Wainuiomata is a suburban town located within the city limits of Lower Hutt - part of the Wellington urban area - in the lower North Island of New Zealand. It is located six kilometres to the southeast of the Lower Hutt CBD, and has a population of around 16,000.

Wainuiomata is isolated enough from the rest of the city by the Eastern Hutt Hills to be considered a town in its own right by most New Zealanders, and was officially a separate district until local government reorganisation in 1989.

The isolated nature of the Wainuiomata valley was a problem for early settlers. Narrow hill routes into the settlement werre the only access during the 1850s and 1860s. The town's economy in these early days was largely based around timber milling from the forests around the Wainuiomata River . A flax mill was based around the north of the town, but this proved uneconomical.

Once the forests started to be cleared, sheep and dairy farming became an important part of the local economy. The settlement started to grow into a proper town in the 1920s, but the major growth was after World War II.

External links

Wainuiomata online