Cross marks spot

Three days after the British missionaries arrived in 1814 New Zealand’s first Christmas Day service, watched by Ma¯ ori, took place beside the rough little bay now in the Rangihoua Heritage Park.

The Marsden Cross memorial marks where the Church Missionary Society’s Reverend Samuel Marsden led the sermon.

New Zealand’s first European settler and mission settlement was made possible because of the protection of powerful chief Ruatara who had an understanding with Samuel Marsden.

Ruatara and hundreds of his people lived in the pa and kainga on a high promontory above Rangihoua Bay, watching and learning everything they could of the British.

In the shadow of the hill, the brave but disadvantaged British below struggled. Were they in denial about their situation?

In 1832, after 16 years of trying to make a go at the inhospitable location, most of those who were still living there moved to more fertile land at Te Puna, just a few kilometres to the west.

Today only terraces in the ground show where the tiny settlement and New Zealand’s first school were built at Rangihoua.

The 1814 arrival at the site has sometimes been called The First Landing; the long struggle to keep the settlement there dubbed by some historians “mission impossible”.

Signs at the Department of Conservation-managed Rangihoua Heritage Park describe the timelines and events that took place.

The park is on the Pureura Peninsula, and about a 35 minute drive from Kerikeri.

Visitors enter through a spectacular memorial building, built for the bicentenary in 2014.

Information panels tell the stories of a variety of the early participants and a 15-minute walk down the path leads to the beach and the Marsden Cross.