Occasionally Auckland Sketchbook escapes the city to somewhere interesting — and close. This time the sketchbook got a workout in The Bay of Islands . Only 3.5 hours by car and a world away from work. The sketch above was made in down-town Paihia, it doesn't look it, but it is literally behind the main street. The view is the back of an old homestead called Williams House . I was attracted by the orchard of very old fig trees on the left that had me imagining eating juicy ripe figs. Sadly they weren't in season but it must be a fun place at harvest time. Right over the other side of the bay you will find his falling down old house on Matauwhi Bay. For a while there the water had a turquoise glow until the sun went into hiding. This is Pompallier House and Clendon Cottage in Russell sketched with my back to the sea. I may have used a little too much artistic licence in moving them close enough together to fit on my page so don't look too closely. Anyway, I have sketched Po...
French Bishop Pompallier was on a mission. He built this mission at Russell in the 1830's after being moved on by the Protestants on the west coast who already had the joint sewn up - in an ecclesiastical sense anyway.
He brought a printing press with him from France and set about translating, typesetting, printing and binding a bible for Maori. He must have had a hard job of it in Russell (or Kororareka as it was called then - the so called 'Hell hole of the Pacific') he had to build the place first and you couldn't exactly pop down to Benchmark to pick up your building materials like we do these days, so they used a rammed earth technique to construct the walls.
That's right, despite it's picturesque appearance, the building wasn't built as a residence, purely a factory to print and bind bibles, even the leather used to bind the books was processed in a tannery out back.
We had an fascinating tour of the place where the guide demonstrated the processes that went into type setting, printing and binding the books, even into the rammed earth technique they used to construct the walls.
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