Public access and private property: law and custom on New Zealand’s beaches

Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION On the colonisation of Aotearoa, New Zealand in 1840 a set of instructions was issued on behalf of Queen Victoria to the new Governor Hobson. The instructions required the Governor to direct the surveyor-general to report what particular lands might be proper to reserve “as places fit to be set apart for the recreation and amusement of the inhabitants of any town or village, or for promoting the health of such inhabitants”. This instruction, hidden in a royally sized forty-third paragraph, inspired what have been described as “urban myths”: an “ideal” of public access to the coast, river and lakeside, well known in New Zealand as the “Queenʼs Chain”. The imagined freedom to walk along the coast from the northern most tip of the North Island to the southern most tip of the South, with only a ferry ride across the strait to slow you down, has gathered such symbolic weight that the Queenʼs Chain is sometimes viewed as integral to New Zealand culture and identity.