Where Are The Regions of New Zealand?
Where is New Zealand, exactly? New Zealand is two islands in the
Pacific, but it is not a Pacific Island.
All those islands we normally think of as "Pacific": New
Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and Tahiti, lie
between 15 and 23 degrees South.
They are north of the Tropic of Capricorn...
... New Zealand is south of it. By a long way.
New Zealand stretches from 35 to 47 degrees south, and covers
270 000 square kilometres. It is:
the size of Burkina Faso, Colorado, Equador, the UK, or the
Western Sahara twice the size of Bangladesh, Fujian Province
(China) or Greece four times the size of Sri Lanka half the size
of Madagascar, France or Kenya and would fit comfortably into
the Caspian or Baltic Seas...
Some geography...
For the sake of convenience, we can divide up the country into 2
degree bands of latitude. Down here, the numbers get bigger as
we travel south. And it gets colder. Down here, birds fly NORTH
for the winter...
The regions of New Zealand fall into these bands as follows:
34-36 Northland 36-38 Auckland, The Coromandel 38-40 Bay of
Plenty, Waikato, Rotorua, Taupo, Eastland, Hawkes Bay,
Wanganui-Manawatu, Taranaki 40-42 Wellington, Wairarapa,
Marlborough, Nelson 42-44 The West Coast, Canterbury,
Christchurch 44-46 Mt Cook-MacKenzie, Wanaka, Queenstown, Otago,
Dunedin, Fiordland 46-48 Southland, including Stewart Island
What else can you find at these latitudes?
Following the same bands of latitude around the Southern
Hemisphere, the regions of New Zealand share their parallels
with:
34-36 Buenos Aires, Adelaide and Canberra in Australia, and
Cape Town in South Africa (in fact, Cape Town is NORTH of the
northern-most point of New Zealand, and Sydney is the same...)
36-38 Auckland and the Coromandel lie in the same band as
Melbourne 38-40 Bay of Plenty, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu,
Taranaki cover large slices of Argentina and Chile 40-42
Wellington, Wairarapa, Marlborough, Nelson - more Chile. 42-44
West Coast, Canterbury (Christchurch) are neighbours with Hobart
44-46 Otago, Southland (Dunedin) is the same as... Patagonia!
(just look at the landscapes to see why...) 46-48 more
Patagonia...
The Northern Hemisphere
While it's not an accurate comparison, New Zealand is in the
middle of the ocean with no part of it further than 130
kilometres (about 80 miles) from the coast, in the same bands of
latitude in the Northern Hemisphere you will find (moving north):
34-36 Cyprus, Kabul, Tokyo, Los Angeles 36-38 Seoul, Tunis,
Athens, San Francisco 38-40 Ankara, Beijing, Lisbon 40-42
Istanbul, Tashkent, Madrid, Rome, New York 42-44 Almaty,
Vladivostok, Sofia, Toronto, Boston 44-46 Bordeaux, Milan,
Belgrade, Bucharest, Ottowa 46-48 Geneva, Seattle
Now you know where you're heading. All you need to do is get
here...