Abstract:
Two important coastal features, Palliser Bay and Port Nicholson, occupy the southern ends of the valleys that are contained within the ridges of the Rimutaka mountain mass and the Wairarapa fault - angle depression as they terminate at Cook Strait. Though both of these water areas were formed by the down-warping associated with mountain building and the subsequent drowning of the valleys, differences between them are most marked. In the case of Palliser Bay the drowning has produced a flattened, crescentic, open roadstead without value as a natural harbour while Port Nicholson is a land-locked, deep harbour, 'so good that man must use it.' D. W. Mackenzie The Build of New Zealand pub. A. H. & A. W. Reed, p.5
An Order in Council of 1869 New Zealand Gazette, September 1869. defines the limits of this latter harbour as within the arc of a circle of three miles radius centred on the outer rock of Barrett's Reef. This circle reaches the land at the centre of Fitzroy Bay in the east and the western end of Island Bay in the west.
