Morrinsville

Morrinsville
Morrinsville
Coordinates: 37°39′S 175°31′E
Country	New Zealand
Region	Waikato
Territorial authority	Matamata-Piako District
Ward	Morrinsville
Electorate	Waikato
Government
• MP	Lindsay Tisch (National)
• Mayor	Hugh Vercoe
Population
• Urban	6,309
Time zone	NZST (UTC+12)
• Summer (DST)	NZDT (UTC+13)
Postcode	3300
Area code(s)	07

Main Road into Morrinsville - Mt Te Aroha in the background

Morrinsville is a town in the Waikato region of New Zealand's North 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 and 22 kilometres west of Te Aroha, close to the banks of the Piako River 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 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 (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.

Sports clubs

• Morrinsville Sports

Notable people

• Stephen Shepherd Allen (1882–1964), mayor of Morrinsville

External links

• Morrinsville Information Website
• Morrin Museum