Harry Atkinson was a good keen man. He hopped aboard a leaky ship and sailed from England to start a new life in New Zealand.

It's nearly 19,000 kilometres by air today but the old sailing ships had to do all the wiggly bits. They swung wide around the Cape of Good Hope and all these corners added distance and time.

Harry could have taken the easy option like most emigrants and sailed to North America. That trip took about 10 days and cost around £10 ($20). The journey to New Zealand took between 75 and 120 days and was £15 so Harry gave it a go right from the start.

Once here he worked hard. He began underground in a saw pit and rose to the highest office in the land. He became New Zealand's Premier. Today these people are called Prime Ministers.

Harry is well worth knowing. Let's meet him.

Word watch

All the words and phrases below are in this week's story. Choose the best meaning and then check your choices when you read the story. The answers are at the end of this week's TreasureLink.

1. contentedly (a) happily or (b) troubled
2. idyllic life  (a) peaceful life or (b) ideal life
3. independent and self reliant (a) able to look after yourself or (b) relying others to get the job done
4. self sufficient (a) whatever you need you can make or find yourself or (b) able to grow your own vegetables
5. prefabricated house (a) an early settlers house likely to be made of canvass and raupo or (b) a house built in advance so it can be shipped and rebuilt in another place
6. philosophy (a)  a set of ideas or beliefs or (b) a type of religion
7. theology (a) nature studies or (b) religious studies
8. economics(a) financial studies such as knowing about money and the movement of goods and services or (b) trading goods and services rather than buying them with money
9. ransacked (a) stolen and stripped anything of value or (b) vandalised
10. chaos reigned (a) a gang that takes over and run things or (b) disorder and confusion was happening all the time. 

Here come the immigrants!

Harry Atkinson arrived in New Zealand when immigration was popular. People were being "pushed' from their homeland by things like overpopulation and poverty while others were being "pulled" to New Zealand by the chance of a better life and promises of land.

Nearly 50% of the immigrants in the first 50 years of European settlement came from England and Wales. Most of these were from England. The second largest group was from Scotland and then came the Irish.

Germans were the largest minority group and Scandinavians, Poles, French and Italians made up most of the rest. Chinese immigrants arrived with the gold rushes but they almost all settled in Otago and Westland.

Click on the file below to find out how the population of New Zealand changed quite dramatically.

The early years

The first of the English settlers arrived in New Plymouth in 1841 but Harry didn't get here until 1853.

Click on the file below  to find out more about the early years.

The perfect settler?

Harry Atkinson was a successful settler who lived through good times and bad. He helped build a little community but then saw it burn to the ground. He was a tradesman first and then became a statesman.

Read the introduction to A Perfect Settler in here to this week's story and find out why he's been called "the perfect settler".

Some people would probably disagree. Does this first part of the story give you any clues?

Off to a good start

Harry's parents couldn't have prepared him better. In fact Harry was probably one of the best prepared settlers ever. When he stepped aboard his settler ship he had all sorts of enterprising qualities.

He was used to looking for opportunities.
He could plan and organise
He could see, solve and prevent problems.
He was willing to take risks
He was used to thinking about what he had done.
He could gather resources and he had the skills to use them.

Read A great childhood and then pair up with a classmate and find all the things Harry did in his young life that must have helped his future in New Zealand.

Good skills Harry!

Read Skills for a new life and then work out here link to PDF Good skills Harry just how useful these skills were.

What a trip!

The voyage to New Zealand took about four months - longer in bad weather. Harry's ship took six months!

Ships were crowded and uncomfortable and they leaked. There was hardly any fresh food and illness was a real worry.

Wealthy passengers paid extra for their own cabins and they were on the after deck, often raised above the main deck.

Steerage passengers, the poorer of the two groups, were in the hold below the main deck.

There were no portholes, it was too dark to read and the air was very stuffy. A family of six would sleep in a space that measured 1.8 by 2.4 metres.

Disease spread rapidly and the sight of small bodies being buried at sea was quite common.

Look here to find out more about life aboard the immigrant ships. It helps explain why Harry argued with the captain on his ship.

New Plymouth 1853

New Plymouth at last describes New Plymouth in 1853- 12 years after the first of the settler ships arrived from England.

Paragraph one gives us a glimpse of life in New Plymouth back then. For example there were two churches and two chapels, a clue that tells us that religion must have been an important part of many people's lives.

Read New Plymouth at last and with a classmate find some more clues that tell us about life in New Plymouth in the 1850s.

Harry the worker

Harry didn't sit around waiting for things to happen- he got out and did them. He made boots and worked in a saw pit as the under-man. This was tough work because all the sawdust fell on the under-man.

By the end of 1853 and only a few months after they had arrived in New Plymouth, Harry and his mates had 100 acres of their own and had built their own settlement.

The "clan" probably had some money saved from their life in England and this money may have been used to buy the land.

Harry had travelled as an "intermediate passenger" on the immigrant ship so perhaps he didn't have as much money as the Richmond family.

They were cabin class passengers.

The clan's settlement later grew to 250 hectares so Harry did quite well.

What about the steerage passengers then? These were the ones with very little money. Some of them did well too. What if you arrived as a single person in New Plymouth in 1853?

What would your business plan look like if you were going to be very successful after two years?

This planner will help you work it out so click on the file below:

Harry's house

Harry built his own house and it's still standing today. You can see it here.

Look closely at the planks. Harry used his pit saw to cut these from the log. You could get a lot of planks from one big tree. How many big trees do you think Harry needed to complete his house? 

A wife, a wife. I need a wife!

There were many more men than women in New Zealand in the early days of European settlement. Settlers warned young men coming to New Zealand that they would be better to take an extra week looking for a wife than looking for a good horse.

It was hard work hacking a farm out of the bush without a wife- almost impossible in fact. The women prepared the food, cooked, washed and raised a family.

This still happens today of course and now women get in there with a chainsaw alongside their men.

Harry was quite keen to find a wife but it took him three years. Read all about Amelia Jane in A wedding and decide if the ceremony and wedding breakfast would have been that much different to a wedding today.

The ideal Victorian woman

This was the time of Queen Victoria and certain things were expected of "ideal Victorian women."

Amelia Jane for example was said to be a "capital nurse" who made
"unexceptional pies and puddings". These things were noticed.

Look here to find out more about the "Ideal Victorian woman". Use the site to help answer the "likely or unlikely" quiz below.

Likely or unlikely?

1. Victorian women with money spent most of their days in their homes.
2. Victorian women promised to love, honour and obey their husbands.
3. Victorian women, who could afford to, kept up with the latest fashions even though the heavy cloth gave them fainting fits, headaches and what was termed 'hysteria'.
4. Victorian women didn't have servants, even if they could afford to have them.
5. Most Victorian women waited until they were over 25 before getting married.
6. Victorian women worked hard at being good wives and household managers.
7. Looking after a middleclass household was hard work and involved a lot of physical labour. Most of it was done by women.
8. Married Victorian women were expected to become mothers.
9. Unmarried Victorian woman were looked down on if they became mothers.
10. Victorian women were expected to always be present for their children.

The answers are at the end of this week's TreasureLink.

It's my place not yours!

Harry seems like quite a good bloke. He's hardworking, smart and enjoys life. But now we find that he wants the "savage Māori suppressed and absorbed into the superior British way of life."

He had very strong views and these included going to war if need be. Read on! Read Suppress the "savages".

The story tells us that most immigrants thought like Harry. They wanted land and believed it was their right to have it. But then there were those that had always lived on the land.  They wanted to and expected to stay there.

Click on the file below to work out why each group thinks as they do.

And then came the war.

The New Zealand Wars were a series of conflicts involving the British- Imperial and Colonial and the Māori tribes of the North Island.

Imperial troops were the British soldiers that came here to fight and the Colonial troops were made up of men like Harry Atkinson. They were already living in New Zealand.

The wars were bitter and bloody struggles and compared to New Zealand's population at the time, they were large.

Look here to find out about the war in Taranaki. It will also tell you why the families at Hurworth left their settlement.

Read Devastation to find out what happened to the settlement of Hurworth.

Attacking the settlers' farms was a Māori war strategy. Their raids destroyed houses and household goods, stock, crops and agricultural equipment.

By the end of the war some 200 farms had been destroyed or ruined. New Plymouth survived on the troop business, the soldiers pay and government handouts.

Work out then why these farm raids were such a successful strategy. They helped Māori in a number of ways. Think, pair and share your ideas with a classmate.

Harry the politician

Harry was a Taranaki man but he spent more of his life in Wellington. Read the last part of the story now, Political Life, to find out about Harry Atkinson the politician - the man who became Premier (Prime Minister) four times.

Harry was probably no different to politicians today. Some people would have agreed with him and others would have disagreed.

Decide who would have been his fans from the list below. The answers are all in that last part of the story.

1. An elderly man who can no longer find work.
2. An old soldier injured in the war.
3. Men who believed that only they had the right to vote.
4. Businessmen who believed they rather than the government should own and run  any big New Zealand industries.
5. Taranaki Māori.
6. Farmers.
7. Widows.

Rest in Peace Harry

An epitaph was often written on a grave stone and told something of the life of a person that lay below.

Look here for some examples and then write one that reflects the life of Harry Atkinson.

Fast forward to the Commonwealth Games 

This week the Commonwealth Games begin in Melbourne, Australia. They were once called the Empire Games and the empire was the one mentioned in this week's TreasureLink.

Around 150 years ago, Great Britain had an empire that stretched right around the world. They ruled countries on every continent.

This gave them resources to sell and land to settle on.  New settlers were travelling to places like New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Kenya.

British administrators ran countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Britain called these parts of her empire the colonies.

Over time, the people in these countries decided they would rather govern themselves. Sometimes Britain tried to hold on to her empire by force and people clashed in bloody battles but gradually the colonies began to govern themselves.

They still traded with Britain but they became independent.

It's these countries that make up the Commonwealth today and many will send sports teams to Melbourne.

There are 53 countries who are members of the Commonwealth today. There are huge countries like India with one billion people to small Pacific island nations like Nauru with a population of about 13,000.

The idea is that the rich and the poor countries work together to help each other. All the leaders get together every second year to work out the best way to make this happen. Look here and find three positive things that the  Commonwealth organisation actually does.

The Commonwealth Games are meant to be "less stern" than the Olympics. They are called the Friendly Games because competition is meant to be between people, not countries. Most people though will still be cheering on their own country and counting their medals.

Look here for all the information on this year's Commonwealth Games and see if you can find one country from each of the world's five continents.

Rewind answers
1. True
2. True. Without roads each settlement was quite isolated and it would take time to get roads built.
3. True. They wore lots of petticoats under the skirts too.
4. False. There were schools but some families needed the children to work on the farm and sometimes quite young children worked for wages.
5. False. Far more men emigrated than women and that's why men were told to spend a week finding a wife before they left England. It was said that it was just about impossible to turn the bush into a farm without a good woman.

Wordwatch answers
1a, 2b, 3a, 4a, 5b, 6a, 7b, 8a, 9a, 10b

Likely or unlikely quiz
1L
2L
3L
4U
5U- They often married much earlier. It was thought to be quite important to have a husband.
6 to 10 Likely