Bishop Pompallier's remains arrived in Russell last weekend but, TIM WATKIN writes, many of the locals were more hooked into the firemen's fishing contest.
A long the thin Russell waterfront only the lapping tide and the big-screen rugby league coming from the Swordfish Club disturb the darkness. By 11pm, with the promise of winter in the air, owners of the old wooden homes and restaurants have closed their doors and turned out the lights. The night is as quiet and dark as the grave.
At the end of The Strand, outside Pompallier (the house, no longer called the House but merely Pompallier), a marquee has been erected on the front lawn in preparation for its former owner's return.
Pompallier, the French Catholic who was New Zealand's first bishop, is due back tomorrow morning for the first time in 134 years. Or at least his bones are.
Masses are to be said, waiata sung and history shared, as 100 people come to town for this historic event. But the bishop won't be the biggest show in town this weekend. Around 250 firefighters have come from around the North Island and Australia for the Russell Fire Brigade International Gamefish Tournament - the fishermen outnumber the fisher of men. Tonight, they're tucked up in bed, saving themselves for their 7am start and Saturday-night bash.
Leaning on the gate outside the Historic Places Trust property, I look back along the foreshore: Pompallier wouldn't recognise the place. The Southern Cross, hanging high in a sky as black as the ink those early Catholics used to print books for the Maori, would be the only familiar sight.
This sleepy, gentrified, seaside town is now promoted as Romantic Russell. Kororareka, as it was called in 1839 when the Bishop arrived, was famous as the hellhole of the Pacific. That same year, J.D. Lang, the senior Presbyterian minister in New South Wales, wrote of the town that "with a few honourable exceptions, it consists of the veriest refuse of civilised society".
In town, the only noise is coming from the Duke of Marlborough tavern on York St. Inside is a hotch-potch of Maori and Pakeha, city-slicker Aucklanders at one table, giggling, shot-drinking Maori girls at another.
A man with rough hands, wearing jeans and a Bob Charles shirt, grins widely at a similarly dressed mate and says, "Leave her alone, she's my sister." The second man just raises his eyebrows twice and strolls after the woman in question.
This Pompallier might have recognised. But like other prophets returning to their own country, he might not be recognised himself. For most New Zealanders, he is an unknown. History remembers him as a failed idealist. A devout man but a poor administrator, defeated by the size of the task given him.
The question I've come north to ask is: why have the Catholics and northern Maori gone to so much trouble to exhume the bishop's bones from his French grave and bring them halfway round the world? The past, it is said, is a foreign country. Perhaps Pompallier should have been allowed to remain there. Why bother his rest if his adopted country isn't bothered about him?
In the tavern I order a beer from the young Maori barman. Town's busy this weekend, I say. He just shrugs and, barely audible above the music, mumbles something about a fishing contest. No mention of bones. A three-piece band - two guitars and a tambourine - is playing old rock songs like Satisfaction and I'm a Believer.
In fact, the true believers don't arrive until the morning or are sound asleep dreaming of big fish.
T HE HISTORIAN on the phone is sceptical, as historians tend to be.
"He's being talked up into a man no historian would recognise," says Peter Lineham, associate professor of history at Massey University. He's curious at the fuss being made about Pompallier's homecoming and the four-month hikoi that has brought his remains up the country from Dunedin, stopping at marae, churches and schools along the way. "Historians do not idealise Pompallier. He's not a figure of the stature of [Anglican bishop George] Selwyn, even though you could raise a few questions about Selwyn too."
Nobody pretends Pompallier had it easy. When British Protestants were annexing the country, he was a French Catholic with less money and fewer missionaries than his spiritual rivals. His claims to fame are that he successfully demanded Hobson include a clause in the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteeing religious tolerance and that he forged a close, respectful bond with Maori.
Freedom of thought and the separation of church and state are no small things, and his presence ensured those. His impact, Lineham concludes, was broad but shallow.
A PR jaunt for the church, then? An attempt at a resurrection of his reputation via the return of his remains? Maybe a revival of the medieval veneration of relics or something just a bit creepy?
Such are my thoughts on Saturday morning as I stand on the roadside, waiting for the car ferry to cross from Opua to the Russell landing. The bishop's remains will be on board. There are only about 12 of us gathered, plus a film crew from France. They're making a documentary on the bishop's return, from his exhumation in Puteaux and farewell from Notre Dame to his interment at Motuti on the Hokianga.
As the ferry pulls out from Opua, escorted by four waka with paddlers chanting, a light veil of rain begins to fall. The waiting group grabs umbrellas and tries to interpret the omen. A woman from Ponsonby notes that at least two of the waka are fibreglass.
"It's a bit half-hearted really," she tsks.
The cars carrying the bishop's casket and his support crew drive off the ferry and up the road to Russell and the waiting marquee. As they round the corner and disappear, the rain stops.
On the side road beside the Pompallier property, the Piriwiritua Morehu Ratana Brass Band from Kaikohe is practising. While the convoy makes its way from the ferry, they are running through God Save the Queen - a curious choice - and sneaking a smoke.
The rotund band leader is not happy. "Listen! I just want you to come in on that top F. Don't pinch our part."
As the official party pulls up and the band members take their place at the head of the small, funereal procession, he tells them it was on this site in 1843 that a brass band - from the French naval ship Le Rhin - played in New Zealand for the first time.
Kaumatua and priests dressed in black lift Pompallier's casket from the car and begin the 200m walk round the corner to the blue and white striped marquee which, for today's purposes, serves both as wharenui and church. The bishop was an imposing 180cm or more tall; a giant of his time. However, the casket for his remains is just 135cm long, kauri engraved with Jerusalem crosses and a guardian of Maori design. Walking behind, women with their heads wreathed in ferns carry a picture of the bishop and his mitre. Perhaps 150 curious locals and tourists line the path.
The boys from the escort waka are waiting, paddles in hand, forming an honour guard leading up to the gate. They push their chests out as far as they can go, ribs protruding, and begin their challenge. Several boys' shorts are slipping down over their hips, revealing their boxers - the 21st century welcomes the 19th.
Women in black call the visitors onto the property and teenagers in blue blow conch shells as the bishop is carried into the tent's sombre light and laid on a platform flanked by two feather cloaks. Kate Martin, Historic Places Trust manager of the house, says where the bishop lies on what is now the front lawn is exactly where he built his first house in New Zealand. Pompallier is home.
At the same time, Jake Miller, the chief fire officer for Russell, is supervising the erection of another marquee a few hundred metres along the waterfront. It's where they'll be roasting sheep and pigs for tonight's prizegiving dinner, on the lawn outside the town hall. One young firefighter says "the bones people" had wanted to book the town hall for the Pompallier visitors' meals, but were too late.
"We've had it for 22 years mate, and that's what the rules are," Miller says.
Instead, in an irony as rich as a bishop's robes, the Catholics have had to rent the Masonic Lodge on Church St. Who knows what Pompallier would have made of that.
L EO John Augustus Joseph Christopher Forbes has spent months preparing for this weekend. Australian-born Forbes is the faithful organiser, not of the Pompallier return, but of the fishing contest. He says with 43 four-person teams, this is their biggest tournament yet and the biggest one in Russell this year. He's in the fire station monitoring the boats on marine radio and recording the catches. By the window is a stack of prizes that will be handed out tonight to the best and luckiest. He's put 250 hours into this since late last year and doesn't want anything going wrong.
With a huge grin under his splendid fireman's moustache he says, "I don't want any of those bloody Catholics coming in here. If they're anything like my family they'll drink all the whisky."
Father Chris Martin, the Northland priest who has organised this leg of the hikoi, says they too have been meeting since late last year to organise their event, working to reconcile the priorities of the church, local Maori and the trust.
"If it wasn't for Bishop Pompallier all these people wouldn't have got together."
Down at Pompallier, the official welcome concludes by singing Mo Maria, a hymn the bishop wrote. He was a gifted linguist and musician.
Afterwards, French ambassador Jacky Musnier offers a wise smile and tells me he was also a skilled diplomat.
"He was a great Frenchman."
He confesses, however, that until he came to New Zealand he had never heard of Pompallier. In France, he is forgotten, his honours and reputation buried with him.
Musnier shares a secret. Pompallier came from the same district as French President Jacques Chirac, but when they asked the President for permission to exhume him, his reply was: "Who?"
The afternoon has been set aside for history lessons. As I sit on the makeshift marae and wait for the speakers, 71-year-old Reo Ruka from Pahia, formal in his tie and hat, sits down beside me. I ask him, why the fuss? Ruka gently says that Pompallier, visiting village after village, left a strong impression on Northland Maori. Because of him, "the faith in the Hokianga is strong. He sowed a little seed here and there."
When Kate Martin, orderly and silver-haired, rises to speak, she turns first to the casket. "Bienvenue chez vous, Bishop," she says. "Welcome to your very own home."
She says Pompallier arrived not knowing whether the Protestant powers would let him stay. He did well to give Catholicism even a foothold in this country and win the respect of Maori. He was so committed to this country, she says, that in 1850 he became a British citizen of New Zealand.
Sitting on the porch of his old printery later, as a tangerine light leaks across the sky, she tells me she thinks of him as a flawed genius. "He was a French New Zealander. I feel this is what he would have preferred - a tangi." Bringing him back to lie in this whenua is "a very Maori thing that he would understand".
The final speaker of the afternoon is Marist brother Brian Stanaway. The Marists, he says, voice mock conspiratorial, did a deal with the Pope in the 1830s. They could establish themselves as a new order on the condition they take Oceania as their mission field. The first thing they did, he says, was agree. The second was ask where on earth Oceania was. "There's no way this fulla lying here knew where he was going."
"So why did we bring him home?" Stanaway continues. Here's my question asked unprompted. The answer, it seems, is tied up with that history; the fact that the Pope sent missionaries here to spread the good news.
He tells the story of the New Zealand party that travelled to Rome, then on to France to pick up the body. "The people of the north were there to invite the bishop back. Now the Maori people and the people of New Zealand can say we invited the church to New Zealand," he concludes with a flourish. "That's why we did it."
A T 4pm the fishermen are given the stop fishing signal. They've got four hours to return to port, weigh their catch and get spruced up for the prizegiving at 8pm.
You know the firefighters in the calendars? These aren't them. The crowd swigging jugs in the town hall at 8pm are mostly round-bellied and middle-aged - volunteers. They're having a laugh and sharing yarns at trestle tables in rows down the hall.
As he hands out the prizes, Forbes apologises for the "pretty ordinary" conditions.
"We didn't catch a hell of a lot of fish."
Pompallier, I think, would have sympathised.
It being a big weekend for the non-New Zealand-born, the awards for best angler, best team and biggest fish suitably go to the team from Australia, for their 109.8kg marlin. But there's special attention for the Ohakune brigade. A 32.2kg short-billed spearfish they caught is thought to be a world record.
Later, under that constant Southern Cross, I ponder a conversation I had with Father Henare Tate that afternoon. He was one of the prime movers behind the bishop's return, so again I ask - why?
Because in the north, the softly-spoken priest replied, he is revered.
"He left, but the mental and spiritual link between the people and him was never severed. Every bishop after him that came to the Hokianga, they were always welcomed with the words, 'Haere mai i runga i nga tapuwae o Pihopa Pomparie'. Come in the footsteps of Bishop Pompallier."
Tate said he baptised a baby just last year called Pompallier Pomare, named after his father and his father before him."Maori want to look after him. In Puteaux no one knows him. So it's better to move him out of that oblivion to where he can be respected; not just the spirit, but the remains."
Outside the town hall and the tavern, the town is dead tonight. This day's muddle of cultures has given way to mundane night.
I'm thinking about the day. I still suspect a resurrection was being attempted here - the resurrection of a reputation, a history. Trying to turn a spearfish into a marlin? I don't know.
What I sense is that the pieces of Pompallier being re-interred at Motuti today are nothing more than a signpost to a deeper spiritual history. In the north, most particularly in the Hokianga, no resurrection was needed. Pompallier was there all along, whole and intact.
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