Peraki Explained

Peraki, a Māori language place name with an initial spelling of Pireka, is a bay on the south side of Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. It is the site of the first permanent European settlement in Canterbury.^{[1] [2]} George Hempelman, a Prussian whaler, established a whaling station in the bay in 1835, and from 1837 lived there permanently.^[3] Peraki has a small cemetery, one of the earliest European cemeteries in New Zealand.^[4]

The Wairewa and Akaroa Counties paid for a memorial to Hempelman that was placed on Peraki Beach in March 1939. The memorial is made up of a whale try pot with the following inscription:^[5]

Erected to commemorate the centenary of the first white settler in Canterbury, New Zealand, Captain George Hempelman, who established a whaling station at Peraki in 1835.

Hempelman flew the German flag in front of his house, and in 1840^[6] he was ordered by Captain Owen Stanley of HMS Britomart to take it down, with the Union Jack raised instead.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Christchurch: a history . . 22 January 2015.
2. Book: Wises New Zealand Guide . 7th . 1979 . 343.
3. News: The glory days of whaling long gone . . 6 April 2013 . Crean . Mike . C12.
4. Book: Du Plessis, Rosemary . Rosemary Du Plessis . Death and dying - Burials and cemeteries . 15 December 2014 . . 22 January 2015.
5. News: Hempelman Memorial . Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser . 31 March 1939 . 22 January 2015 . LXIII . 6522 . 1.
6. Berry . P. L. . Germans in New Zealand: 1840 to 1870 . thesis . II - Early Germans in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands . 1964 . . 22 January 2015 .