Great Barrier Island has a diverse history dating
back some 700 years to the first colonisation by people from East Polynesia.
(A survey of
Kaikoura
Island includes information on Maori and European settlement of this small
island situated on the western coast of Great Barrier Island).
In the 1800's European arrived and their activities on the island included; the
mining of copper at Miners Head, silver and gold mining at Okupu and
Whangaparapara. Kauri was logged for many years and a restored kauri dam
is still standing on the Kaiaraara track to Mt Hirakimata (Mt Hobson). Farming
was innovative and included cattle, sheep, goats, deer, bees and of course
marine farming. Commercial whaling occurred in the nineteenth century and
again during the 1950's. Many ships were built on the island including the
barque Stirlingshire. Great Barrier Island has also been the location of more
than 30 shipwrecks, the best known being the SS Wairarapa. |
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Karaka Bay
Graveyard
Compiled by Margaret Peacocke, a great-great-grand-daughter of Edward &
Annie Paddison.
The Paddison Family
The
Sanderson Family
The Le
Roy Family
The
Cooper Family
Living at Buschs' Beach, Kaiaraara Bay
The
Malcolm's Lonely Life on Great Barrier Island
Part of a printed booklet of 1904 “My Own Story” in which Emile Monson
Malcolm describes the sixteen years the family spent on the island from
1854.
A Pastoral Visit to the Great
Barrier Island
from the Journal of the Rev. A. Baker, M.A. (Church Gazette.) March 1881
The Great Barrier Island by A. E. Le Roy
Published in the ‘Journal of the Auckland-Waikato’
Issue No. 32 April
1978
Contact
all contributions gratefully received.
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Kaiaraara
Kauri Dam
Three dams were erected
from the kauri logs, built across the headwaters of the Kaiaraara Stream,
directly below Mt Hirakimata.
NZ's
First Airmail Service
- the Great Barrier
Island Pigeongram
Stamps and blank stamped flimsies available
commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the wreck of the S.S. Wairarapa issued by
Great Barrier Pigeon Gram Co.
Painting of Kaiaraara & Mt Hirakimata
(Hobson)
by George Frederic Allen
SS Wairarapa Shipwreck
Orama Christian Community at Karaka Bay
Dion (Stud)
Stellin and Barrier Gold
Girlie Leroy
Alethea Major (nee Lamond)
Don Woodcock -
A Relection: My time on Great Barrier
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