20th - 21st March
And
so on to the Napier, a city noted for its Art Deco architecture. Most of the
City was destroyed by a major earthquake in the 1930’s and those responsible
for its rebuild created some lovely art deco buildings. The city planners had
the forethought to bury all services underground so there are no overhead
electricity cables, wide streets for the car and loading areas at the rear of
shops to keep lorries out of the streets.
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| A sample of the many Art Deco buildings in Napier |
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| Strange tourist "bus" that goes on land and water |
In addition
to the neck craning architecture, the area has loads of wineries so once again,
we were "forced" to try some local wines. The Mission winery is the oldest in NZ
– started in 1851 by some canny Christians. Beautiful old style country
mansion. great wine and as always, some interesting staff serving it. Trevor, originally
from the UK, is now a mainstay at The Mission and does virtual wine tastings
with folks in London via skype! (Yes, they do have real wine to taste, it’s
sent over in advance!).
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| Front of The Mission Winery |
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| View from the rear of the Winery |
The
highlight of our visit to Napier was meeting more of the Culy family. Here we
met Mike’s cousins Margaret and Brian his wife Lee Ann. Margaret and Brian uncovered a box full of
family memorabilia including photos of a trip to the UK by their parents to
Mike’s parents and Uncle David and Aunt Edith.
Perhaps the
most interesting documentation was about the religion started by Mike's ancestor, David Culy in
1695 in Guyhirn, near Wisbech St.Peters, Cambridgeshire in the UK. The
dissenters from the Baptist Church who supported this new religion were known
as “Culimites”. David even wrote what was effectively his own version of the
bible! The locals held him in such high esteem that he was known as the “Bishop
of Guyhirn”. All seemed to be going well but after David’s death in 1725 the
Culimites declined in numbers and in 1755 and the religion was declared to be
non-conformist and died out. Prior to his death David also ran into a bit of trouble for having a dalliance with a married woman parishioner!
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| Left to right - Margaret, Brian, Gill and Mike |
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| left to right: Margaret, Brian, Lee Ann and Mike |
One of the
many interesting things about the Culy family is their creativity and talent.
Amongst them are jewellery designers and makers, artists, sculptors,
photographers, cabinet makers and weavers!Brian's house (pictured above) is full of fabulous photos that he's taken and wonderful materials that are produced by Lee Ann and Brian's company.
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