Nelson: Town of History and Trees

NELSON is a lovely, leafy city at the top end of the South Island of New Zealand. It has a sunny climate, lots of old buildings both in wood and stone, and a frankly amazing abundance of hiking trails in the hills that overlook the town.‍‍

Nelson: An old historical precinct downtown

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A screenshot of the Nelson Trails Map Viewer, filtered and rendered in black and white for clarity (2021). The urban area is to the left, an abundance of trails on hills overlooking the city is to the right.

Nelson was the first New Zealand settlement to be designated a city, as far back as 1859. At that time, it had just gained New Zealand’s first would-be Anglican cathedral, called Christ Church, on a small hill down which a terrace of formal steps soon cascaded to the street.‍

‘Nelson Cathedral’, Nelson Provincial Museum, Bett Collection, photo reference no. 314710.

The hill on which the intended cathedral was built was called Piki Mai meaning ‘come hither’. It had formerly been the site of a pā, or fortified village, where worked pieces of a flinty, obsidian-like local mineral called pakohe in Māori and argillite in English, from which tools were made for trade all over pre-European New Zealand, were gathered together for safe-keeping.

In colonial times, hill-forts and stone implements (other than those of pounamu) both became…