A celebration of Scottish heritage

Caledonia Place in Highlands Park was formed and named by 1979, the same year the new suburb started to appear on New Plymouth city maps.

Development had begun five years earlier by Auckland-based Parkdale Development Ltd, but the suburb’s original name, Tableland, was soon changed to Highlands Park.

This opened the way for most of the streets in the area to be named after places in Scotland.

Caledonia was a Latin name used during the time of the Roman Empire to refer to Scotland itself.

It comes from an even older Celtic word, “Caledones”, meaning “hard feet”, a reference to the local tribes’ reputation for toughness and endurance.

When the country’s name eventually changed to Scotland, derived from the

Latin “Scoti” referring to Gaelic-speaking pirates, Caledonia remained in use as a romantic or poetic term for the nation.

Although the majority of Scottish migrants to Aotearoa settled in the South Island rather than the North, by 1878 nearly 8% of the population of Taranaki County had been born in Scotland, a number that rose to more than 16% in Pātea.

This explains why Taranaki’s first Caledonian Society was formed in Pātea (then known as Carlyle) in January 1878.

Its inaugural meeting was even held at the Albion Hotel, which took its name from the Scottish Gaelic word for Scotland.

Caledonian Societies were established across the British Empire and beyond by Scottish emigrants to celebrate cultural imports such as Highland dancing and piping.

They also held so-called Caledonian games that combined traditional athletic competitions such as running and cycling with more rural pursuits such as wood chopping and specifically Scottish activities such as tossing the caber.

Before long, New Plymouth, Hāwera, Stratford, Waitara, Ōpunake, Eltham, Inglewood and even Kaponga all had their own Caledonian Societies.

None of Taranaki’s Caledonian Societies remains active, and these days less than 0.5% of the region’s population was born in Scotland, but the Taranaki Caledonian Pipe Band and the Highland Dancing Association of Taranaki are still going strong.

- Contributed by the Taranaki Research Centre I Te Pua Wānanga o Taranaki at Puke Ariki. Find this and hundreds of other street histories on the New Plymouth District Council’s Puke Ariki website.