Speed dating christian near Kawerau New Zeland

He reassured them that their lands were safe, but declared he would not tolerate neutrality among the chiefs. They must choose where they stood: with Britain or with the rebels. Instead, by not confiscating land, by fair dealings in his government land purchases and by an instinctive empathy, Grey won the support and friendship of the chiefs through diplomacy. Look back upon us, and in kindness remember us. The autumn morning I set out for Kawau—just a few weeks more advanced in the season than Froude had been—the weather is crisp and clear. It is not yet eight, but even from Sandspit wharf the island, nine kilometres out, is sharply defined against the pewter plate of the sea.

As the elegant residence swings into view around the point, wedding-cake white amid the trees, Rita gathers her things together. Manager of the DOC-administered historic building for 18 years, she has spent more time in the house as Grey knew it than anyone—Grey included. We step ashore to a scene that would not have been unfamiliar to Grey, though east of the old wharf, the sea has chewed back the beach five paces, and his mighty Kaffir boom tree, said to have been the largest in the world until reduced to a stump by Cyclone Bola, is just a mass of thorny regrowth.

Honest, forthright, haughty even, but with a dignity shorn of ornament. I enter the drawing room, so admired by Froude and now fitted out with bequest furniture and collected period oddments, yet still redolent of Grey.

But the four honeyed kauri pillars, pitsawn on the island and sent to England for turning, still stand as they did when Grey was forced to prop the sagging ceiling years ago. Unable to work his old magic, Grey embarked on what was to become an often-compromised year rearguard action in defence of democracy, equality and racial harmony.

Such actions have left historians wondering at his true motivations. The original building was extended and a new wing added in the Colonial Georgian style by the highly adaptable Frederick Thatcher. Ironically, the oldest part of the house suffered most at the hands of later owners, and needed entire rebuilding during restoration work in the late s.

Grey, childless since the death of his five-month old son in Australia in , had separated from his wife, Eliza, two years before buying Kawau. It was the sort of decisiveness that worked well enough for Grey in the field, and, who knows, perhaps it was in their best interests. Eliza, pinned like a colonial brooch to the fringes of Empire, had grown impatient with life so far from the heart of London society.

So she went back to her friends in London, and Grey got on with his solitary, often emotionally bruising, career. Not the first collection of books on Kawau—miners had earlier got up a subscription library—nevertheless it dwarfed in size and reach what those autodidacts put together, containing some 15, volumes dating back to the 10th century. Use well the Present. Improve the Future. James Grey, a journalist who visited the island in , reported it to be the finest private collection in the colony.

He soon struck an obstacle. To better understand what was being said, Grey began collecting traditional poems and legends, proverbs and myths wherever he went. It was a bitter blow. At length, having reached the hot lakes, the party paddled out to Mokoia Island. At the very place where they now sat, he said, Hinemoa had rested after swimming from the shore. Indeed, they have won all my feelings and sympathies in their favour by their conduct to me.

Grey, however, blamed the Government for the break-out. In a fiery memorandum to the premier, he claimed that no captured chief would have broken his word if he had been generously treated. Yet Grey was not without guile. Later, he encouraged the ageing chief Te Rangihaeta to open up his roadless lands by the seemingly innocent gift of a pony and trap. It chills you to the bone to look at him!

So we weep at the pitiable lot which is not, but might have been ours… and to do Sir George justice he weeps a little with us except when perhaps he smiles a little at his power and our weakness. After the marriage of his niece Annie to Seymour Thorne George in , Grey had a new nursery wing built and he was eventually to indulge three grand-nieces and six grand-nephews. One of them, Zoe, recalled having chocolate in bed with Grey, and, along with her brother Sydney, being entranced by his stories, especially of big game hunting in South Africa with Prince Alfred.

Close friends and distinguished guests such as Froude had the use of a spacious upper bedroom next to his, both of which shared a spectacular view of the bay, and they seemed to spend their time on the island in a trance-like contentment. Exercise on the beautiful breezy promontory hard by wooded sides, grassy top with scattered trees.

A little theological reading. Godet on Romans at present; 9am: Breakfast. Walk about ground with Sir George Grey. A little light reading and writing, study of NZ political history; 1pm: Dinner. Walk and talk with Sir George; 5pm: Cup of tea. Walk up and down the jetty with Sir George. Somewhat profound discussions; 9.

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To sample this cracking pace for myself, I abandon Rita to her work and step out into the afternoon light. The wind soughs in the pines. Birds chatter. I am the only one in the valley, the small party that arrived by the late ferry having set off on foot up the old Coach Road towards the copper mine. A track of sorts begins on the wooded slopes to the west of the house. Beyond a picket fence lie the bones of an old, well-made track reached by a gate which is jammed shut by undergrowth. Pine resin scents the air and dry needles spill down the bank.

A taut spiderweb spans the path. Here and there are the massive trunks of fallen trees, lodged at the base of others which tower up 30 or more metres.

These are survivors, mostly, from plantings by Grey. Out near the point, a clearing reveals the deep waters leading in to the Mansion House jetty. Way below, a yacht on its motor slices a path across the bays beyond, and up into Bon Accord Harbour. Turning south from the point, I startle a wallaby which thumps off through the scrub and saplings. Like the pines, it is another legacy of the governor, who introduced at least five species of the marsupial, four of which can still be found on the island.

A little further on, past a luxuriant patch of agapanthus, is a small wooden hut. On the lip of sandstone cliffs 25 metres above the heaving sea, it stands where Grey is said to have had a lookout—a rustic shelter where he came to brood, to scan the horizon for ships from the city, or just to feel the knock of the wind. Not far off, Martello Rock squats in the water above its pencil of reef, a tempting target for every passing gunner until Grey put a stop to the practice.

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Great chunks of golden cliff have cleaved off along its length, falling to the beach and taking big pines with them. But then, in a way, the fast-growing exotics symbolise what Grey was all about on the island. True, he bought Kawau as a bolt-hole from the pressures of public life.

Equally, he bought it because a temperate island would best serve his interest in acclimatising plants and animals. Grey had by then bought Rakino, which he continued to farm. Grey grew Mediterranean carob and stone pine, arrowroot from the West Indies, coffee and liquorice. I had met Brassey, an archaeologist by training, before my visit. Incomplete, the list runs to more than 30 pages. Fold-out maps show trees Brassey and his team have identified as being planted by Grey.

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There is seen to great advantage that scientific combination of nature and art, which is ever the aim of the landscape gardener. Near the house, the path crosses a flat sward punctuated by Phoenix palms. The palms date from the late s and 60s. At his most active, he employed some 25 helpers—gardeners, kitchen staff, shepherd, governess, dairyman, farm manager, a housekeeper. One who left a record of life under Grey was his factotum, Thomas Osborne.

And of unusual breaks in routine. A busy night. Mostly, though, it is the weather that occupies him. Then comes a change of focus. Perhaps, as he languished on the parliamentary back benches, he felt the time had come for this long-awaited grand gesture. In April the following year, Osborne was announcing, between observations on wind and sun, that he had just finished packing case 52—a full month after the library housing the collection was opened.