Southland Anniversary Day in New Zealand
Southland Anniversary Day in New Zealand is held on April 7. Date for 2024. Holiday is actually the 17th of January but it is observed on Easter Tuesday. This was decided in December 2011 by the mayors of Invercargill, Southland, and Gore districts. This event in the first decade of the month April is annual.
Southland, on New Zealand's South Island, is a land of rugged coast and rolling plains.There is plenty to see and do in Southland. From early Māori heritage, to the legendary Burt Munro, to the petrified forest on the Catlins Coast, you will find evidence of New Zealand's history everywhere in Southland.
The first Europeans on the South Island's southern coast were the sealers of the late 1700s. Māori had arrived over 600 years prior to the first Europeans and bountiful fish and birds attracted seafaring Māori to Bluff.
If you look at an aerial map of New Zealand, you'll see how the North Island resembles a fish. Māori believe the far north to be the tail of the fish and Wellington Harbour the mouth.