Taranaki Region - Geography and People

Geography and People

Taranaki is situated on the west coast of the North Island, surrounding the volcanic peak. The large bays north-west and south-west of Cape Egmont are prosaically named the North Taranaki Bight and the South Taranaki Bight.

Mount Taranaki, or Mount Egmont—Te Maunga O Taranaki in Māori—is the dominant feature of the region, second-tallest mountain in the North Island. Māori legend says that Taranaki previously lived with the Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu mountains of the central North Island but fled to its current location after a battle with Tongariro.

Taranaki, a near-perfect cone, last erupted in the mid-18th century. The mountain and its immediate surrounds form Egmont National Park.

Although Māori had called the mountain Taranaki for many centuries, Captain James Cook renamed it Egmont after the Earl of Egmont the recently retired First Lord of the Admiralty who had encouraged his expedition. The mountain has two alternative official names, "Mount Taranaki" and "Mount Egmont".

The region has an area of 7258 km² and a population of 110,100 (June 2012 estimate). Just under half live in the city of New Plymouth. Other centres include Waitara, Inglewood, Stratford, Opunake, Okato, Kaponga, Eltham, Hawera, Patea and Waverley—the southern-most town.

The region has had a strong Māori presence for centuries. The local iwi (tribes) include Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Ruanui, Taranaki, Te Āti Awa, Nga Rauru, Ngāruahinerangi and Ngāti Tama.

The region is exceptionally fertile, thanks to generous rainfall and the rich volcanic soil. Dairy farming predominates, with the milk factory just outside Hawera being the second largest in the Southern Hemisphere. There are also oil and gas deposits in the region, both on- and off-shore. The Maui gas field off the south-west coast has provided most of New Zealand's gas supply as well as, at one time supporting two methanol plants (one formerly a synthetic-petrol plant called the Gas-To-Gasolene plant) at Motunui. More fuel and fertilizer is produced from a well-complex at Kapuni and a number of smaller land-based oilfields. With the Maui field nearing depletion, new offshore resources have been developed: The Tui field, 50 km south of Hawera, with reserves of 50,000,000 barrels (7,900,000 m3) of oil and the Pohokura gas field, 4.5 km north of Waitara.

The way the land mass projects into the Tasman Sea with northerly, westerly and southerly exposures results in many excellent surfing and windsurfing locations, some of them considered world-class.