A bit of history

The golf club is close to an important piece of NZ History .

Rarangi Golf Club is situated near one of New Zealand’s most important archaeological sites.  At the mouth of the Wairau River, remains have been found of a settlement dating back to the arrival of the first settlers in the 13th century , from East Polynesia .

Archaeological digs have shown that they used the same cultural techniques, as the people of the Marquesas Group, that now form part of French Polynesia. Legend has it too, that Kupe the first to discover Aotearoa from Polynesia , stopped here and fished for oysters.

Although in 1770 Captain James Cook, the great English explorer named this stretch of coastline Cloudy Bay, Maori have always referred to it as, Te Koko-o- Kupe in honour of their great navigator, who inspired the migration to this far off land from Eastern Polynesia.

The Wairau Bar is also the site of one of the the most significant  Moa burial grounds. These large flightless birds that stood up to 3.6 metres, were easy prey for the first arrivals and a plentiful supply of protein for them, but within 300 years they were extinct. Their remains  discovered in 1939 by a 13 year old boy, Jim Eyles.

John Guard was the first European to make his home here, arriving in 1828 to begin a profitable whaling station in Port Underwood, north east of Rarangi. Alas like the Moa, the whales quickly reduced in numbers as well.

But Port Underwood has an even more significant place in this country’s history. On the island of Horahora-Kakahu on the 17th June 1840, the South island Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, five months after the document had been accepted by the North Island Tribes, at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands.The beginning of a new nation.

Enjoy your golf at Rarangi you are part of history. Brilliant.