Today in History

1846 Devastating landslide at Lake Taupo

The Ngati Tuwharetoa village of Te Rapa on the south-western shore of Lake Taupo was obliterated in this landslide. Sixty people were killed, including the paramount chief Mananui, Te Heuheu Tukino II.

Te Rapa sat below the volcanic springs of Mt Kakaramea. The missionary Richard Taylor recorded how an ‘unusually rainy season occasioned a large landslip’ on Mt Kakaramea in 1846. The slip dammed a stream which, three days later, ‘burst its barriers, and, with irresistible force, swept rocks, trees and earth with it into the lake’. Te Rapa was buried with only a few individuals managing to flee in time. Another village, named Waihi, which was established near the site of Te Rapa, met a similar fate on the morning of 20 March 1910. Villagers heard something resembling cannon-fire and rushed outside to take a look. A cloud of dust appeared as another enormous landslide came crashing down the valley. This time all but one escaped.

1881 Anti-Chinese hysteria in Dunedin

A meeting in Dunedin presided over by the mayor unanimously called for a ban on further Chinese migrants.

New Zealand in the 19th century strived to be a ‘fairer Britain of the South Seas’ and non-white migrants were seen as undesirable. The discovery of gold in California, Canada, Australia and later New Zealand attracted many Chinese who usually intended to make their fortunes and then return home. In the 1860s the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce sought to replace European miners who had left Otago for the new West Coast fields. Chinese were seen as hard-working and law-abiding, and were also willing to rework abandoned claims. The first 12 men arrived from Victoria in 1866, and a further 2000 had followed by late 1869. Chinese women seldom migrated to New Zealand. In 1881 there were only nine women to 4995 men, raising fears that white women were somehow at risk from Chinese men.

As work on the goldfields became harder to find, anti-Chinese prejudice resurfaced. Some spoke of a conspiracy to overrun the colony with ‘Coolie-slaves’ who were ‘ignorant, slavish, and treacherous’. Canada and Australia had imposed entry taxes on Chinese immigrants and New Zealand followed suit via the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881. A poll tax of £10 was introduced and ships arriving in New Zealand were restricted to one Chinese passenger per 10 tons of cargo. In 1896 this ratio was reduced to one passenger per 200 tons of cargo, and the poll tax to £100. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries organisations such as the Anti-Chinese Association, the Anti-Chinese League, the Anti-Asiatic League and the White New Zealand League emerged to oppose Chinese immigration.

From 1907 all new Chinese arrivals were required to sit an English reading test, while from 1908 Chinese who wished to leave the country temporarily needed re-entry permits, which were thumb-printed. Permanent residency was denied from 1926 and Chinese were denied the old age pension until 1936. The poll tax was waived by the minister of customs from 1934, but the legislation was not repealed until 1944. In 2002 the New Zealand government officially apologised to the Chinese for the suffering caused by the poll tax.