Paihia

Paihia began as a mission. In 1823 the Church Missionary Society's Henry Williams established a station on the beach here, with the agreement of local Ngāpuhi leaders, and it became the base from which he and his brother William worked on the written form of te reo Māori. A printing press brought from England produced the first books printed in the country, and the mission school taught reading to hundreds of Māori pupils. The name is usually explained as coming from a phrase spoken by Williams in his imperfect Māori, though other accounts disagree.

Across the water, Kororāreka — later renamed Russell — was the busy, disorderly port of the bay, filled with whaling crews, traders and grog shops. The contrast between the mission beach and the town opposite framed the events of 1840, when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed at James Busby's residence just north of Paihia on 6 February. Within five years the relationship had broken down: Hōne Heke cut down the British flagstaff above Kororāreka, and the Northern War of 1845–46 followed.

For the rest of the nineteenth century the bay slipped into quiet. Government and trade moved south to Auckland, and Paihia was a small settlement of farms, orchards and a few boarding houses. Tourism revived it in the twentieth century: launch trips to the Hole in the Rock became a fixture, the writer Zane Grey publicised the bay's big-game fishing in the 1930s, and after the Treaty House was restored and the Treaty Grounds opened as a memorial in 1934, Waitangi became a place of pilgrimage. Motels replaced the boarding houses from the 1960s, and the town has been the bay's tourist centre ever since.

Paihia's identity rests on Waitangi. Every 6 February the Treaty Grounds hold the country's most watched national commemoration, a mix of dawn church services, naval ceremony, waka paddling, political speeches and protest that is argued over in the news for days afterwards. The rest of the year the grounds run guided tours, cultural performances of waiata and haka, and a museum of the treaty's history and its continuing legal life through the Waitangi Tribunal.

The wider district is strongly Māori. Ngāpuhi, the country's most numerous iwi, has its marae and hapū throughout the bay, and te reo Māori is heard more often here than in most of New Zealand. Dual place names are standard, and local guiding, boat and tour businesses are often iwi-owned.

The town's other culture is that of the sea. Big-game fishing for marlin and tuna has been a Bay of Islands tradition for a century, and the boats still go out from Paihia and Russell in late summer; yacht racing and regattas fill the anchorage through the summer. Summer brings a second population of holidaying New Zealanders to baches and campgrounds around the bay, and life in the town divides plainly into the busy season and the quiet one, when many businesses close for a spell in winter.

Paihia is small — the town itself has well under 2,000 permanent residents, and the wider Bay of Islands settlements of Waitangi, Haruru, Ōpua, Kerikeri and Russell together hold a few tens of thousands. The population swells several times over at Christmas and in January, and the ratio of holiday houses to permanent homes is high.

Tourism is the economy: cruises, dolphin and island trips, fishing charters, diving, motels, restaurants and the Treaty Grounds, supported by construction, marine trades at Ōpua and the orchards and farms inland. Incomes across Northland are among the lowest in the country, seasonal work is common, and housing costs have risen faster than wages, a pressure felt by the families who staff the visitor businesses. Many residents travel to Kerikeri, the district's main service centre, for supermarkets, schools and other services.

Daily life is coastal and outdoors. Boats sit on trailers in front gardens, fishing and diving are ordinary weekend activities, and the shoreline walkway and beach are used by residents as much as visitors. Winter is quiet enough for the town to feel almost empty. Long-running local concerns include the state of State Highway 1 through the north, water quality in the harbour after heavy rain, and finding staff and housing for the summer season.

Seafood dominates. Snapper is the prized fish of the bay, caught by charter boats and sold in the takeaways and restaurants along Marsden Road; kahawai, gurnard, trevally and kingfish appear too, along with scallops, mussels and Pacific oysters from the northern harbours. Fish and chips eaten on the green by the wharf is the standard local meal, and crayfish and smoked fish are holiday treats.

Ashore, the district around Kerikeri is one of the country's richest growing areas, and its produce reaches Paihia's kitchens and weekend markets: oranges, mandarins and lemons, avocados, macadamias, kiwifruit, feijoas in autumn, honey from mānuka flowers and olive oil. Kūmara, the Polynesian sweet potato grown in quantity further west around Dargaville, is a Northland staple, roasted or made into chips.

Māori food traditions are close to the surface here. Hāngī — pork, chicken, kūmara, pumpkin and stuffing steamed for hours in a covered earth oven — is served at the Treaty Grounds' cultural evenings and at community gatherings, often with rēwena, a slightly sour bread raised with a fermented potato starter. Seafood gathered from the rocks, including pipi, tuatua and kina, remains part of local eating.

Drinks lean local as well: coffee is taken seriously in the cafés, a small brewery and several vineyards operate in the district, and the bars along the waterfront serve New Zealand craft beer and wine from further south.