A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
Josh Wharehinga obviously moves in different circles than I do, which is entirely understandable. I immigrated to New Zealand barely 11 years ago from the UK; his whakapapa probably extends back hundreds of years, to long before James Cook called in at Turanganui a Kiwa hoping to procure supplies, but
left empty-handed after a brief and unfortunate encounter with tangata whenua. So it is unsurprising that his circle of acquaintances has never pressed him for restoration of the Endeavour models, previously prominently displayed on poles in Gladstone Rd.
The people I talk to, including those who have offered to do the repair work voluntarily, strongly believe the models are important to Gisborne and should go back to their previous prominent positions.
I suggest that the majority of overseas visitors who come here do so largely because of the Cook connection.
I freely admit I had never heard of Kiwa before I came here for the first time. I have learned a lot since, and that’s good, but the fact remains that those few days in October 1769 marked an important turning point in the history of Aotearoa for both tangata whenua and subsequent pakeha settlers. It is this fact that has triggered the forthcoming Te Ha celebrations to be held in October 2019, for obvious reasons.
Like it or not, it is the Cook “first landing” that sets Gisborne apart from other New Zealand locations where Cook called in, or where other Pacifica waka landed at some unrecorded point in time.
