Brightwater is a toun 20 km sooth-west o Nelson in the Sooth Isle o New Zealand. It haes aboot 2,000 fowk, the 2006 census fund 1794 fowk. The toun is alang the bank o the Wairoa River. The steid wis fund aboot 1843, but wis named by a local towe mill awner, Alfred Saunders, in 1855. Faur-kent nuclear pheesicist Sir Ernest Rutherford wis barn here.