A group of volunteers at work during the week-long community excavation held this month near the Butler Point Whaling Station.
A recent community-led archaeological excavation has revealed new information about a historic site near the Butler Point Whaling Museum.
The focus of the excavation was the site of the 1870s residence of Robert M Houston (later to become an MP). However, some of the archaeological features uncovered have been identified as associated with Māori habitation predating Pākehā settlement.
Led by archaeologists Dr Justin Maxwell and Dr Jennifer Huebert of Mangōnui-based Sunrise Archaeology, the community excavation was supported by a group of 25 volunteers including iwi participants.
More than 70 people attended the open day held on site in the latter half of the week-long excavation
“Although we still need to finish the analysis, the excavation provided clear evidence of use and reuse over a long period of time,” Huebert says.
“The middens found here and around the harbour were extensive before the inner harbour became silted up.”
Finds associated with the 19th-century house included bottle and window glass, ceramic shards, nails, old barbed wire, an associated pavement made from shell and beach pebbles, and included a well-engineered brick-lined path.
A number of items left by children were also found including fragments of slate, slate pencils and a patterned glass marble.
Features associated with Māori habitation included a shell midden comprising mainly of cockle and pipi, as well as several cooking-related features that may be fire hearths, ovens, or possibly oven rake-out.
A number of rangatahi including John Stedman of Kaitāia College, Rawiri Belcher and Taipā Area School Year 13 students Summer and Sahara Vercammen took part.
Other volunteers included archaeologists from the Department of Conservation, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, the University of Otago, and Te Papa.
Heritage New Zealand Northland manager Bill Edwards said Sunrise Archaeology deserve special recognition for putting the excavation together and running it.
Parking at Kerikeri Airport
The new Kerikeri Airport number plate recognition system was installed in October last year by Automated Solutions Limited, contractors to Far North Holdings Limited. A period of parking grace of 30 minutes was embedded into the system.
It hasn’t always worked as intended. Robyn Radisich from Cable Bay said she has twice had problems.
“It wouldn’t recognise the personalised plate. There was a huge queue behind and some guy opened the barrier and no-one paid.
“I called them and told them my correct details and so [the system] finally knows me. Other friends have also reported issues.”
Nicola Walters from Kaitāia struck problems in late December. She said the woman in the front couldn’t get through the barrier arm and cars were piling up behind which meant those at the back of the queue were over the 30 minutes.
In early January a woman from Russell, who didn’t want to be named, said it took 45 minutes to get out of the airport.
“I parked in the long-term carpark so was validated to just go through, but it took all that time to get to the barrier arm,” she said.
“An engineer was working on the problem and you would have thought he would have lifted the barrier arm and just let everyone go but, no, everyone had to be registered.”
Daniel Alexander, Far North Holdings’ airports manager, said he has received “valuable feedback” during the commissioning stage from customers as they became familiar with the new system.
“The carpark has processed more than 24,000 short-term casual parkers and we estimate complaints received at around five per month and that has since dropped to around one to two complaints per month.”
He maintains that in relative terms this represents a very small percentage of the total vehicle movements. He said problems were at the outset as the system “bedded in” and resulted in a few periods where payment processing caused “brief delays”.
“This has now been resolved partly through customer familiarity, partly through system modifications and with more signage to improve communications,” he said.
Jazz Festival back for Kerikeri
The Kerikeri Jazz Festival returns to the Bay of Islands Golf Club for the third annual summer show. Four bands will be performing.
The “seriously experienced” Nairobi Trio is back. The band has toured to major jazz festivals in Britain, Europe, Australasia, and Asia and have released eight albums.
Ray Woolf is travelling from his home in the Far North for the festival. He will meet up halfway (in Kerikeri) with the Basin City Big Band from Whangārei. He’s a singer, recording artist, actor and MC with a formidably long list of television credits.
The Basin City Big Band is a group of Whangārei-based musicians, with a standard big-band format of 17-plus musicians and vocalists. They’ve been playing a wide variety of music at weddings, dances, concerts, and community events for decades.
Described as a keyboard maestro, Dave MacRae has recorded with top names in jazz and he’s a pioneer of fusion music. He was a vital part of what became known as “the Canterbury scene”.
He is also joined by his wife, Joy Yates. She has a singing career spanning five decades and several continents. Together they are well known for their musical partnership.
The festival, which is sponsored by Craigs Investment Partners, is for one day only, February 22 from noon until 6pm. Last year more than 400 attended.
The festival is supported by the Kerikeri Jazz Club and the Our Kerikeri Community Charitable Trust. The organisers are Melanie Chandler-Ward and Denis Winters. Tickets are available at Eventfinda and the Sound Lounge Kerikeri.
New Zealand Youth Choir coming to Northland
The New Zealand Youth Choir is heading to Northland for two public concerts, one at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds as part of the official Waitangi Day ceremony and the other at the Whangārei Boys’ High School auditorium.
In between the public concerts, the choir will spend Friday working with students at One Tree Point School and will “pop up” for a performance at the Whangārei market.
There are 50 members, ranging in age from 18 to 25. Some have Northland connections.
Riley Rolton is from Whangārei and Coopers Beach. He has previously performed in his home territory while on tour with the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir when he was a student at St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton.
Soprano Tess Dalgety-Evans says singing at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds will have special meaning for her. She works with the nation’s founding documents as an educator, and earlier this year hosted the choir on its visit to the He Tohu exhibition at the National Library.
Composer Tuirina Wehi (Ngāti Ruapani) will be in Northland to teach the choir her new waiata composed especially for it, which is under the direction of David Squire.
Squire was appointed to the position of music director in 2011 and is the choir’s first alumnus conductor.
After the Northland appearances the choir will travel to Europe to compete in Aarhus, Denmark, for the Grand Prix of Nations and at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod in Wales.
The last time the choir was in Europe in 2016 the group sang another of Tuirina Wehi’s compositions, Waerenga-a-Hika and won the Grand Prix at the IFAS in the Czech Republic. The choir has launched a Givealittle page to support the 2025 European tour to help ensure no singer is left behind.
Date with history
Five Northland heritage destinations cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga will be open to the public for free on Waitangi Day. They are the Kerikeri Mission Station (Kerikeri); Clendon House (Rawene); Māngungu Mission (Horeke); Pompallier Mission (Kororāreka/Russell) and Te Waimate Mission (Waimate North).
Police believe he was killed between 7pm and 11pm on Tuesday.