Getting Started: The Colonial Administration Buys First Thermometers:

Government involvement in meteorology in New Zealand started in August 1861 when the Colonial Secretary, William Fox, instructed Provincial Superintendents to establish observatories for meteorological instruments which the Colonial office would send. Regular readings were to be taken and summaries published. The Auditor General Dr Charles Knight was appointed to control the scheme.

The Colonial Office had been urged by numerous people to begin a program of scientific observations to put an end to the controversy over what New Zealand’s climate was really like.

In 1842, Charles Heaphy had published a book in London based on his experiences in New Zealand in which he claimed that summer in New Zealand lasted eight months and winter only two. He allowed that there was a rainy season in winter that lasted several weeks, but that in summer and autumn, the rain that fell did so mostly at night. He accepted that the wind in Wellington could be boisterous, but never so violent as to do material injury to a field of corn.

The next wave of settlers’ letters home painted a considerably harsher version of New Zealand’s weather, discouraging some potential immigrants.

1861 was also the year gold was discovered in Gabriel’s Gully in Otago. It was the first of a series of major gold rushes that saw New Zealand’s non-maori population almost double in three years growing from 98,000 to 171,000 by 1864 and contributed significantly to a surge in the economy.

Illustration:- Heaphy’s painting of Mt Taranaki/Egmont.

Caption- It is likely that Mt Taranaki was covered in cloud when Heaphy painted it. Not wishing to show the cloud he left it out and had to make up the shape of the mountain from hearsay – about as accurate as his description of New Zealand’s climate.