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The Wairau River is one of the longer rivers in New Zealand's South Island. It flows for 170 kilometres from the Spenser Mountains (a northern range of the Southern Alps), firstly in a northwards direction and then northeast down a long, straight valley in inland Marlborough.
The river's lower reaches are noted for the fertile plain which surrounds them, now one of New Zealand's finest wine producing regions. The river has its outflow into Cook Strait at Cloudy Bay, just north of Blenheim in the island's northeast.
In pre-European and early colonial New Zealand, one of the south Island's largest Maori settlements was close to the mouth of the Wairau.
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