Lazing around in Kerikeri (day 46 to 56)

Kerikeri is a lovely little town (pop. c 5,000) in the north of the North Island of New Zealand, in the Bay of Islands.  I’ve been staying there with my old friends, Mike and Blanche.  They have a lovely house, set in about an acre of garden, well outside the town and near to the sea.  There’s been a serious water shortage here and until yesterday it hadn’t really rained for seven months, which is most unusual.  What a contrast with where I’d been in the South Island, where they have an average annual rainfall of something like eight metres!  

Treaty of Waitangi

Most of the time, I’ve just been lazing around, not really doing too much.  However, I have been out to visit something most days.  An interesting trip was to Waitangi.  This is where the white settlers signed an agreement with the Maori tribes in 1840.  There had been intermittent fighting between the British and the Maori since the late 18th century, when the British first arrived.  Some of the tribes were quite keen to join with the British, whereas others were most determined to retain their independence.  In true British fashion, the settlers provided some of the tribes with guns so that they could wipe out some of the more troublesome tribes.  In the end, they pretty much all agreed to go with the British, partly as they were promised protection from the French, who were increasingly coming to New Zealand, particularly in the south.

Since the early settlers brought few women with them, many set up homes with Maori wives and so the races soon became very mixed to the extent that now, few Maori can claim to have no white blood.  Although the Maori are generally the under-privileged class, many are well-educated and have important jobs.  My impression is that they are better integrated than ethnic minorities in other societies and, indeed, New Zealand makes much of its Maori heritage.  There are problems, however, and I was advised, for example, not to go to pubs in Maori districts on a Saturday night.  It seems that this sort of problem is on the increase.  

Much is being done to improve the lot of the Maori people and, in contrast with Australia, there is no concept of separate development or tribal settlements.  In general, there is a single education system and children of all races go to the same set of schools.  However, there are also Maori-only schools, the so-called Kura Kaupapa  (broadly speaking meaning doing everything in a Maori way).  In these schools, students are taught using so-called “kinaesthetic” methods, i.e. based primarily on things like touch, taste and smell, rather than the “scientific” methods used in western schools.  The Maori claim that their children better respond to such methods, but whether or not this is actually true seems a moot point.

The Maori are recipients of a number of state handouts and this does seem to cause resentment on the part of some Kiwis.  Indeed, since anyone with only a small proportion of Maori blood can claim to be a Maori, it is said that people with, perhaps, a single Maori great-grandmother, might claim to be Maori in order to obtain the benefits.  I have no idea how true this might be, but it smacks of ill-informed prejudice to me.

Back to Waitangi.  Captain William Hobson arrived in the Bay of Islands in January 1840 to sign the  treaty with the Maori chiefs, on behalf of the British Government.  Hundreds of Maori and scores of Europeans gathered in front of the Residency, the original British house in Waitangi, later known as the Treaty House.  The treaty was read and explained in both English and Maori and the chiefs debated all day and well into the night.  The following day, 6th February, 1840, 43 chiefs signed the Treaty in front of the Residency, at a spot now marked by a flagpole.  Copies of the Treaty were then carried round the country and by September that year over 500 chiefs had signed it, although Hobson had already proclaimed sovereignty over the country.

The Treaty itself is a very short document, containing just three articles.  In English, it easily fits onto a single A5 page.  Debate still continues over the interpretation of the Treaty, but it is best understood as a whole.  It is an agreement between two peoples to live and work together in one nation and it guarantees the rights of both Maori and non-Maori citizens throughout New Zealand.  At least, that is the official blurb.  Reading the agreement, it does seem that the Maori are entitled to retain possession of the lands that they singly or collectively own, although there is provision for land to be sold to the Crown, at prices to be agreed between the two parties.  Somehow, ownership of nearly all the land was subsequently transferred to the immigrants and it is hard to believe that this was all the result of sales at fair prices.

Whatever the truth of the Treaty and its consequences, the Treaty Grounds are interesting to visit.  The Treaty House is still there in its original form, albeit with later extensions.  There is a large Maori meeting house (Te Whare Runanga), actually built for the Centenary Celebrations in 1940.  The house is made of wood and includes many and varied Maori carvings.

There is also a huge, intricately carved Waka (war canoe) built from three massive Kaori trees.  A minimum of 76 paddlers were needed to handle the canoe safely.

Finally, the setting itself is beautiful, with native bush giving way to open grounds leading down to the bay.  Elevated walkways through the bush furnish the visitor with glorious views of both the bush and the whole of the Treaty Grounds.

Kawakawa and its World Famous Toilet

One day Blanche and I drove down to Whangarei, the largest town in the area.  The town itself is not especially interesting, although it has an attractive marina where I ate a delicious lunch of New Zealand green mussels with pasta.

The town also boasts a clock museum with what must be one of the world's largest sundials.







On the way back, we stopped at the small town of Kawakawa (population 1,347 in the 2006 census).  The town has nothing to commend it, apart from its public toilets! 

In 1998 the Kawakawa Community Board was looking to upgrade its 40-year-old toilet facilities in the central township, and Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a well-known Austrian architect and painter who had settled in the Bay of Islands, offered a solution in his own inimical style.  His concept was adopted and construction was completed the same year, the artist personally lending a hand in construction, including the provision of materials from his own studio.  It is said that he became more involved in construction of the toilets than he had been in the building of the world-renowned Hundertwasser House apartments in Vienna.  The toilets feature salvaged tiles, glass bottles and a living roof, covered in grass.

Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, the toilets have put Kawakawa on the map and made it something of a Mecca for lovers of Hundertwasser’s art.  Although I wasn’t overwhelmed by the toilets, clean though they were, I did end up buying prints of a couple of his paintings from the shop opposite.

Fishing in the Inlet

One afternoon Mike and I took a boat out on one of the local inlets, in an attempt to catch fish.  The boat belonged to Mike’s near neighbour, Bob, an Australian who, amazingly, had been at Imperial College at the same time as me, only he studied Physics, not Maths.  Using just squid as bait, I’m glad to report that we had a little success.  I caught three snapper, the largest weighing about three pounds, together with another fish which, having consulted a book, Mike reckoned to be a young king fish, but I’m not convinced.   Whatever they were, they were delicious eaten later that night.

Our second attempt at fishing, in Mike’s own dinghy, was less successful, resulting in just a single fish, which wasn’t even large enough to take home.  What was particularly galling, was that in the meantime Bob had told us of how he’d been out the previous evening and found a place where he kept reeling in large kingfish, three feet long or more.  He now has a freezer packed full of enough fish to last him through the summer!

Selling Forests

Mike works as a real estate agent, selling farms and forests in the Northland area.  One day, he had to inspect some new forests that he and his partner Rex were hoping to take on their books.  I went with them to look over the prospects.  It was quite a long drive to the first property, which was right  on the west side of the country.  The drive over there was very pretty.  New Zealand really is a lovely country visually.  The forest was a bit tricky to find, but eventually we figured we had the right place and went exploring.  It was a pine forest of some 250 hectares, about ten years old.  We walked deep into the forest for a couple of hours or so and, although there was nothing particularly special about it, I did learn quite a bit about forestry from Mike and Rex.  They do have a potential buyer, a Chinese company which is looking to buy a lot of timber properties in New Zealand. 

We stopped by the second forest on the way back, but it was rather inaccessible and so we never managed to get into it.  In fact, we weren’t even sure that we were looking at the right place.  Mike is hoping to persuade the Chinese that they should charter a helicopter so that they can more easily visit both forests.  Let’s hope he and Rex are successful in completing a sale.

Concluding My Visit to Kerikeri

Blanche took me to a number of other places, whose names now escape me, but including a small seaside town where we had fish and chips for lunch, overlooking the sea.  They had oysters on the menu and so I thought I ought to try them.  I was a bit disappointed, to say the least, to find that they came deep-fried in batter and were rather mushy.  Who on earth would fry oysters in batter?  The fish, however, was delicious.

I had a great time in and around Kerikeri.  It’s a lovely part of the world, with beautiful scenery everywhere, but mostly I enjoyed meeting up again with my old friends, Mike and Blanche, whom I’d not seen for years.  I thank them most heartily for their hospitality and only hope that we meet up again before too long.  I’d certainly like to go back to New Zealand someday.