Akaroa is the most charming and quirky town in Canterbury: a natural harbour of calm waters nestled in the crater of an extinct volcano, with streets called Rue Lavaud or Rue Jolie and colourful wooden cottages facing the sea. It is the only French colony ever established in New Zealand, and although the story ended under the British flag, the Gallic flair -the tricolour flags, the boulangeries, the street names- is still its trademark. Just an hour and a half from Christchurch, it's the favourite weekend getaway for Cantabrians.
The town's big draw is on the water: Akaroa Harbour is one of the best places in the world to see Hector's dolphin, the smallest and rarest marine dolphin on the planet, found only in New Zealand. Nature cruises leave from the wharf and in two hours take you to see these dolphins, plus fur seals, white-flippered penguins and the harbour's spectacular volcanic cliffs and sea caves. According to many rankings, it's the number one wildlife activity in the country.
Akaroa lies at Onawe and the lands of Ōnuku, the heart of the territory of Ngāi Tahu, the main iwi (tribe) of the South Island. It was at Ōnuku, a few kilometres from the town, that the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed in the South Island in May 1840. Between Māori history, the French episode and a volcanic landscape dotted with hidden bays, Akaroa combines like few other places a picturesque town, good food and one of the best marine wildlife experiences in Oceania.
Akaroa sits on Whangaroa, a harbour that is the flooded crater of an extinct volcano, on the lands of Ngāi Tahu, whose pā at Takapūneke was the scene of a massacre in 1830. In 1838 the French whaler Jean-François Langlois bought land from Kāi Tahu chiefs with the idea of founding a French colony; when the settlers on the Comte de Paris arrived in 1840, the British Crown had already proclaimed sovereignty over all of New Zealand following the Treaty of Waitangi -signed at nearby Ōnuku that same year-. Akaroa became British, but its French soul lives on. The full story, from the Ngāi Tahu Claim to the Anglo-French race, is on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The great plain of the South Island, settled by the Anglican “Canterbury Pilgrims” in 1850 around Christchurch, “the garden city”. Land of Ngāi Tahu, of the roof of the country (Aoraki/Mount Cook) and of the dark skies of Tekapo, marked by the devastating earthquakes of 2010-2011.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the streets with French names, before the tricolour flags and the dolphin cruises, this horseshoe-shaped harbour -a volcanic crater flooded by the sea- had another name and other owners. Māori called it Whangaroa, 'the long harbour', and the whole of Banks Peninsula was Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū, 'the storehouse of Rākaihautū', in honour of the legendary ancestor who, according to tradition, explored the South Island digging out its lakes with a giant ko (digging stick).
The peninsula is an extinct double volcano more than eight million years old, whose two main craters sank and filled with seawater to form the harbours of Akaroa and Lyttelton. Its fertile slopes, sheltered bays and waters rich in fish and shellfish made it a place people lived in for centuries. Successive waves of Māori peoples settled it: first Waitaha, then Kāti Māmoe, and finally Ngāi Tahu, the iwi that to this day is tangata whenua (people of the land) of almost the entire South Island.
For Ngāi Tahu, Banks Peninsula was a core territory: fishing and farming villages in the bays, mahinga kai (food-gathering) sites, trade routes and pā (fortified villages) on the headlands. Akaroa Harbour, sheltered and plentiful, was a place of life. That deep presence -generations woven into the volcanic landscape and the sea- is the first layer of Akaroa's history, the one that was there long before any European looked at the crater and found it picturesque.
Akaroa's history has a dark and decisive episode that happened before any European settler arrived, and that helped change the fate of all of New Zealand. In the early 19th century, the arrival of European whalers and traders, and of the musket, transformed warfare between iwi. In 1830, the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha, a Cook Strait warlord who was ravaging the south with the new firearms, set out to attack the Kāi Tahu village of Takapūneke, next to present-day Akaroa.
Te Rauparaha persuaded -or coerced- the captain of the British brig Elizabeth, John Stewart, to carry him and his warriors secretly to the harbour, hidden below deck. The local Kāi Tahu chief, Te Maiharanui, was lured on board under false pretences and captured, and the village of Takapūneke was attacked by surprise and destroyed. It was a massacre. The episode, in which a British ship and captain had been accomplices to a killing between Māori, caused a scandal in Sydney and London.
The 'Elizabeth affair' was one of the factors that pushed the British Crown to intervene formally in New Zealand to bring order to the chaos of the frontier: it showed that British subjects were acting lawlessly and that some authority was needed. Ten years later, that reasoning would lead to the Treaty of Waitangi. Today Takapūneke is a reserve and a place of remembrance: a reminder that Akaroa's history begins with a Māori tragedy, not a French postcard.
In 1838, a French whaler named Jean-François Langlois looked at Akaroa Harbour and saw an opportunity. He needed a base to resupply the whaling ships working southern waters, and he believed that sheltered crater was the ideal spot. Langlois signed a provisional agreement to buy a large part of Banks Peninsula from twelve Kāi Tahu chiefs, leaving a deposit in goods and promising to pay the rest later. With that 'title' he went back to France to look for backing.
In November 1839 the Nanto-Bordelaise Company was formed in France, with the aim of making Akaroa the nucleus of a French colony in Te Waipounamu -the South Island-, which there were even plans to link to a penal colony in the Chatham Islands. King Louis-Philippe's government supported the project and sent a warship, L'Aube, to protect the future settlers. In March 1840 the ship Comte de Paris sailed from Rochefort with about 63 French and a few German settlers, bound for the other side of the world to found the France of the South Pacific.
It was an ambitious dream and, though the settlers didn't know it, already doomed. While the Comte de Paris crossed the oceans, events in the north of New Zealand were sealing Akaroa's fate. On 6 February 1840, in the Bay of Islands, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the British Crown and numerous Māori chiefs. The French were sailing towards a colony that, by the time they arrived, could no longer be French.
The outcome had the feel of an adventure novel. In May 1840, Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson proclaimed British sovereignty over all of New Zealand -over the North Island by cession through the Treaty, and over the South Island and Stewart Island by 'discovery'-. When word reached Akaroa that a French warship, L'Aube, was escorting settlers to the peninsula, the British authorities moved quickly to secure the South Island. At Ōnuku, next to Akaroa, on 30 May 1840 the Kāi Tahu chiefs Iwikau and Hōne Tikao signed the Treaty of Waitangi: it was the first signing of the Treaty in the South Island.
From the Bay of Islands, the British ship HMS Britomart was dispatched with orders to reach Akaroa before the French and raise the flag. The Britomart entered the harbour on 10 August 1840 and its officers held a court hearing on shore -a formal gesture to assert British jurisdiction- days before the French settlers of the Comte de Paris arrived, on 18 August. The 'race to Akaroa' was settled: when the French landed, the Union Jack was already flying.
Popular legend exaggerated the drama -there was no neck-and-neck chase under sail-, but the result was real: Akaroa would never be a French colony. Even so, the settlers stayed. Rather than expel them, the British Crown allowed them to settle. They planted vines, walnut trees and gardens, built cottages, and named their streets Rue Lavaud, Rue Jolie, Rue Balguerie. In the middle of an increasingly British New Zealand, a small enclave with a French accent flourished, and it never entirely disappeared.
Present-day Akaroa thrives on that unusual mix. The tricolour flags, the street names, the boulangeries and the biennial French Festival keep alive the memory of the French colonial dream, now a tourist draw and a source of local pride. It's one of Christchurch's favourite getaways: colourful cottages facing the harbour, good food, wildlife cruises and a picturesque feel that attracts travellers from all over the world, many of them arriving on the big cruise ships that anchor in the harbour.
But the deepest story -and the one most recognised in recent decades- is that of Ngāi Tahu. The 1998 Ngāi Tahu settlement, one of the major Waitangi Tribunal settlements, acknowledged the historical grievances suffered by the iwi across the South Island, including those on Banks Peninsula. Today Ōnuku remains a living marae and the site of the first Treaty signing in the south; Takapūneke is a reserve of remembrance; and many Kāi Tahu names and stories are becoming visible in the landscape again. The 'storehouse of Rākaihautū' is getting its voice back.
Walking around Akaroa today means reading all those layers at once: the volcanic crater and the sea that drew Ngāi Tahu; the Takapūneke tragedy that helped bring in the Crown; the Anglo-French race that decided which flag the town would grow up under; and the everyday life of a harbour where Hector's dolphins, colonial cottages and a tea with a croissant by the water all coexist. Few places so small pack in so much history -Māori, French and British- in such a beautiful setting.
