Petone
Petone is a suburb of the city of Lower Hutt in New Zealand.
Petone was the first European settlement in the Wellington region and retains many historical buildings and landmarks. As it sits in what was once the swamp at the harbour's edge of a flood plain from the Hutt River, the earliest settlers found life hard, and a new settlement was eventually built on the shores of what is now the city of Wellington, New Zealand's capital. Until the 1980s Petone was a thriving, largely working-class town (and ), and the location of large industrial sites. The majority of these, including car assembly and meat processing factories, closed in the 1980s, resulting in gradual economic decline. Petone was an independent borough until local government reform in 1989 led to its amalgamation with Lower Hutt. The suburb has since enjoyed renewed economic growth, using its early European heritage as a draw for tourists and gaining many cafes and shops.
