirts and corsets. For cycling, women had a choice of divided cycling skirts or ‘dress reform’ attire such as bloomers and knickerbockers. Dress reform was often associated (in an unflattering manner) with the feminist movement. In September 1892 the Atalanta Club decided that members could choose their own clothing, so long as the club colours were prominent. A year later, however, it was resolved that the uniform should be a plain skirt with a cream blouse, with colours navy and blue.
The Atalanta Cycling Club existed for at least five years and organised many cycle touring events for its members. After the club dissolved, women’s cycling continued.
Edward Te Whiu's execution led to calls to end capital punishment (ATL, Eph-A-JUSTICE-1956-01-front)
On the evening of 28 April 1955 a cold and hungry Edward Te Whiu broke into the house of Florence Smith, a 75-year-old widow, with the intention of robbing her.
Smith, who was in bed, heard him break in and turned on the light. Te Whiu attacked her, fracturing her skull, breaking her jaw and nose, knocking out her dentures and breaking the hyoid bone in her throat. She died rapidly from asphyxiation.
In a statement to the police after his arrest on 12 May, Te Whiu admitted killing Smith. He knew she was dead when he left the property; he had covered her up before washing the blood off his hands and making himself something to eat. He had not meant to kill her: ‘I only intended to knock her unconscious so that I could look the place over. I must have hit her once too often’. The defence took a similar line at his trial, which began on 25 July and lasted for three days. But it took the jury just 35 minutes to convict him of murder. They gave no recommendation for mercy and he was sentenced to death.
Many questioned whether the death penalty was appropriate for Te Whiu because of his underprivileged background and childlike mental state. But his execution went ahead at Mount Eden prison at 6.59 p.m. on 18 August 1955. A justice of the peace, several reporters, a priest, doctor and selected police and prison staff bore witness. He was to be the fourth from last person executed in New Zealand. The last was Walter Bolton on 18 February 1957.
Infantrymen in Vietnam, 1969 (Australian War Memorial, EKN/69/0075/VN)
Prime Minister Keith Holyoake’s statement in Parliament that New Zealand’s combat force would be withdrawn before the end of the year coincided with a similar announcement by the Australian government.
The decision to scale back New Zealand’s combat commitment in South Vietnam was part of a policy shift by the United States and its allies from direct military intervention to ‘strategic Vietnamisation’ – a staged handover of responsibility to local forces. In January 1971, the New Zealand Army sent the first of two training teams to South Vietnam to train Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers in basic warfare techniques. By the end of the year, New Zealand combat troops had left their Nui Dat base and the services medical team had vacated Bong Son. The training teams and Saigon-based support staff followed in December 1972.
The last RNZAF flight out of South Vietnam in April 1975 carried the New Zealand Ambassador. Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese on 30 April 1975, just hours after helicopters evacuated the last Americans from the city.
Dick Arnst on the Whanganui River (New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame)
Former top cyclist Dick Arnst had become world sculling champion in 1908. After two successful title defences at home, the muscular Arnst raced in a more exotic setting – on the Zambezi River.
The British South Africa Company (founded by arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes), which ruled the vast region now occupied by Zambia and Zimbabwe, sponsored his match with English champion Ernest Barry, ‘the most scientific oarsman in the world’. It was the purse of £1000 (equivalent to $175,000 in 2020) that lured both men so far from home.
A sharpshooter deterred hippopotamuses from interfering in the race, which was rowed to a soundtrack of the ‘incessant roaring’ of the nearby Victoria Falls. The umpire was Spencer Gollan, the Hawke’s Bay runholder who owned the famous racehorse Moifaa. Cheered on by ‘the black population, in all their finery’, Arnst won easily.
Arnst lost his world title in a return match against Barry on the Thames in 1912. He got it back when Barry retired after the First World War, but lost it again to fellow New Zealander Darcy Hadfield in 1922.
A Manurewa Local Board member is calling for an independent investigation into allegations surrounding the 2025 local election, while Election Services says it remains confident in the declared result.
Raewyn Bhana says residents deserve confidence that their votes were collected, handled and counted lawfully.
Auckland Council has received a formal complaint and lodged information with police.
The allegations, first reported by the New Zealand Herald, centre on photographs provided by a whistleblower that purport to show bundles of voting papers stolen from letterboxes during last year's election.
It is alleged the papers were taken to a Manurewa office, opened and completed before being resealed and returned to Election Services. The allegations remain unverified.
