Petone Settlers Museum

The Petone Settlers Museum is housed in a handsome 1940 memorial building on the foreshore at Petone, marking the spot where the first European settlers landed in the Wellington region in 1840. The collection focuses on the immigrant experience — the journey from Britain, the difficult early years in the new colony, and the gradual development of the community.

The museum is well-curated, with a particular strength in social history: domestic objects, letters, photographs, and oral histories that bring the settler period to life without romanticising it. Entry is free. It sits on Jackson Street, Petone's main retail strip, which is worth a wander for its range of secondhand bookshops, independent cafés, and the heritage character of its early 20th-century shopfronts.

things to do museum sight
A story
The Wellington Provincial Centennial Memorial building that houses the museum was built in 1940 specifically to mark the centennial of European settlement in the Wellington region. The first colonists arrived at Petone beach on 22 January 1840 — fewer than three weeks after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed further north. The timing and the location placed Petone at the very start of organised British colonisation of New Zealand.