First Christmas site gains 'historic' tag

5:00AM Wednesday December 26, 2007
By Tony Gee
Samuel Marsden held New Zealand's first Christmas service in 1814.

The Bay of Islands site where Samuel Marsden held the first Christmas service in New Zealand in 1814 has been formally recognised and registered as a historic area by the Historic Places Trust.

Registration of Rangihoua at the mouth of the Bay of Islands now identifies it as a place of outstanding heritage significance.

The trust's Northland area manager, Stuart Park, said Rangihoua was significant because it was the first place in New Zealand where there was prolonged early contact between Maori and Pakeha before British colonisation. This makes Rangihoua one of the foundation sites of modern, bicultural New Zealand.

Visitors to the area can walk the historic landscape on the Marsden Cross track where the Rangihoua pa site was once effectively the country's first capital.

Mr Park said Rangihoua in 1805 consisted of about 100 houses surrounded by gardens producing exceptionally good quality potatoes which were used as currency for incoming ships, whose crews traded axes, adzes and hatchets for fresh supplies.

It was the earliest Maori trading post and a significant economic centre after the then-Governor of Norfolk Island sent technology and animals - one of the earliest introductions of European goods into New Zealand.

Rangihoua chief Te Pahi went to Norfolk Island and Port Jackson, where he met senior New South Wales chaplain, the Rev Samuel Marsden.

The pair became good friends, although Te Pahi died four years later in 1809. His successor, Ruatara, went to Australia, where he lived with the Marsden family in Parramatta while learning about European agriculture. The first mission in New Zealand was established in 1815, which became the first long-term Pakeha settlement in the country.

Hongi Hika followed Ruatara and, under his patronage, the missionary society set up another mission station at Kerikeri near Hongi's pa, Kororipo.

Two of New Zealand's oldest standing buildings - the Kerikeri Mission House and the Stone Store - survive from this period.