EXPLORE THE LIST WORDS: JAMIE DOUGLAS • IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP
Mission accomplished The future of Mission Bay’s Melanesian Mission, an Auckland icon, is now assured Melanesia’s inclusion into modern-day Auckland’s melting pot of cultures can be pinpointed to a Tudor Revival stone building nestled near the water’s edge at Mission Bay that was built 160 years ago next year. The Melanesian Mission building and site on Tamaki Drive has many layers of history, particularly its connection with Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Paoa iwi as an area of pre-European settlement, food gathering and travel routes. The importance of that connection and the building that originally served early Anglican missionary ideals was succinctly articulated by the Archbishop of Melanesia,
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George Takeli, when blessing the reopening of the Melanesian Mission in November last year. This followed a $3 million project that included a new pavilion building being built on the site, in addition to strengthening and refurbishing the historic stone building. In essence, the site’s spiritual and cultural heart still beats strongly. “That relationship is a true friendship – a deep friendship actually,” Archbishop Takeli said at the reopening. “I described it in my address as the tūrangawaewae. It captures all of our life, our faith and our imaginations.”
LOCATION Auckland lies between the Hauraki Gulf to the east and the Waitakere Ranges to the west and north-west. Built of basalt quarried from nearby Rangitoto Island, the Melanesian Mission building was part of a larger complex, including a church and schoolhouse, created to provide young Melanesian men with a Christian education before they returned home to share their Anglican faith. The Anglican mission transferred to Norfolk Island eight years later, but education
continued in different forms on the site. It was part of a naval training school, then an industrial school, before becoming the site of New Zealand’s first flying school, where at least one-third of the country’s airborne personnel trained in World War I. It became a Melanesian Mission Museum in 1928 and since 1974 has been in the care of Heritage New Zealand, with a Category 1 listing. “The Melanesian Mission site is important as a place of early contact and cultural exchange between Pacific and European peoples,” says Heritage New Zealand Assessment Advisor Martin Jones. “Connections forged here influenced future relationships between cultures. The boys educated here would return to Melanesia to spread the Christian values linked with the Anglican faith. Bonds between students, who themselves came from different cultural backgrounds within Melanesia, are also likely to have strengthened. “There has been a multitude of other historical uses and
Heritage New Zealand
