Hear the incredible stories of the people who built our nation from the ground up. Tonight's focus is road development, from rough early routes to multi-billion dollar motorway projects of today. Making New Zealand tells the incredible stories of the men and women who built our nation from the ground up. At its heart, it is the compelling tale of the blood, guts and glory it has taken to build our major infrastructure projects and communication networks: massive hydroelectric dams and power schemes; railways; roads and bridges; and ports and shipping. The stories acknowledge and celebrate those who took on the big challenges in a raw, remote country, and whose vision, ingenuity and hard work transformed the lives of many and created a modern-day nation. Each episode contains a captivating mix of present–day interviews and visuals, archive footage and stills, historical audio recordings, and enhanced graphics.
From a rickety start due to lack of funds and difficult geography, our rail journey has been filled with engineering marvels, including one of the world's highest rail viaducts, over the Mohaka gorge. Making New Zealand tells the incredible stories of the men and women who built our nation from the ground up. At its heart, it is the compelling tale of the blood, guts and glory it has taken to build our major infrastructure projects and communication networks: massive hydroelectric dams and power schemes; railways; roads and bridges; and ports and shipping. The stories acknowledge and celebrate those who took on the big challenges in a raw, remote country, and whose vision, ingenuity and hard work transformed the lives of many and created a modern-day nation. Each episode contains a captivating mix of present–day interviews and visuals, archive footage and stills, historical audio recordings, and enhanced graphics.
The illuminating history of our power industry is filled with technological enterprise, from electric power production to the DC link connecting the North and South Islands. Making New Zealand tells the incredible stories of the men and women who built our nation from the ground up. At its heart, it is the compelling tale of the blood, guts and glory it has taken to build our major infrastructure projects and communication networks: massive hydroelectric dams and power schemes; railways; roads and bridges; and ports and shipping. The stories acknowledge and celebrate those who took on the big challenges in a raw, remote country, and whose vision, ingenuity and hard work transformed the lives of many and created a modern-day nation. Each episode contains a captivating mix of present–day interviews and visuals, archive footage and stills, historical audio recordings, and enhanced graphics.
From the early days of Maori waka, to the development of refrigerated shipping and the 1968 Wahine disaster, our maritime history has been filled with challenges and triumphs.
Explore New Zealand's pioneering engineering, building and architectural luminaires, highlighting our most iconic buildings such as Dunedin's Railway Station and Auckland's Civic Theatre.
This is the story of how Kiwis learned to spread their wings and take flight. Through trial and error, a civil aviation industry was born that opened up a whole new world for New Zealanders.
With wealth blanketing the land, forestry became one of New Zealand's earliest industries. Discover our history, and how the beauty of our native forests was almost realised too late.
Unearth how mining the country's riches played a fundamental role in the making of New Zealand, as landscapes were altered and whole towns were made and lost and made again.
Early entrepreneurs understood the appeal of New Zealand's natural beauty, giving rise to the world's first Tourism Department. Witness how New Zealand became the tourism mecca it is today.
New Zealand’s unique landscape, rich soils and original thinking has made farming the backbone of the economy. Our clever innovation was born of necessity, and to this day continues to make waves on the world stage. First to arrive were pigs – an important part of the Māori hākari, or feast – and Māori quickly adopted raising animals as part of their lifestyle. Early farmers found it tough, the land was hilly and covered in native bush, and the settlers had to do the backbreaking work of clearing and planting by hand; then when they got livestock on their property, they had diseases like footrot to contend with. Despite the challenges, farmers are amongst our most ingenious thinkers: the rotary milking shed, penning in animals with the portable electric fence, fertilising inaccessible areas from the air, and even the humble pound of butter are all New Zealand inventions. Today, in an age without government protection, farmers are coming up with diverse ways of earning an income: wool, deer velvet, honey, and even tourism help to keep farms ticking over.
New Zealand’s first industry was flax rope, essential in the 1800’s for sailing ships plying the Pacific and Tasman and further afield. This gave Maori economic power and enabled them to purchase equipment to establish flour mills; European settlers provided a ready market for this second product. In mining towns beer was an early staple but it wasn’t until the 1880s and the beginning of a long era of government protectionism that other industries sparked up. From there industries grew to support each other – with the birth of rail and mass transportation came an army of steam trains, manufactured at Dunedin’s famous Hillside shop. Kiwi brands like Hudsons gave rise to the iconic Cookie Bear, manufacturers like Bendix Hallenstein offered fair working hours, and Fisher and Paykel invented clever designs which were adopted worldwide. As the free market took over, Kiwi manufacturers looked to the future, with the past as inspiration. Today we manufacture high-quality, luxury goods, often by hand, and design genius solutions for everything from washing machines to space travel.
Featuring a remarkable combination of young tinkerers and academic physicists, who were first responsible for wireless broadcasting in Aotearoa, the industry soon bloomed into an immensely popular entertainment medium which Kiwis had never experienced. Despite stringent government control preventing the propagation of news or criticism, gameshows, live music, sports and dramas graced the airways nightly. Soon, emboldened radio enthusiasts pushed the boundaries of technology and the government monopoly – names like Colin Scrimgeour and David Gapes now live on in history. When broadcast television arrived in the ‘60s, Kiwis got to work constructing an ambitious national network reaching from our main centres to tiny out-of-the-way towns. Perched on mountains, sometimes fighting snow and occasionally sabotage, New Zealand’s broadcasting infrastructure allowed audio and visual content to grow quickly from scarcity to plenty.