Kakapo Bay

Kakapo Bay comes next, the home of the Guard family since it was occupied by the ancestor Captain John Guard in 1827. In 1963 the Historic Places Trust erected one of their standard markers here to record the establishment of the first whaling station on the Port. Since then our Marlborough Historical Society has put one of the Guard's trypots and also mounted nearby a historic gun, which had been lying in the grass for many years.

A visit to the Guard family cemetery is worthwhile. It has recently been tidied up and a stone put over the grave of Kuika the wife of James Wynen who was murdered here in December 1842 and which event, and the allowing of Richard Cook the murderer to go free, was partly the cause of the trouble at Tua Marina the following year.

The Rev. Samuel Ironside landed here on 20th December 1840 and on Christmas Day he conducted the first Christian service in the Port, in the home of the storekeeper James Wynen. On 20th December 1965, exactly 125 years later a church service was held on the site of Wynens home and the clergyman, the Rev. C. B. Oldfield, used the same text as Ironside had used.

James Wynen later is moved to the Wairau Bar and Blenheim and the site of his first store in Blenheim is marked by an Historic Places Trust marker. (Incidentally James Wynen died on 13th April 1866 in an accommodation house known at 'The Fleece' in Waimea Road, Nelson, aged 60 years, and was buried in St. Paul's Churchyard Brightwater. If any of you Nelson people can locate the site of his grave I would be pleased to hear of it).