New Zealand trip Day 4 - Akaroa

Day 4 of our holiday dawned cool and clear. Duck eggs for breakfast in the farmhouse dining room, with rambling roses in the morning sun just outside the rippled glass panes of the old casement windows. We fell on our feet finding this place to stay. Visit the cheese factory, they said. It's just around the corner. So we did. Barry's Bay is a boutique outfit making a range of mostly English style hard cheeses.

(Above) Empty cheese round tins stacked and a big covered vat of curds to the right. We bought supplies.

The entire town of Akaroa (Maori - "long harbour") is registered by the Historic Places Trust. Many 19th C buildings survive, including some from when it was first settled by the French. The Comte de Paris sailed into harbour in August of 1840 with a view to colonising the South Island and the captain was shattered to learn that the British had beaten them to it by signing the Treaty of Waitangi in February 1840. A British flag had been raised in the harbour area only a few days earlier. For a while there was a French settlement to the north and an English one to the south. But now the whole place has a French flavour.

Streets and shops have Frenchified signage.

A peinteur impressioniste in bronze frames David.



We bought beautiful cuts for dinner from this place, drank coffee at LÉscargot Rouge, explored Le Bon Accord hostel and bought souvenirs including a possum fur jumper for David, a ceramic by Brian Gartside ( NZ artist potter) for me and some gifts from La Folie Jolie. 

Then we went for a guided audio historic walk. This little bird isn't historic, except in the sense of being historically feral. It's a little dunnock or hedge sparrow. I know this because we accidentally nicked a bird book from one of the hostels we stayed at. I posted it back yesterday. You rarely see NZ native birds, they hide and they are nearly all brown/green. They are much more often heard than seen. More bird photos to come in later posts...We like birds.

This is a "try-pot" from the 1830's when whaling for right whales happened here, a terrible joint activity between crazy eyed wild white whalers and Maori tribes already living here, predating farming settlement. What a ghastly business whaling was for all concerned, the poor creatures in their nursery bays, the ruined beaches, the desecrated indigenous communities. And all to light the parlours in Europe with whale oil. Our colonial history is depressing to read about. Not that we've learned much, the modern equivalent would appear to be CSG. But I digress.

This building, the Gaiety Theatre looks like stone but is entirely constructed from a native hardwood, podocarpus totara, of which there once were huge forests in this area. Where are they now? Don't ask.

This is the cottage of one Captain Bruce, who built it in 1856 after his ship The Magnet sank. Well, it would sink, wouldn't it, says David. Captain Bruce is famous for bringing to Akaroa his sizeable clutch of marriageable nieces. Many descendants still live here.

The township is dotted with these beautifully preserved little old houses. This one is now a B&B. The council is also very strict these days about what can be built. The result is an exquisite streetscape.

The exquisite streetscape was cluttered with wealthy personages from this cruise ship in the morning, but they mostly were gone back to their deckchairs by the afternoon. We visited the museum, walked to the old French Cimitiere and generally soaked up the atmosphere.

White chocolate and raspberry creme brulee from our special evening dinner at a tiny bistro with its French waitress, its traditional menu using locally sourced produce and its idiosyncratic maitre d', who had written the menu in completely illegible scrawl on the chalkboard. We sat on tiny balloon back chairs and sampled the house wines "Rickety chair red"and "wobbly chair white". It was a good night, finished off with a complimentary feijoa sticky liqueur made by the owner's mother.