January 3 - Akaroa, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand

I know my itinerary showed that today I would be in Lyttleton (Christchurch) and indeed that was where we docked, but I went to a fascinating place called Akaroa today. On the advice of two friends who both have lived in New Zealand I went on a small group tour to this place.

I have to first write something about the geology and history of the area I went to today.  I remember about 14 or 15 years ago the area around Christchurch suffered two devastating earthquakes within a few months.  It was all over the news and the pictures of the devastation were incredible.  The area on which Christchurch and my destination today are both built is part of the Banks Peninsula.  This land mass was formed by three volcanoes, now dormant, but all sitting on a significant fault line.  In fact, all of New Zealand, both North and South Islands, sit on geologically active parts of the ring of fire.  Back to the Banks Peninsula.  Initially this was a volcanic island which eventually due to eruptions and emissions became joined with the South Island.  As we traveled on a twisting mountain road I could see the contour of the land where in millennia past lava had flowed down the sides of the volcanoes and as  it cooled formed ripples on the sides of the mountains. It was a very rainy, cloudy day and so it may be hard to see in the photos, but take my word for it.  The hills have gentle folds in them.

Akaroa sits in what would have been the caldera of a volcano and that caldera is now a sheltered harbor opening to the ocean to the south.  The area was settled as all of New Zealand was by various Maori tribes.  After the discovery of the islands by Europeans trade had begun so the indigenous people knew of westerners.  Growing around Akaroa was a particular kind of flax plant which was prized by Europeans because very strong ropes could be made from its fibers.  The local tribes engaged in trade but what they wanted as payment was guns, something new to them and which obviously they couldn’t produce.  The Maori tribes were warriors and the addition of guns made for some brutal tribal battles.  In 1829 in one such battle a tribe from around Akaroa had fought with a tribe on the North Island and many chiefs from the latter had been killed and eaten by the southerners.  In 1830 to avenge that event the northern tribe enlisted the support of an English trading ship called the Elizabeth under the command of Captain John Stewart.  I’m not going to go into the whole story but essentially the Elizabeth was used as a Trojan horse to lull the locals into a false sense of security.  The chief and his family were kidnapped  (later killed) and the settlement was destroyed and hundreds were massacred.  There is an interesting account of the affair at this site https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/maori-european-contact-pre-1840/captain-stewart-and-the-elizabeth  The incident when it became known to the British in Australia plus the interest of the French in settling the Banks Peninsula helped among other things to precipitate the Treaty of Waitangi establishing the relationship between the tribes and the British.

This was a monument commemorating the place where the southern tribes signed the Treaty of Waitangi

We took an hour and half ride across the peninsula to meet our guide  Marie Haley who is a seventh-generation descendant of the French settlers who came to the area in the time I just wrote about.  Marie has a doctorate in native ecology and history and was a font of information.  She took us to various sites around the sheltered bay and recounted  to us the events that occurred there.  The only remnant of the village, then named Takapuneke, is what’s left of an underground cooking pit and the smooth basalt rocks that were used to generate the heat to do the cooking. We saw the place where the English flag was first planted only a few days before the French came and expected to lay claim to the area. 

I know it doesn't look like much but that area near Marie's hand has been documented as the remains of a cooking pit from the Maori tribe and the rock she's holding has been authenticated too.

This and the next two are photos of the Onuku Church built in 1876 on the Maori reserve. It's now a non-denominational chapel registered with Heritage New Zealand as a category 1 historic place.

Marie’s great (times 7) grandfather came as a relatively young man who had served on a whaling ship and stayed in New Zealand.  He lived to be 92, which is remarkable for the time period, and was prolific.  He and his wife had at least 10 children and those children also had many kids.  Marie said that the direct descendants now number close to 8000.  She said that when she went to school she used to check the ancestry of a boy before she went out with him to make sure he wasn’t too closely related to her.  As I said it was a small group (just 6 of us) and we asked about her current family.  She told us that she and her partner met when they were both doing graduate work in of all places Idaho at the University of Idaho.  He is from Balochistan which is an area in south Asia and part of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  She had no worries about being related to him.

Use your brain's and eye's filters to see this beautiful old Victorian style house built by one of Marie's many ancestors and now operating as a B&B.

We learned a few other interesting facts about the Akaroa district.  What had once been covered with trees was completely deforested during the last couple of hundred years and instead was being used for raising sheep and cattle.  The terrain is too hilly for more agricultural farming.  Now there is an effort to reforest it and one of the ways that is being used is the introduction of gorse, a thorny evergreen plant.  Gorse is used in places in western Europe and in places like Scotland to form hedgerows to keep cows or sheep in specific pastures.  In the case of the Banks peninsula it is being used to keep animals out of certain areas.  It seems the gorse generates a lot of nitrogen back into the soil and as seeds from local species of trees are spread by wind or birds and fall beneath it, the seeds will germinate or grow.  The gorse will die back and the trees begin to emerge and we could see plots of land where new forests were growing. 

The weather was pretty miserable all day, both windy and wet, so much of what we saw was from the inside of the van we rode in.  My pictures can’t do justice to the spectacular beauty of the place and you have to use your imagination to see beyond the raindrops. There’s probably a way to get rid of those but that’s beyond my capabilities.  In some ways the clouds and the mist added an aura of mystery and magic to the hills and mountains, but I think it would be nice to see Akaroa on a beautiful sunny day too.

I forgot to mention that we had an excellent lunch of fish and chips in a local pub named the Bully Hayes. He was a colorful scoundrel/pirate in the Pacific in the mid-1800's.  The pub was along the waterfront in Akaroa which is a summer vacation spot for New Zealanders.  The town was busy with tourists despite the rainy weather.