Page 12 - PGA Community News - April '20

Page 12, PGA C.A.N.! April 2020 April 2020

New Zealand, Land Of The Long White Cloud…

By Don Kiselewski, MCC, of the Māori Nation, and is New Zealand’s portion of of the America’s Cup) and great vistas from the top of
D.S., Palm Beach Gardens the “Ring of Fire.” Its landscape is accented by thermal volcanoes that pop up all over the area. The abandoned
Travel Leaders activity, geysers and hot bubbling mud pools. The area city’s sewage treatment plant was revamped by Kelly
Some 130 million years also boasts excellent fishing, agricultural exhibits and Tarlton into one of the finest aquariums in the South
ago, New Zealand broke not to be forgotten, an occasional vibration of the earth. Pacific. One travels on a moving sidewalk some 110
away, separating itself from A constant reminder of the effects of Mount Tarawera’s meters long in an acrylic dome that snakes back and forth
Australia. Fifty million wrath can be witnessed in the buried village below. under the water in viewing the various marine life. Kelly,
years later it split from Auckland is the port of entry from the United States. It an explorer himself, also includes an excellent working
Gondwana, and twenty is the country’s largest city with one out of every three of exhibit of the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica.
million years after that New Zealand’s four million people living there. The city The Bay of Islands on the northwestern tip of the
it found its final resting has everything to offer the urban culture traveler; shows,
place … 1,500 miles from museums, sporting (especially sailing – the previous home New Zealand on page 13
where it started, now separated by the Tasman Sea from
Australia. It’s no wonder that lying so far south in the
Pacific Ocean, it was one of the last places on earth to be
inhabited by man. There is much discussion on the exact
origin of its first inhabitants. Scholars believe that their
base was in the Austronesian society of Southeast Asia.
Nonetheless, a little over a thousand years ago, the
first visitors to take roots have been tied linguistically
to Polynesia. These early visitors beat the Europeans to
the islands by some 800 years. Called the “Vikings of
the Sunrise,” their descendants became known as Māori.
Landing on the northeastern tip of the North Island of New
Zealand, they made their way west stopping at the second
lake, naming it Rotorua (second lake). Continuing west
they came upon a sight never before seen … the horizon
was snow white. So unusual was the sight that they named
the land after the sighting, calling it Aotearoa, “Land of
the long white cloud.” Conjecture has it that this was the
first sighting of snow on the mountains that frame the
eastern coast of the islands.
Whakarewarewa, simply known as “Waka,” located
in Rotorua on the North Island, has become the heart

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