KERIKERI

The Maori name for the largest township in the Far North is 'dig, dig'. Not surprisingly, given the name, it is known as the horticultural centre of Northland and has been for centuries.

A terraced pa site, Kororipo, overlooks the township of Kerikeri today. It was undoubtedly once a stockaded fortress and is uphill from the Mission House and Stone Store.

Rewa's Village - a full-scale reconstruction of a Maori village that recaptures the atmosphere of the kainga (unfortified village) of Pre-European times, sits across the inlet from the Stone Store.

Captain James Cook named the region the Bay of Islands in 1769 and Marion du Fresne's 1772 expedition introduced potato to the populace. One of the earliest known Maori trading with European was Te Pahi, the paramount chief of Ngati Rehia of Kerikeri who dealt with whalers and sealers from Woolshed Bay just outside the Kerikeri Inlet.

He travelled to Port Jackson near Sydney to meet with The Rev. Samuel Marsden who subsequently arrived in the Bay of Islands to conduct New Zealand's first church service on Christmas Day, 1814, which then became the site for the first Mission Station. Today Marsden's Cross, set up to commemorate the event, can be seen. Until the founding of Auckland and Wellington the Bay of Islands was the centre of European activity in New Zealand.

While the Stone Store (built by William Parrot from Sydney in 1834) is undoubtedly the most famous example of European architecture in the Far North, another sturdy stone house with walls over half a metre thick can still be seen in Edmonds Ruins on the south side of the Kerikeri Inlet. It was built by John Edmonds between 1841 and 1858 and although the wooden part of the home was later destroyed by fire, the sturdy farm house remains a unique example of early settler stone construction.

The oldest example of a wooden building in New Zealand is also in Kerikeri, next to the Stone Store. Kemp House was built in 1821 by the London-based Church Mission Society under the protection of Hongi Hika, the most influential Maori leader in the Bay of Islands at the time. It was built by missionary carpenters and Maori sawyers and the gardens, first dug in 1820 and cultivated ever since, are a classic example of English horticultural design.

Nearby is Waipapa ('place of water') where the Waipapa Stream meets the Kerikeri Inlet and, to the south, are the popular Rainbow Falls. Today Waipapa is developing as a commercial and industrial centre and linked to Kerikeri by the road that was built specifically to by-pass the famous Stone Store, essentially to save the store's precious foundations. It is, after all, an intrinsic part of New Zealand's heritage.