KEY POINTS:
This year, Auckland celebrates its anniversary today, January 29, exactly a week after Wellington. In both cases, the day taken as a holiday this year happens to be the actual date of their respective provincial anniversaries. This is not always the case.
When the anniversary falls on a Saturday, Sunday or during midweek, most provinces usually observe a floating holiday, shifting their day to the nearest Monday, or more rarely Friday, giving people a long weekend.
Most of the six original provinces created in 1853, the year the colony gained the right to rule itself, chose to celebrate their birthday on the date that their first organised shipload of white settlers arrived.
So, on January 22, Wellingtonians commemorate the coming in 1840 of the immigrant ship Aurora, just as Otago people on March 23 recall the arrival in 1848 of their first ships, the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing.
Auckland, however, commemorates a different occasion. And the Auckland I speak of is the province as it was in 1853, possessing boundaries that took in almost half of the North Island, including districts such as Northland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty, which today don't think of themselves as part of Auckland and have a distinct regional identity.
Yet for reasons of convenience these places keep the day of the old Auckland provincial anniversary.
But in celebrating January 29, metropolitan Auckland simply observes a New Zealand first that really has little to do with either the old province or the modern city. This anniversary simply recalls the day in 1840 when HMS Herald, bearing the governor-to-be, Captain William Hobson, dropped anchor in the Bay of Islands.
This was the prelude to the signing at Waitangi on February 6 by northern Maori chiefs of the treaty ceding sovereignty of their lands to the British Crown. Over the next six months the majority of the Maori chiefs elsewhere in New Zealand followed suit.
Without a doubt the arrival of Hobson was momentous. But, at least on the surface, it holds no particular place in the story of Auckland. Are there other dates that would better do that? The first that comes to mind is the date of the founding of the settlement.
By August 1840, Hobson had determined to shift his Government from the Bay of Islands and set up the permanent capital of the colony on the south shore of the Waitemata Harbour. The following month he sent an advance party to Tamaki under his deputy-governor, Captain Symonds, with a two-fold commission.
First, to prepare a settlement. And, as well, it had to formalise the purchase of a 1214ha, wedge-shaped block of land north of Mt Eden, taking in today's central business district and much of the modern city's inner suburbs.
At midday on September 18 this land transfer was completed and the Union Jack was run up a flagpole on Point Britomart, to the accompaniment of cheering from Pakeha and Maori and a salute of guns from the two vessels anchored in the harbour.
That afternoon a regatta celebrated the occasion, unconsciously foreshadowing the way that the city has traditionally celebrated its birthday in later years.
Sarah Mathew, wife of the Surveyor-General, recorded in her diary that the gentlemen got up a boat race among themselves, another for the sailors, and a canoe race for the natives. The amateurs pulled the Surveyor-General's gig while the sailors contested their whale boat against that of the harbourmaster, for a purse of £5. The natives were each given half a pound of tobacco, with which they seemed much delighted.
The second date that perhaps could warrant commemoration is March 14, 1841, the day Auckland became the capital when the governor came to take up permanent residence here.
Governor and Mrs Hobson, with the officials ranged behind and musically escorted by a single fife and drum, marched up Shortland St to the yet-to-be-completed Government House. At the time, most settlers regarded the ceremony as ridiculous, and to us today it still seems a less-than-memorable occasion.
But why, it might be asked, doesn't Auckland, like the other settlements, pay tribute to the day that its first shippers came ashore? The problem here is if one sets aside the government officials and the military, Auckland was not systematically colonised. It was haphazardly settled by private individuals who saw a chance to make money by getting in on the ground floor of the government-sponsored settlement.
In fact, the first organised group of settlers to come here did not arrive until October 1842. Almost entirely Scots, and most of them people of little means, they came on two barques, the Jane Gifford and the Duchess of Argyle. These can scarcely be considered first ships because by the time they anchored, Auckland was already a going concern with a population approaching 2000.
The existing date of January 29 has a great deal to commend it. Conveniently, it pays tribute to Captain Hobson, who more than any other person can be considered the maker of Auckland. It was he who gave the settlement its name after his patron George Eden, 2nd Baron Auckland.
But more importantly, at a time when there was enormous pressure from Wellington settlers to locate the capital in their midst, Hobson chose the south shore of the Waitemata.
He justified his choice to his masters in London by praising Tamaki's "central position in the North Island, particularly with regard to the more populous Maori tribes, its fine waterways, and its great potential as a port on the south seas trade route".
Vilified by bitter opponents in his generation, Hobson is fittingly honoured by Aucklanders today as a man of vision. Holding our anniversary day on January 29 is a happy reminder of this.
* Russell Stone is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Auckland.
