The story of the development of New Zealand may almost be found in the history of the surveying and mapping of its territory. The land surveyor was the forerunner of settlement, the explorer of the hinterlands, the roadmaker, and the designer of its towns and cities. In the pioneering era the work of the surveyor was difficult in the extreme. New Zealand has some 3,000 miles of indented and irregular coastline enclosing a total area of 103,000 sq. miles. The terrain is dissected by mountain ranges and turbulent rivers and streams, and the dense rain forests and the lack of communications presented unique logistic and technical problems for the land surveyor. It is to his credit that the standards, methods, and techniques in land surveying adopted in those pioneering days have been the basis for the development of a most efficient survey and mapping organisation.
Tasman in 1642 and Captain Cook between 1769 and 1772 charted the coasts of New Zealand. Cook's chart, supplemented by knowledge of the hinterland gained from the Maoris, was the only source of geographical information available to the missionaries, traders, and whalers before 1840. Sporadic and scattered settlements were established along the coast on land purchased directly from the Maoris for trade goods and muskets. These deeds of purchase, the boundaries of which were loosely defined, became the basis of subsequent land claims investigated by the colonial Government in 1840 following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Under this treaty the Maori tribes surrendered the sovereignty of New Zealand to the Crown, but retained the ownership of the land, excluding that which was subject to land claims. When a Government was established under Governor Hobson, one of the four officials who accompanied him was Felton Mathew, first Surveyor-General. It was his responsibility to recommend to the Governor sites suitable for towns and settlement, to lay out roads for access to settlement lands, to define the boundaries of such land, to provide a system of land records, and to establish a land-title registry. This was a heavy task for one man and a few assistants, especially as the sailing ship was the only mode of travel between the far-flung settlements. But Felton Mathew had foresight. He laid out the site of the Auckland City, providing for Albert Park, and showing on his first map of the city (1842) the identical location of the foreshore access road across the Orakei Basin, which was not developed until 100 years later.
Meanwhile the New Zealand Company had established its first settlement in Wellington. The most important administrative unit was the Survey Office, first under the direction of a Surveyor-General, later called the Chief Surveyor. The Company recruited some outstanding surveyors from the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. Many of them had had experience in the survey of India, where a triangulation system had been laid down as a basis for land-title survey. In the Wellington district it was almost impossible for the surveyors to keep ahead of the settlers' demands for town and rural land. In the steep and broken forest-covered terrain, the job of finding suitable land meant exploring territory as distant as the Wairarapa and Manawatu districts. These were often epic journeys.
The New Zealand Company had bought from the Maoris large tracts of land in the Wellington and Taranaki districts and in the South Island. Settlements were established in the Wellington district in 1840, in the Manawatu and Taranaki districts in 1841, in the Nelson and Marlborough districts in 1842, in the Otago district in 1848, and in the Canterbury district in 1850. Settlement had been preceded by explorations by a band of surveyors who designed and surveyed the towns and rural allotments to accommodate the increasing flow of selected immigrants. With the setting up of the provinces under the Constitution Act of 1852, the office of Surveyor-General was abolished, because it was impossible to maintain any effective central control of surveys, especially as there was hardly any overland communication between the scattered settlements. Under a Provincial Superintendent, a Lands and Survey Office was responsible for all land administration within each provincial district. A Chief Surveyor had autonomous control and direction of all surveys within his district. Unfortunately, in the nine provincial districts ultimately set up, the standards of land-title surveying and the techniques and methods used in the office and in the field varied greatly. Rapid settlement and its demand for surveys led to inferior work being done by men who were not adequately qualified. In the Auckland and Taranaki districts the Maori Wars of the 1860s (brought about by land disputes) disrupted land settlement, and survey work fell behind.
After conferences between provincial and Government officials, and after receiving a report on the state of the surveys of the colony by Major Palmer of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, the Government of New Zealand accepted the following general recommendations: the surveys of New Zealand be placed under the central control and direction of a Surveyor-General; a system of triangulation be provided to control the accuracy of surveys; and no person be permitted to carry out land-title surveys unless he had obtained a licence after passing an examination set by the Surveyor-General.
It was fortunate that some of the provincial survey officers were outstanding surveyors who had had experience and training with the survey of India and the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain. In four of the provincial districts these men had already established limited triangulation and standard traverse systems for survey control and an orderly method of reference for cadastral surveys within their districts. By the early 1860s most districts had adopted the theodolite for the observation of bearings and angular measurements, and by 1872 the continuous steel band had been universally adopted for distance measurements. Land-title boundary marks were related to permanent survey monuments established by triangulation of standard traverses, and the accuracy for land-title surveys was 1 in 8,000 in urban areas and 1 in 4,000 in rural areas.
Otago was the most advanced district in land-title survey methods and techniques. J. T. Thomson, Chief Surveyor of Otago, was appointed the first Surveyor-General for the colony following the abolition of provincial government in 1876. He and his team of Chief Surveyors tackled the problem of improving the state of surveys with ability and energy. A system of meridional circuits controlled by triangulation networks was laid down. By the end of the nineteenth century the whole of the country had been covered by a triangulation system that has served, until recently, most of New Zealand's survey and mapping needs. This accomplishment sealed the Crown's guarantee of the measurements and areas for land parcels.
The Surveyor-General immediately established a Surveyors' Board, which was responsible for the qualification of land surveyors and the review of the qualifications of all surveyors then employed in Government and private practice. A land-surveying profession was thus established, responsible to the Crown for the accuracy and indefeasibility of land-title boundaries. Thus the Crown's guarantee of the accuracy of land title surveys was safeguarded. Uniform regulations for the control of land-title surveys carried out under the Land Act, the Public Works Act, the Maori Land Act, the Mining Act, and the Land Transfer Act, and for the provision of survey records and cadastral maps, were gazetted. Ever since, the offices of the Registrar-General of Lands and the Surveyor-General have been closely linked in their administration of the land-title registration system. In districts, the Chief Surveyor is responsible to the District Land Registrar for the approval of all surveys of land subdivisions carried out under the Land Transfer Act. Such approval is necessary before the District Land Registrar may issue title to the land. The merits of the work of these early surveyors is proved by the fact that there has been no fundamental change in the land-title survey system since its inception in 1876. A professional institute was set up in 1881, comprising both Government and private surveyors. It has helped its members to keep abreast with the latest technical developments and has maintained a high standard in the profession.
Until 1906 the Surveyor-General was the permanent head of the Department of Lands and Survey and carried the additional title of Secretary of Lands. Briefly, the Department surveyed the lands of the Crown, including surveys of Maori land, of land required for public purposes, and of roads and railways; approved and looked after all land-title survey plans and records; maintained cadastral plans for administrative and public references; produced topographical and general-purpose maps; administered and disposed of Crown land for settlement; and administered public reserves and domains.
The last two were, in 1906, vested at head office in the Under-Secretary of Lands. In the 1930s, the combined offices of Chief Surveyor and Commissioner of Crown Lands were separated. The provincial districts, except for minor changes in boundaries and the subsequent creation of new land districts, became the land districts of the present day. The Chief Surveyor of each land district – the boundaries of which coincide with the Land Registration Districts administered by the District Land Registrar – has full administrative authority within his district subject to the overall control and direction of the Surveyor-General.
The demarcation of land-title boundaries, including surveys for railways and roads, the settlement of backblock lands, the development of new towns, the extension of existing towns and cities, and the closer subdivision of land between 1876 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, was an enormous task both for the field and for the office staff of the Department.
The office technical staff of draughtsmen and computers also became more and more specialised as survey records accumulated and the demand for published maps increased. Expert cartographers were trained to draw maps for publication; computers helped to maintain the efficiency and accuracy of the survey records. After the First World War the staff of the Department of Lands and Survey was employed mainly on settlement surveys for returned servicemen and, until 1935, when the effects of the depression had worn off, no outstanding advances were made in the field of surveying and mapping. The Department had made some efforts in 1911 and again in the late 1920s to carry out observations for the laying down of a geodetic triangulation for the more effective control of topographical mapping, and for linking up the existing local triangulations into one coordinated whole. An organised attack was begun in 1935 and it was completed in 1940. Thus it was possible, during the Second World War, to have a provisional grid for military mapping.
Some advance was being made overseas in the use of aerial photography to help to produce topographical maps, particularly for military purposes. Techniques and equipment were being developed whereby contours and physical features could be plotted down by stereoscopic methods from overlapping pairs of photographs with the minimum of field survey work. In 1935 the Department, through a national mapping committee, began the 1 : 63,360 (1 mile to an inch) topographical map series. The Air Force bought the necessary aerial camera and by the end of 1935 had photographed 500 sq. miles of the Hawke's Bay district. At the same time the Department bought two simple stereoscopic plotters which could plot down topographic detail from each overlapping pair of photographs from survey control points identified on the ground by the surveyor.
When war broke out in 1939, priority was given to the production of maps and charts for defence needs. Most of the professional and technical staffs at head office and in the districts were diverted to this essential work. At the same time the Army hired a private aerial survey company on contract to supply aerial photographs of strategic areas as a basis for detailed topographic mapping. This company still operates under agreement and supplies all of the official aerial photographs. By the end of the war, with considerable help from the Army, 1,500 sq. miles, covering fortress areas, had been mapped on a scale of 1 : 25,000, and 50,000 sq. miles (half the area of New Zealand) on a scale of 1 : 63,360 (1 mile to an inch). In 1947 the full responsibility for the production of military maps and charts and the representation of the armed services at all overseas military mapping conferences was vested in the Surveyor-General.
After the war the Department adopted new equipment and new methods and new techniques in surveying, in aerial photography, in photogrammetry, in cartography, in map printing, and in computing, all of which had been developed and proven by overseas survey and mapping agencies. Some of these developments included the precise measurement of distances by radar; the production of the distortion-free lens for aerial photography; the development of photogrammetric plotting equipment for the precise measurement and contouring of aerial photographs; the use of distortion-free mediums for drawing and type-set lettering for cartographic reproduction; the use of improved photographic processes for plate production for map printing; and the use of electronic computers for involved and high mathematical computations.
Thus the office of the first Surveyor-General at the Bay of Islands in 1840 has grown into the present surveying and mapping organisation which controls and directs all land-title surveys of civil and military topographical mapping and aeronautical charting; triangulation and trilateration for precise survey control; development surveys for land settlement and housing; and special precise and detailed mapping for the planning and location of highways, railways, airports, drainage and irrigation, and hydro-electric schemes.
by Russell Gladstone Dick, I.S.O., formerly Surveyor-General, Department of Lands and Survey.