Taranaki Anniversary Day in New Zealand

Taranaki is the centre for a thriving arts industry, boasting world-renowned art galleries, museums and some of New Zealand's top artists. Taranakite. This is a fine-grained, cream mineral found in volcanic rock near New Plymouth, in the Taranaki region. It forms by a chemical reaction between bird droppings and weathered volcanic rock.

The name Taranaki comes from the Māori language. The Māori word tara means mountain peak, and naki is thought to come from ngaki, meaning "shining", a reference to the snow-clad winter nature of the upper slopes. After the second Taranaki war in 1865, the mountain and a million acres around it are confiscated by the Crown and sold for resettlement. More than a century later, Egmont is by far the name most commonly used for the mountain and its national park, but a movement for change has started to rumble.