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GNS Science announced in April of that year that a plaque had been placed in the Tararua Ranges, 11 kilometres northwest of Greytown, marking what it claimed to be the real Centre of New Zealand. Botanical Hill has long been considered the nub of the nation because it was a central survey point in the 1870s. Until then, there were surveys of various parts of New Zealand, but none of the nation as a whole. The powers that were decided to combine these surveys into a single geodetic version which took the curvature of the Earth into account, and Nelson’s chief surveyor, John Spence Browning, was considered the only man for the job.