November 16 & 17 Russell or Kororāreka (Maori)

    November 16

    We had another lovely breakfast at Allegra House with great conversation with a British, a German and our host (Swiss) - all about real estate, short term rentals and tourism etc. It was wide-ranging and thought-provoking. Plus, the breakfast was extraordinary with homemade bread, smoked salmon, eggs done however you wanted, and a lot of fruit, including delicious kiwis.

Ferry from Opua to Okiato - 10 minutes, $37 (NZ) roundtrip

On the ferry!

    We drove the short distance to Opua and took a 10-minute car ferry to Okiato and then drove to the small town - Kororareka, the Maori word meaning Sweet Little Penguin. The man whose name was given to the town, Russell, never visited here. There are under 800 permanent residents. It was the first permanent European settlement and seaport in New Zealand. (Tomorrow we will visit the town's museum and learn more.)

   

Bar in The Duke of Marlborough

The Strand, the bayside street. Our hotel has the red roof and the veranda.

 We got to the Lord of Marlborough, a grand old hotel on beachfront. As we were early, we drove to Long Beach, but it was too cold to swim. (Low 70s, cloudy, a bit of wind.) But, we had a coffee from a coffee truck and watched people on the beach and sailboats. We saw our first Variable Oystercatchers.

 

Grave of Henri Turner, Nantucket Whaling Captain, buried in Russell

  Then, we went back to town and found the gravesite of Nantucket Whaling captain, Henri Turner, an ancestor of Scott and Ken Blackshaw. The whalers visited here during whaling's heydays. And, at least one Maori is resting in Nantucket's Historic Coloured Cemetery. The Anglican Church here is the oldest one in New Zealand.

 

After that, we went to the Pompallier Mission and Printery, recommended by Sandy Mitchell. We took a tour lead by an entertaining and interesting Maori guide. This mission was established by a French Catholic Bishop, Jean-Baptiste Pompellier who established the first Catholic mission. It is interesting that the Anglicans and Catholics had their first churches here.

Pompellier

Dawn, our excellent guide

      The Bishop established a printing press in the early 1840s which was well-explained by the guide. The Marish brothers collaborated with an Irish Catholic tanner to print 40,000 books in 8 years. These were not Bibles, but rather prayer books and hymnals.  It is now part of New Zealand's National Trust and considered the country's oldest working factory.

     We chatted with a Maori three-generation family that was on the tour with us and we learned a lot from them as well as from the two women who work at the Mission. 

      They talked about the repeated erasures of the Maori culture and language which was almost lost. The older woman said she was not taught Maori and only learned it as an adult. 

       Contrary to what we had been told by someone else, there is not mandatory Maori language teaching in the schools.

The Duke of Marlborough

In fact, according to the older women, there is now a backlash against Maori education and renaming of places. It is the New Zealand equivalent of the anti-woke movement seen in the United States. That was disappointing to hear.

     We all had a talk about racism and indigenous peoples around the world. The man from the middle generation of the family talked about a motorcycle trip he took when he was a young man to the U.S. and how welcomed he was by an indigenous tribe in South Dakota and his mother said that she once visited Alaska and felt the same. 

 

 However, they felt somewhat optimistic about the younger generation of Maori and their embrace of their culture. The fact that 1,000,000 out of almost 5,000,000 identify as Maori also gives them hope.

     

The pier in Korarareka/Russell

  They gave us some tips on some Maori phrases and a few places to visit when we go further south. 

      We dined on the large veranda at the Duke of Marlborough. We shared a meal of  roasted lamb with fennel, potatoes with a sauce made of chive, garlic oil and soymilk as its base. (Mark asked the chef for the ingredients.) We also had broccolini. We couldn't finish the lamb which was falling-off-the-bone tender.

November 17

 

Old photo of Russell

Takeka Point - many roosting birds on the rocks in the distance

 We started our day with a huge breakfast which is included in our room. It is hard to believe that we are staying at such a beautiful old inn for about $150 American dollars a night - including breakfast made to order.

   

Then we went and put our toes in the water at Tapeka Point Beach and did some birding. By Fraser's Light (a small lighthouse warning ships off rocks) we saw many nesting birds. We also saw Red-Breasted Dotterel running along the beach. They are supposedly nesting on the bottom of the rocks. We also saw Pied Shad, otherwise known as Pied Cormorants which also nest out there. And, we saw several Gannets, but don't know which one.

Not a bad place to have breakfast! Duke of Marlborough

Another photo of Dawn who demonstrated how hard it was to tan the leather and make books.

     One of the flowering trees we are seeing is the Pohutukawa Tree which is endemic to New Zealand. (not found elsewhere.) It has red blossoms and is nicknamed New Zealand's Christmas Tree.

New Zealand's 'Christmas Tree'

     We went back to the Pompellier House garden for a pastry for lunch and chatted again with the two women guides we met there. 

      The next stop was the Russell Museum which was a disappointment. We had learned most of the information in the Auckland Maritime Museum, but that was expected as we are in a small town. What was the disappointment was the almost total lack of information about Russell as the capital of whaling in the Southern Hemisphere and their connection with places such as Nantucket and New Bedford. Nevertheless, we stayed about an hour and then we saw on a shady bench watching people and ships in the bay.

     We ate dinner at an excellent Italian restaurant, The Gables. All homemade pasta and unique flavors. We split a grilled asparagus side with asparagus puree and macadamia nuts. Mark had a short-rib bolognes and Barbara had a spiced fish pasta dish made with black pasta (squid ink). It had fish and green-lipped mussels. Both dishes were excellent.