MUSEUMS

Like the nation, let's start at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds Te Kōngahu, an interactive museum – rather, a series of attractions - telling the history of the North and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Its newest museum, Te Rau Aroha, focuses on the 28 Māori Battalion and the commitment of Māori to the armed forces.

Auckland War Memorial Museum – you won't see it called "Auckland Museum" here, it's not a brand - is rightly regarded one of the finest in the Southern Hemisphere. Designed to tell the story of Aotearoa, its galleries are chocka with taonga from all peoples of Oceania and New Zealand, and our natural world. Highlight: their new immersive experience, Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Stories of Auckland and its people.

Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato unites art, social history, tangata whenua and science. Must-see: the majestic war waka Te Winika, hands-on science galleries for children; and the rich blend of artworks.

The Elms Te Papa Tauranga is one of the Bay of Plenty's oldest heritage sites, a place of early contact between Māori and Pākehā, its nationally significant collections displayed in a heritage building and garden setting.

If the name seems puzzling, MTG Hawke's Bay is a unified Museum, Theatre and Gallery. Exhibitions include an extensive Taonga Māori Collection with more than 6000 items; a detailed view of the province's devastation following the 1931 earthquake; and the history of five Hawke's Bay freezing works, exploring their role in the region's story.

Gisborne's Tairāwhiti Museum and art gallery has a reputation as one of our best and most innovative regional museums. Extended and updated in recent years, its displays include a historic cottage and ship.

Puke Ariki in New Plymouth is more than a museum. The "integrated knowledge hub" combines a museum, library, research centre and tourist visitor centre. Te Takapou Whāriki explains how tangata whenua carved a home in the shadow of Taranaki Maunga and the impact of European settlement; Taranaki Life is an interactive journey through more recent generations. Kids thrill to recreations of the largest shark ever and a 5m-wingspan toothed bird found near Hāwera.

Set in Pukenamu Queen's Park, Whanganui Regional Museum is famed for its Taonga Māori Collection, the creations of tūpuna of tangata whenua.

Palmerston North's Te Manawa holds around 55,000 items, including artworks, taonga, heritage objects and natural history specimens. Some 300 interactive exhibits explore science and technology themes; its art gallery holds work by significant New Zealand artists, and the national rugby museum is housed here too.

What more can we say about our national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, other than any New Zealander who hasn't taken the chance to visit should rip up their passport now. While in the capital, take a look at nearby Wellington Museum, named as one of the top 50 museums in the world by the Times, opening windows on the city's social and cultural story; and Petone Settlers Museum, once a bathing pavilion, now recording the area's shared history.

Nelson Provincial Museum is the oldest in New Zealand, its origins dating from 1841. The kaitiaki of Nelson Tasman's social and natural history and taonga, a permanent exhibition leads visitors through Te Tau Ihu (top of the South Island).

Canterbury Museum is worth visiting just because of the gorgeous building; once inside, Māori galleries display treasures and tools from the region's first people; the Christchurch Street and Victorian Museum recreate the 19th-century city; the Antarctic Collection (not to be confused with the International Antarctic Centre, below) marks a long and close relationship with the icy continent and its explorers. Many flock to the kiwiana icon, Fred & Myrtle's Pāua Shell House.

Dunedin has not one but two of the country's best. The 150-year-old Otago Museum displays more than 1.5 million objects in seven free galleries. Tūhura - New Zealand's biggest science centre - is a must-do with over 45 hands-on interactives, including a giant DNA-inspired helical slide, and a three-tier Tropical Forest full of exotic butterflies, 5m waterfall and a sky bridge. Toitū Otago Settlers Museum is dedicated to stories of the city and province, how "people and their character, culture, technology, art, fashion and transport shaped New Zealand's first great city."

Can't leave this section without mentioning one of the most beautiful buildings and outstanding collections in the country, Rotorua Museum in the Government Gardens, out of commission while it's rebuilt to meet earthquake standards. Sadly missed.

Let's race around some exhibitions devoted to our hobbies and pastimes. A surprise: two of the three so-called pillars of Kiwi leisure time have museums devoted to them; one doesn't. Which? Read on.
This section doesn't pretend to be exhaustive. There may be a Hall of Memories for Needlework and a Little House of Treasured Thimbles that we've overlooked. Don't shoot the embroiderer.
Regarded one of the world's largest private collections with four buildings housing more than 600 vehicles, 20 aircraft and 60,000-plus toys, Wanaka's National Transport and Toy Museum is the product of one man's dream and more than 50 years of collecting.
The transport collection includes vintage cars, fire engines, military vehicles, tractors, trucks, motorbikes, heavy construction equipment, buses, boats and aircraft.
The toy collection, however, is wonderland for children of any age: diecast models, Meccano, dolls, teddy bears, tin, windup, clockwork and battery-powered toys. For more recent generations, Barbie and Star Wars figurines. Then, typewriters, hurricane lamps, sewing machines, musical instruments and kitchen utensils … we've only just started.

These are the cities and bays and inlets of sails, so we've a number of institutions covering our watery interests. The Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui A Tangaroa on Auckland's Viaduct tips its cap to history's greatest navigators, the Polynesians, right up to today's most successful sailors - Blake, Coutts, Dalton, Barker, Burling, Tuke. But it's not all about glamour here – working ships and their crew have their day in the sun, too.
The Edwin Fox Museum on Picton's foreshore is the shell of the last wooden immigrant vessel that brought people to New Zealand in the late 1800s and the last surviving Australian convict ship. You can step on board and soak up the atmosphere and the stories of the "passengers", while the ferry port's Heritage and Whaling Museum collates artefacts, letters and photographs of early Māori and the area's maritime history and wildlife.

Nelson's Māpua Wharf is one of our few remaining working wharves, hub of the village with shops, galleries and cafes in old buildings and a maritime museum.
Port Chalmers Museum in the town's original 1877 post office reflects coastal shipping memorabilia, models and artefacts from sail, steam and fishing eras, as well as many characters who lived in the town.
This is a land where, as many locals tell a visitor, you don't have to worry about scary animals or reptiles. It's only the landscape or the weather that'll kill you if you don't respect them. So our environment is the focus of any number of establishments.
The Waitomo Museum of Caves is New Zealand's only specialist speleological museum, showing the area's above- and below-ground treasures: glow worms, fossils, birds, animals; geology and landscapes; community and history.
Our national character may be defined by our precarious relationship with the ground under our feet and how we have turned that to advantage. The Buried Village of Te Wairoa, near Rotorua, teaches the role of the Pink and White Terraces in creating our tourism economy around 1850 and how guiding became a profession led by the women of Ngāti Tūhourangi. The 5ha archaeological site tells of those who perished in the devastating 1886 Tarawera eruption.
In the city, Te Puia is not only home to the Southern Hemisphere's largest active geyser, Pōhutu, but also a living museum where people experience contemporary culture at Whakarewarewa and the Māori Arts and Crafts Institute.
Sir Edmund Hillary warmed up for his Everest feats on Aoraki Mt Cook and that's recognised at the Hermitage Hotel, where you'll find the world's only theatre with 2D, 3D and a Digital Dome Planetarium, plus memorabilia. Koha of a $5 note would be appropriate.
The International Antarctic Centre at Christchurch airport takes families through interactive experiences commemorating the city's relationship with an immersive exploration of the icy continent from the first explorers through Hillary's expeditions to the present day.
In town, a visit to Canterbury Museum's Quake City is a must to understand the seismic events that shook the region in all too recent memory, with contributions from those who lived through the earthquakes and those who came to help. History and tragedy, sensitively relayed.
Wading into another favourite Kiwi pastime, The Tongariro National Trout Centre near Tūrangi is an angler's paradise. The Freshwater History Museum examines the history of trout and fly fishing on the Tongariro River, one of the world's best fishing rivers; the Native Freshwater Aquarium preserves native fish including giant kōkopu, kōura, tuna and kōaro; and the Trout Hatchery raises up to 16,000 trout fry.
For car nuts, the ultimate roadie will take them around the country to see some of the world's oldest and rarest vehicles. Hillsborough Holden Museum in Taranaki has the largest private collection of the Aussie-badged cars and memorabilia and has a mini-putt course based on the Mt Panorama track.
The granddaddy is Southward Museum, Paraparaumu, with its 6000sq m exhibition hall, engineering workshop, theatre and cafe. The collection includes an 1895 Benz Velo, 1915 Stutz Indianapolis racer, Marlene Dietrich's Cadillac and a Back to the Future DeLorean.
Nelson's Classic Car Museum features more than 150 cars from more than 100 years of motoring, many of them names no longer in production.
Motor-racing fans will make for The Highlands Motorsport Museum at Cromwell, displaying Michael Schumacher's Bennetton Formula 1 rocket, the $4.2 million Aston Martin Vulcan, Paul Radisich's Ford Mondeo, Jimmy Richards' Hillman Imp, speedway and rally cars. In the Virtual Reality Room, wannabes can test their skills against big-name drivers like Scott McLaughlin, Shane van Gisbergen and Greg Murphy.
Birthplace of the World's Fastest Indian, it's not surprising that Invercargill houses several motor-themed attractions, including Bill Richardson Transport World, reputedly the largest private collection of its type in the world - more than 300 vehicles, wearable arts collection and children's play zones. Classic Motorcycle Mecca is the country's largest display of two-wheelers, more than 300 motorbikes from 1902-2007.
Who do you think you are? If there's some Scots on your family tree, the Waipū Museum tells how 1000 Highlanders arrived in the Northland neighbourhood in the 1850s and has received a Unesco award for its collection. Further south in Foxton, discover Māori,

Dutch and pioneering history at Te Awahou Riverside Cultural Park, an exquisite award-winning setting with museums, a gallery and its centrepiece, the interactive Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom.
Which brings us to those quintessential Kiwi passions. For footie fans, The New Zealand Rugby Museum in Palmerston North's Te Manawa Museum is dedicated to the nation's favourite sport and boasts the world's largest collection of memorabilia from the original All Blacks jersey to Dan Carter's boots. There's a "Have a Go" area to test rugby skills at pushing in a scrum, tackling, sprinting, jumping and kicking.
Racing? Stand to be corrected, but we couldn't find an institution given over to the turf, although there have been several attempts to start one.

Which brings us to beer and, given its renown in the ale world, you'd expect to find the Hop & Beer Museum in Nelson, which grows 99 per cent of the country's commercial hops and has a rich brewing heritage dating back to 1843.
If your taste runs to other beverages, the Church Road Wine Museum, Napier, allows visitors to immerse themselves in the winery's history and philosophy. The museum is housed underground in old concrete vats where some of the oldest winemaking relics in the country are entombed.

Auckland's War Memorial Museum is perhaps our most sombre hall of remembrance; Te Papa's Gallipoli exhibition the most graphic representation. The nation's military exploits are recalled at dedicated museums at a site respecting each force's history.

The impressive National Army Museum Te Mata Toa is found near the Waiouru training camp halfway between Auckland and Wellington on SH1. Full of unique exhibits and interactive displays, it showcases stories of courage, honour and sacrifice. There are two guided tours (20min express, 60min premium) and a Kids HQ with dress-ups and play area.

Marking the Royal NZ Navy's renowned history, Torpedo Bay Navy Museum is housed in a 19th-century submarine mining station beside the Waitemata Harbour at Devonport. After visiting, wander up Maungauika North Head to walk through tunnels and other features of the area's defence history.

The Air Force Museum of New Zealand is housed at the RNZAF's first operational base at Wigram, near Christchurch Airport. Commemorating more than a century of national service, the 37ha museum occupies six buildings and is regarded as a world-class cultural institution, attracting about 150,000 visitors per year.
Most regional museums include collections from conflicts at home and overseas. Two of the more poignant are C Company Māori Battalion Memorial House, next to Gisborne's museum, dedicated to all from the Tairāwhiti region who saw active service during New Zealand's wars; and Featherston Heritage Museum, Wairarapa, a confronting history of the nearby prisoner-of-war camp.