You realise you’ve reached the navigational limit of this Up the Creek trip following the Kerikeri Inlet in the Bay of islands, when you see a line of birds, ducks and gulls, standing on the water.
And it’s not a hallucination – rather, actually, they’re perched on the rocks just below the surface that mark the end of the boat passage, and the ecotone between salt- and freshwater systems. For here is where the sweet water of the Waipekakoura River spills over that rock sill into the tidal Kerikeri Inlet. It’s one of five waterfalls in this area, all connected by walking trails. So this could be the waterfalls-themed Up the Creek too. And in this case, it’s quite appropriate that the birds standing on the water are a mix of freshwater and seabirds.
In common with an observation of almost all our Up the Creek adventures so far, this spot where potable water meets the briny is where human settlement was first situated. There’s always history in these places. As there is, assuredly, at Kerikeri.
Right by the rocks and the birds standing on the water, appositely, is the Mission House, a two-story weatherboard building of Georgian-era design. It’s the oldest extant wooden building in New Zealand. It was built in 1820-22 by John Gare Butler (well, he oversaw the work), the first properly ordained clergyman to be posted to and live in New Zealand by the Church Missionary Society (CMS).
Naturally this desirable location had long-time settlers already there, in the form of the assertive and confident Ngāpuhi people, with their substantial pā named Kororipo (meaning ‘swirling waters’) which dominates the southern-bank headland at the last bend of the inlet before arriving at the Stone Store basin.
Butler’s boss was the stern Samuel Marsden, the CMS agent in New South Wales, based at the Parramatta parish in Sydney.
Previously, Marsden had bought 13,000 acres at Kerikeri from Hongi Hika (who they knew as ‘Shunghee Heeka’) and his iwi in 1819 for 48 axes. It was a strategic military move – Hongi encouraged the mission and the Europeans there because he wanted to get muskets as well (missionaries called them ‘civilised weapons’).
The site for the Kerikeri Mission was beside Kororipo pā, the nexus of Ngāpuhi’s rohe (area of influence) and where Hongi Hika based his waka taua (war canoes).
John Butler and the Māori at the mission established a modest-sized farm here, and on May 3, 1820 the missionary gushed: “The agricultural plough was for the first time put into the land of New Zealand at Kideeekidee [you’ll note all the different spellings of the place in this story], and I felt much pleasure in holding it after a team of six bullocks …
I trust that this day will be remembered with gratitude and its anniversary kept by ages yet unborn. Each heart rejoiced in this auspicious day and said, ‘May God speed the plough’.”
Ironically, given their hopeful message of peace, goodwill, and compassion, the missionaries were a fractious lot. Butler and Marsden fell out. Butler was fired by Marsden in 1824 over a dispute about paying for timber. But there were probably other reasons. Read on.
Elsewhere in the Bay of Islands, William Yate, the CMS missionary at Paihia, was also dismissed by Marsden after allegations of sexual interactions with young Māori men. Yate reckoned he was innocent , complaining that “to be accused [by Marsden] was always to be found guilty.” But still, Yate’s fellow missionaries were outraged – so they burnt all his stuff and shot his horse.
The missionary enterprise in New Zealand actually started in 1814. The first mission station was established at Rangihoua Bay, further out and on the north shore of the Kerikeri Inlet. Despite it being a total failure (no converts and destroyed by Māori), Marsden tried again in 1820.
Thomas Kendall had set up a school at Rangihoua, learned the Māori language, devised how to write it, and published the first Māori dictionary. But he was suspended for adultery in 1822. (His wife, Jane Quickfall, fell from grace too, even quicker – but that’s another story…)
A succession of missionaries lived in the house at Kerikeri until James Kemp and his family set up there in 1832. By then, Kerikeri had pretty much lost all its strategic importance. Hongi Hika had died, and imported diseases had decimated the Ngāpuhi people.
But the initial six years at Kerikeri, which overlapped with intertribal musket wars were harrowing for the missionaries. They experienced robberies and were at times ‘impotent onlookers’ to brutal treatment delivered to slaves captured from other iwi.
Still, by 1828 schools were flourishing and church services well attended. James Kemp and family kept this up. By 1835 Charlotte and James Kemp had eight children of their own. They also took in Māori children to their home. By 1840 the Kemps were the only missionaries left at Kerikeri.
During the Northern War between the British and Ngāpuhi, 1845 to 1846, the Kemps were among the few Europeans who stayed. British troops travelled through Kerikeri to the battles at Ōkaihau and Ōhaeawai and on May 4–5, 1845 the station became a temporary barracks. Later the Kemps helped with tending the wounded.
The Kemp’s descendants lived in the mission house until 1974, when it was donated to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. The Stone Store was bought by the Trust in the same year.
In 2008 the road bridge that had been built across the river was demolished by, according to some locals, ‘some over-zealous heritage types.’ But this did remove heavy traffic from the immediate area, and with a 1.6km bypass, created the more peaceful historic precinct we know today.
The last car to cross the old Stone Store basin bridge was a 1913-14 Model T Ford from Pete’s Pioneer and Transport Museum in Kerikeri. This was symbolic: it was also a Model T Ford that made the first crossing of the original wooden bridge in 1915.
A walking bridge across the creek now takes visitors to Te Ahurea, an immersive learning centre for Māori culture and heritage. [See more in info box]
And right next to the mission house is the Stone Store, which by now must have been photographed a million times by Kiwi visitors and tourists alike. It’s the oldest stone building in New Zealand.
Lesley’s challenge was to capture this much-photographed building from a new angle. Our little rubber dinghy obliged – not many tourist shots are from water level from the creek. She also wandered around inside, soaking up the muted, sun-beamed light.
Lesser-known parts of the Stone Store story contain some anomalies. Like the fact that much of the stone used in its construction is Australian – sandstone brought over from quarries near Sydney. The normally temperate NZ History website calls the Stone Store ‘New Zealand’s first architectural white elephant.’
“The building’s impossible location, up a shallow creek and far from the shifting frontier of missionary endeavour, arose from infighting between the CMS’s Kerikeri and Paihia factions. ‘You may ask why, then, did we go to so great an expense in the erection of a building which is now condemned by the collected wisdom in New Zealand,’ CMS leader Henry Williams wrote to his superior in 1835. He knew very well why. Marsden feared that whalers and traders would have more pulling power than preachers and backed Kemp precisely because this warehouse was far from temptation.”
But there was more. At a late stage in construction someone stuck a structurally unsound belfry/clock tower on Kemp’s folly. It probably lasted less than a decade but it explained why early visitors frequently shook their heads at it, towering over the chapel. The heavy window bars, built by Kemp himself, showed how much he feared his Māori overlords.
Then it was flooded in 1981 after forestry slash dammed the river at the nearby bridge.
But let’s back up a bit. For our current Up the Creek, we anchored near Windsor Landings boat ramp and jetty amid some local moored boats and opposite the Kerikeri Cruising Club and Marina, choosing to go up the waterway in Skyborne’s dinghy tender. We felt this might replicate the slower passages up that same creek that people would have made back in the day. Many a waka paddled up here, and in missionary times whaleboats were rowed or crept along under lugsails.
While we were tootling up, I reflected on how the CMS missionaries chose to base their station well away from the bawdiness, prostitution, and constant brouhaha of Kororāreka (then being re-named and re-known as Russell), the whaling base that had been established here in the earlier 1800s. And also a locus for some pivotal moments in the lead-up to the Northern War – like when the flagpole there was chopped down a few times.
In his book Adventure in New Zealand (published in 1845), Edward Jerningham Wakefield summed up the character of Kororākeka’s denizens thus: “the frankness and manly courage of the sailor mingle[d] with the cunning and reckless daring of the convict’.” Though prone to drunkenness (just like Wakefield himself) and with a “general inclination to vice and lawlessness,” they redeemed themselves in his mind via their “many generous and noble qualities”. Ahem.
It was much quieter up at Kerikeri – more suited to the missionary lifestyle and their stated values and attendant mission.
Mind you, they did plant grapes there and make their own wine. Which may be why Butler was dismissed for ‘drunkenness’ by the uncompromising old Samuel Marsden. French explorer Dumont d’Urville had a quaff of it in 1840, describing it as “a light white wine, very sparkling, and delicious to taste”. Maybe a chardonnay type – his favourite.
My historical reverie was broken by the navigational demands of following the twisting route – plenty of channel marker posts to follow, and some homemade signs; and Lesley finding intriguing things to photograph en route. Beautiful waterside homes; boats worth looking at (some, obviously, ocean voyagers from faraway); waterbirds resting; a fine weathervane!
On the way we were also rewarded by encountering an outing of elegantly-canopied electric launches, part of a fleet of self-guided tours operated by the NZ Electric Boat Company, based at the end of Riverview Road [See more info box]. I was almost embarrassed by the vroom-vroom of our small outboard motor. The electric boats offer excursions of a few hours to half a day, with destinations ranging from the Stone Store, to Waipapa Landing and Charlies Rock Waterfall, to the ‘best kept secret’ (according to Electric Boats man Chris Claydon) of the bush-clad Rangitane Creek. Another creek for us to explore in future.
It is possible to get all the way up the Kerikeri Inlet to the public wharf right by the Stone Store in a fairly big boat –
a 35-40-footer, say, monohull or catamaran – but some of the turns are tight, and the tide must always be watched, depending on your draft. Nautical charts and Navionics put the low tide water depth at the wharf at 0.9m. Navionics, optimistically, posts an Anchorage symbol right here. Fine for trailer-sailers or smaller launches, I suppose; and yes, there are a couple of local cruising yachts of modest size/draft tied up nearby on pile moorings.
Heading back to Skyborne, and our planned voyage back to Auckland (our summer holiday cruise was drawing to a close), and I was thinking: now here’s an Up the Creek adventure that could easily turn into a much longer sojourn. Like staying there forever…
