25 January: Auckland Day

Today is Auckland Day in New Zealand. Here are ten things you might not know about New Zealand's largest city.

1. The Maori name for Auckland is Tamaki Makaurau, which translates to ‘Tamaki with a hundred lovers’. The English name was given to it by William Hobson, then Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, after George Eden, Earl of Auckland, British First Lord of the Admiralty.
2. With a population of around 1,628,900 people, it's the largest city in New Zealand. About 33% of New Zealand's population live there. 28% of them are Polynesian, which makes Auckland the largest Polynesian city in the world.
3. Auckland was the capital of New Zealand for 25 years from 1842-1865. It lost out to Wellington because, for government officials travelling from the south, the journey could take up to two months.
4. Auckland is home to the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, namely, the Sky Tower, which is 328 metres high.
5. Auckland lies on and around an isthmus, less than two kilometres wide at its narrowest point. It has two major harbours, Waitematā Harbour, which opens onto the Pacific Ocean and Manukau Harbour which opens onto the Tasman Sea. A favourite walk in Auckland is the 16km walk bwtween the two harbours, which takes about 4 hours.
6. Auckland's coastline is 3,702 kilometres (2,300 miles) long.
7. It's probably not surprising, then, that one in three people there own a boat, which has led to the city's nickname - the City of Sails.
8. The residents have been given a nickname, too - Jafa. It's actually quite insulting, an acronym for "Just another f***ing Aucklander" because there are so many of them and because the city is seen by some to get more than its share of government funding. A little like the resentment some provincial areas in England have for London, I guess. Aucklanders, however, re-interpreted it as meaning Just Another Fabulous Aucklander and adopted it as a term they use to refer to themselves.
9. There are over 50 volcanoes in the city of Auckland, from a magma source 100 kilometres under the city. Luckily, they are not expected to erupt any time soon.
10. Famous people from Auckland include Alannah Currie, a member of the 80s UK pop group Thompson Twins, pop singer Lorde, Lucy Lawless, actress who played the title character in television series Xena: Warrior Princess, and Sir Edmund Hillary, famous for climbing Everest.

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