Northland, New Zealand — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Northland known for?

Northland is known as the warm-weathered region at the top of the North Island, with Whangārei as its only city. Kerikeri is the biggest town. Beyond those two, settlements thin out to a few thousand people apiece, so the region reads as coast, farmland, and small centres strung between Te Hana and Cape Reinga.

Wellsford and Warkworth once belonged here before the Auckland Region took them in.

Where is Northland?

Northland is the northernmost of the sixteen local government regions that divide New Zealand, and it takes in the whole upper end of the North Island. Its extent is easy to state. The region begins at Te Hana in the south and runs to Cape Reinga at the northern tip, a single unbroken stretch of country with no other region above it.

Whangārei sits within that stretch. The city is the region's largest centre and the only one the country classes as a city at all. Below the city the region thins toward its boundary.

Wellsford and Warkworth lie just south of the modern line, and though both once counted as part of Northland they now fall inside the Auckland Region, which puts the region's southern marker at Te Hana rather than further down the island. Kerikeri, the largest town, lies north of Whangārei. The towns beyond it are smaller again, each numbering a few thousand people, so settlement across the upper region is a matter of scattered small centres rather than any second concentration.

Long drives explain the rest. Northland shares the North Island with Waikato and the Bay of Plenty Region further south, but it is set apart by having only one urban centre of any size. Whangārei anchors it.

Everything else in the region, Kerikeri, the small towns strung above and below it, and Te Hana at the southern foot, stands in relation to that single city.

What is Northland like?

Life in Northland is organised around a short list of names. Whangārei is the one city, so it carries the region's institutions, its larger workplaces, and the services that smaller centres send people to; nothing else in the region plays that role. Kerikeri is the counterweight.

As the largest town it holds a civic weight out of proportion to its size, and the towns beyond it, none of them much more than a few thousand people, orbit the two centres rather than each other. The regional identity sits partly in what was lost. Wellsford and Warkworth were once Northland towns, and their transfer into the Auckland Region redrew the southern edge at Te Hana, leaving people on either side of a line that runs through country reading much the same.

Boundaries are administrative. Belonging shifts far more slowly than the map that records it. Warmth shapes the ordinary year here.

The region is known for it across New Zealand, and a climate that stays comparatively mild pushes daily life outdoors and northward, toward the run of small settlements that ends at Cape Reinga. That tip carries a weight of its own as the northern extremity of the North Island, a place people travel to precisely because the land stops there. Most people simply say Northland.

The fuller Northland Region belongs to official use.

What is the history of Northland?

Northland's recorded shape has changed more than its ground. The line sits at Te Hana. Wellsford and Warkworth were once counted within the region, and their shift into the Auckland Region local government area shortened Northland from the south while leaving Cape Reinga and the towns of the north exactly where they had always been.

The order of its centres settled early: Whangārei became the only city, Kerikeri the largest town.

What is the climate of Northland?

Warm weather is what Northland is known for across New Zealand. Position explains it. The region sits further from the pole than any other in the country, so the strip between Te Hana and Cape Reinga runs milder through the year than the regions below it, and that reputation for warmth travels ahead of the place.

Whangārei and Kerikeri share it.

How do you get to Northland?

Almost everyone arrives from the south, crossing out of the Auckland Region past Wellsford and Warkworth and entering Northland at Te Hana. Whangārei comes next. The city is the region's transport hub and the point where onward journeys to Kerikeri and the smaller towns of the north are put together, since no other centre is large enough to serve that function.

Beyond Kerikeri the settlements thin toward Cape Reinga.