Morrinsville
Encyclopedia
Town
A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...
in the Waikato
Waikato
The Waikato Region is a local government region of the upper North Island of New Zealand. It covers the Waikato, Hauraki, Coromandel Peninsula, the northern King Country, much of the Taupo District, and parts of Rotorua District...
region of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
's North Island
North Island
The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The island is in area, making it the world's 14th-largest island...
. The land for the town and surrounding farmland was purchased from Wirimu Tamehana,the king maker prior to the NZ land wars of the 1860s. The land then was very swampy. The Scottish Morrin brothers hired Irish navvies from the gold fields to dig an extensive network of drains to dry the land.One of the brothers was an engineer. It is situated around 33 kilometres east of Hamilton
Hamilton, New Zealand
Hamilton is the centre of New Zealand's fourth largest urban area, and Hamilton City is the country's fourth largest territorial authority. Hamilton is in the Waikato Region of the North Island, approximately south of Auckland...
and 22 kilometres west of Te Aroha
Te Aroha
Te Aroha is a rural town in the Waikato region of New Zealand with a population of 3,768 . It is 53 km northeast of Hamilton and 50 km south of Thames. It sits at the foot of 952-metre Mount Te Aroha, the highest point in the Kaimai Range....
, close to the banks of the Piako River
Piako River
The Piako River is a lowland river system that drains into the Firth of Thames on the North Island of New Zealand. Together with the Waihou River, it is one of the two main rivers systems which drains the Hauraki Plains...
and Waitakaruru Stream. It has a population of approximately 6000–7000.
Morrinsville serves as one of three town centres in New Zealand's most prosperous dairy farming
Dairy farming
Dairy farming is a class of agricultural, or an animal husbandry, enterprise, for long-term production of milk, usually from dairy cows but also from goats and sheep, which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy factory for processing and eventual retail sale.Most dairy farms...
industry, and the region around the town is sometimes described as among the most intensively farmed areas in the world, from where it gets its town slogan 'cream of the country'. The town is named after Samuel and Thomas Morrin, early settlers who purchased the land as an estate and founded the town to house the estate's workers.
Morrinsville is the railway junction of the Thames Branch
Thames Branch
The Thames Branch railway line connected Thames, New Zealand, with Hamilton and was originally part of the East Coast Main Trunk Railway. Part of the line between Morrinsville and Waitoa remains open and is in use as the Waitoa Industrial Line, connecting to the Fonterra Dairy Factory at...
(now truncated as the Waitoa Industrial Line) with the East Coast Main Trunk Railway, which passes through the town. The last passenger trains to serve the town were the Kaimai Express and the Geyserland Express, both of which were cancelled in October 2001.