Raise your glass to Aotearoa’s first pub Just when thought New Zealand history was staid, the Bay of Islands brought it to life.
Chris Hyde
We arrived in Kororareka Bay in the fashion of the drunken whalers and hopeful colonisers of early New Zealand.
Complete and utter wrecks, my wife Sahiban and I were. Something hot and healthy to ward off the scurvy was needed. Pronto.
As we finally spied the twinkling lights of Russell ahead we sighed with relief.
Flights from Wellington via Auckland to the Bay of Islands take no more than three hours in total, not a six-month boat trip from England, but combine fickle New Zealand weather with my rubbish planning and we’d unintentionally gone full colonial immersion.
The Duke of Marlborough hotel, New Zealand’s first licensed pub and our lodgings for the night, called our name.
And so a compelling weekend began.
The Grand Old Duke
The Duke is a big part of the rich and storied history of Russell and they celebrate it, the walls adorned with artefacts and artwork dating back to 1827 when Johnny Johnston opened his grog shop on the site.
The wooden building has burned down twice, once potentially accidentally during Hone Heke’s battle with the British in 1845, once definitely accidentally.
Both times the rebuild has only enhanced its colonial opulence.
As tourism increases, there’s big plans for the Duke – renovation, extension, even a backpackers across the road. It’s easy to see why.
Amid the gentle hum and latent warmth of the old kauri building filled with happy people, we tuck into the fare of what is one of the country’s top 100 restaurants.
Lavish offerings of kumara bread, scallops, pork and chicken are food for the soul, and the ale goes down a treat.
Pratik Singh, our charming maitre’d, pairs wine while talking about his journey from Mumbai, population more than 22 million, to tiny Russell, population 800, albeit rather larger in the summer months.
‘‘I never get sick of the quiet here,’’ he says with a smile.
The hell hole of the Pacific
Russell, or Kororareka as it was first known, wasn’t always so quiet.
In the early 1800s James Cook’s recommendation of the bay as a notable anchorage drew both whalers and Maori wanting to trade with them.
A lawless and undoubtedly brutal culture clash ensued. Grog, punches and women were traded around the town.
Someone nicknamed the town ‘‘the hellhole of the Pacific’’. That name stuck.
Its reputation meant Kororareka wasn’t chosen as Aotearoa’s first capital by William Hobson. Instead he picked a hilly site at Okiato a few kilometres down the road.
When that failed spectacularly, the capital was shifted to Auckland and the area immediately lost most of its trading importance.
A pirate walks past
Pulling back the curtains to a beautifully blue morning over Kororareka Bay, it’s hard to believe it could have been described as anywhere close to hell.
The town is buzzing with the weekend’s Birdman festival: a bizarrely Kiwi tradition of jumping off the end of the wharf in all manner of contraptions, the icy winter water below immediately destroying all the hard work that went into making them.
Kids rip at masking tape to stick together boats made out of plastic. Three adults in full pirate garb walk past nonchalantly.
Leaving the crowd behind, we make our way up to the Flagstaff Hill, the spot of Hone Heke’s infamous axe