Samuel Marsden Memorial Church

When we first came up to the far north on holiday in April 2018 we drove through Matauri Bay and just before the road to the beach and campground there is this small church with a Maori urupa attached to it.

It's named after Samuel Marsden, the first missionary to New Zealand who came here in 1814 to minister to the Maori people. Accompanying Marsden were missionaries Thomas Kendall, William Hall and John King and their families; John Liddiard Nicholas (author of “Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand”) and Ruatara, Hongi Hika, Korokoro, Te Nganga, Tui and Maui.

The great Ngapuhi war chief, Hongi Hika welcomed Marsden and his colleagues with haka (war dances), inviting them to a feast. They spent the night with Hongi Hika and his people at Putataua Bay before continuing to Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands to establish the first mission station.

The small Anglican church beside the road, some 400 metres before the beach, is the Samuel Marsden Memorial Church, named in honour of the missionary's arrival on these shores. The lettering above the gate to the churchyard and urupa (cemetery) reads “Te Tou O Taki”.

Linking up with Skywatch Friday.

Rangihoua Heritage Park

We got out for a visit out to Rangihoua Heritage Park this morning - this is a place the other half has been itching to see for a while.

From the top of the walk way this was the view we had of the Kerikeri Inlet Harbour - so beautiful on a sunny Spring day like today. From the top it was about a 30 minute walk to the coast and along the way we trekked along a slightly muddy 4 wheel drive track. 

Rangihoua Pā and Kainga (village) was the local town at the time of the mission settlement, home to many hundreds of people including Chief Ruatara, Māori leader and friend of Reverend Samuel Marsden. The people of Rangihoua Pā were the protectors of the settlement in its early days.

Today only a few terraces remain of the first European settlement established by the Church Missionary Society at Rangihoua Bay in 1814. In 1832, the settlement moved to more fertile land at Te Puna, a few kilometres to the west.

Lots of Kowhai trees around our area at the moment too - their name in Maori means "yellow".

The Park was established by the Marsden Cross Trust Board together with its partners Ngāti Torehina, the Rangihoua Native Reserve Board and the Department of Conservation. The prime objective is to inform and educate the people of New Zealand and visitors from abroad of the significance of Rangihoua and the events of 1814 and the years that followed.

Marsden Cross (above) marks where the Reverend Samuel Marsden preached his first sermon on Christmas Day 1814. That line of trees in the above photo is where the track started at the top and carried on along down the hill.

There are cultivation lines running down the slope that may be the gardens Marsden’s travelling companions referred to as “plantations of kumara, potatoes and other vegetables”. 

The terraces that you can see on this slope today are where the missionaries’ homes were and also the country’s first school house. 

So it was back towards the way we came but firstly through this short native bush walk. Next weekend another adventure...