Hamilton (Kirikiriroa)

Hamilton (Kirikiriroa in Māori) is in the Waikato region of the North Island, approximately 130 km (80 mi) south of Auckland. It sits at a major road and rail nexus in the centre of the Waikato basin, on bot  h banks of the Waikato River.

The area now covered by the city was originally the site of a handful of Māori villages, including Kirikiriroa (“long stretch of gravel’), from which the city takes its Māori name. By the time British settlers arrived, most of these villages, which sat beside the Waikato River, were abandoned.

The city is near the southernmost navigable reach of the Waikato River, amidst New Zealand’s richest and most fertile agricultural land.

With the exceptions of low hills around the University of Waikato, Hamilton Lake and to the west of the city, and an extensive network of gullies, the terrain of the city is relatively flat. The 64 hectare lake is formed in the crater of an ancient volcano. The formation of the crater saw the erupted material deposited in a Tuff Ring forming low hills around three sides of the lake. Water drains into the lake from streams that drain the extensive peatland to the West and also from direct rainfall. Subsequently the crater was infilled with deposits of sediment when the ancient Waikato River flowed through the area about 15,000 years ago. The lake averages 2.4 m deep but is 6 m at the deepest point. Water seeps out of the lake through an underground fissure to the North, which drains into the headwaters of Maeroa Gully. The present channel of the Waikato River is relatively new in Geological terms. Its former path was north through the Hineura Valley and out to the sea at Thames. The soils of the Waikato were largely formed from volcanic material eroded from the Volcanic Plateau at the end of the last ice age. The melting ice sent vaste volumes of outwash material north to the Waikato.

In its natural state Hamilton and environs was very swampy in winter. Early photos of Hamilton East show carts buried up to their axles in thick mud. The site had numerous small lakes which have now been drained. Up until the 1880s it was possible to row and drag a dinghy from the city to many outlying farms to the North east. This swampy, damp environment was ideal breeding ground for the TB bacillus which was a major health hazard in the pioneering days. The first Hamilton hospital was constructed on a hill to avoid this problem.