Motuti

This tiny town up a dirt road was the very interface between Maori and Catholic, in the first moments of the cultural fusion that joined the tangata whenua and the church of Rome.

As a result, here rests Bishop Pompallier, the missionary who came before the others, captivating the Northern Iwi with his Roman Catholic message, blazing trails in the cultural landscape of Maori. His remains are interred in the Motuti Church.

The Marae up here, Motuti, used to offer cultural experiences and nohoanga (Overnight stays) but they are not doing that at the moment. So Motuti is quiet, with a few house, a church, a meeting house and a Maori - Catholic cemetery. Reached from the road between Rawene and Kohukohu, a diversion to Motuti is a diversion to another time.

It was 1838 when Bishop John Baptiste François Pompallier arrived in the Hokianga, set about establishing the first mission station, at Purakau, opposite the Anglican Mission at Mangungu. Purukau ran from 1839 to 1915, the Bishop moving to Pompallier House in the Bay of Islands where he was based and printed the bible and other religious works including his own. Pompallier served the Church and Maori ceaselessly until he returned to France in poor health in 1868, and died in 1871. But so successful was his merger of Maori and Catholic the Hokianga people wanted him back, and some 130 years later, his remains were uplifted from his home parish in France and after a hikoi (journey) around New Zealand, brought here.

The tiniest and most modest of signs on the rarely-travelled Motuti Road annnounces "Bishop Pompallier." Up a steep dirt drive is St Mary's Church, 1899, a board and batten timber church, with a small steeple and a tongue-and-groove macrocarpa interior. Like chapels in other Maori parishes, there are some Maori interior decorations. The only unusual chattel, apart from the Bishop, is a red french carpet down in the aisle.

Bishop Pompallier's ornately carved casket is raised for public viewing on four days each year: April 20, the date of the reinterment; August 15, the feast of the Assumption; December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception; and December 21, the date of the bishop's death, and additionally by special arrangement for larger pilgramage visits.

The other locations associated with the Bishops earliest days here, Purakau, Papakawau have disappeared from the map, and only remain in Church and archaeological records. A small memorial to the first ever Catholic Mass stands at Totara Point.

NZPlaces are first to admit we need an image of St Mary's Motuti. Submissions welcome.

Image Credit: Google Maps