page_title: Ngauranga Gorge
section_title: Motorway
hierarchical_section_title: Ngauranga Gorge / Motorway
caption_attribution_description: On 13 October 1975, a hikoi of 5,000 marchers arrived at Parliament to protest the ongoing alienation of Māori land. Organised by Māori land rights group Te Rōpū O Te Matakite and led by Dame Whina Cooper, the hikoi had departed from Te Hapua, Northland, on 14 September, and arrived in Wellington after marching 1,100 kms throughout the North Island. Te Rōpū O Te Matakite regarded the land march as ‘a climax to over a hundred and fifty years of frustration and anger over the continuing alienation of their lands’. Upon their arrival at Parliament they presented a petition signed by 60,000 people from around New Zealand to Prime Minister Bill Rowling. The petition called for an end to monocultural land laws which excluded Māori cultural values, and asked for the ability to establish legitimate communal ownership of land within iwi. The hikoi represented a watershed moment in the burgeoning Māori cultural renaissance of the 1970s. It brought unprecedented levels of public attention to the issue of alienation of Māori land, and established a method of protest that was repeatedly reused in the following decades. To mark the 40th anniversary of the Land March, Archives New Zealand has created an album on Flickr to highlight key documents within our holdings that relate to the event. These include the petition with 60,000 signatures presented by Dame Whina Cooper to Prime Minister Bill Rowling, images of the Land March approaching Wellington City and correspondence related to the planning that went on behind the scenes to support the march taking place. This image is from the Public Works Department showing the tail end of the Land March group walking down Ngauranga Gorge at the point where State Highway 1 merges with State Highway 2. Another angle of the march can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/archivesnz/20605544353 Archives Reference: ABKK 24414 W4358 539 archway.archives.govt.nz/ViewFullItem.do?code=23459250 For updates on our On This Day series and news from Archives New Zealand, follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ArchivesNZ Material from Archives New Zealand
context_page_description: The Ngauranga Gorge is in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. State Highway 1 runs through the gorge, a vital link between central Wellington City and its northern suburbs and Porirua City and the Kapiti Coast; it is the main route north out of Wellington. It is 2 kilometres long and has a grade of approximately 8 percent. Sixty-five thousand vehicles a day travel through it, and it connects the Wellington Urban Motorway with the Johnsonville–Porirua Motorway.
  The name is derived from the former Nga Hauranga Maori settlement at the foot of the gorge. Its spelling was simplified after the second world war.
context_section_description: The first section of the Johnsonville–Porirua Motorway opened in December 1950 but traffic was funnelled through Johnsonville until a bypass was completed towards the end of the 1950s joining the Gorge's four lanes to the Motorway. A junction controlled by lights remained between the two highways until the end of the 20th century. During the 1960s the road through the gorge was widened from four to six-lanes. This required considerable excavation and the rock removed went into harbour reclamation for the construction of the Wellington Urban Motorway completed in 1969. 
  The Ngauranga Interchange flyover joining State Highways 1 and 2 was finished in 1984 eliminating the junction controlled by lights at the foot of the Ngauranga Gorge.
  The Newlands Interchange, at the top of the gorge, was constructed in 1997–98 to replace the simple junction controlled by traffic lights, which caused a large amount of congestion. Further excavation and widening of the gorge was required to construct the interchange and a short uphill section between Abattoirs Road the Newlands exit was widened to four uphill lanes.
  The North Island Main Trunk railway crosses the bottom of the gorge via an overbridge between the Tawa No 1 and Tawa No 2 Tunnels of the Tawa Flat deviation.
  There is an industrial area and some retail outlets at the bottom of the gorge, where there was previously an abattoir. Another abattoir and a quarry are part way up the gorge.
caption: The intersection of SH1 and SH2 at the foot of the Gorge, 13 October 1975. Māori land march
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