KATIKATI !

Mural painted on a house wall...

We hadn’t intended to stop in this little town, but the sign as you enter has a jolly pukekho on and says ‘mural village’, so, intrigued, we made Greg stop with a promise of some fresh coffee.






It has a river side walk, with weeping willows and yellow and white spring flowers, but the most noticeable design along the path, was that every now and then there were huge rocks with inscriptions on.




The town holds a Haiku competition every year and the winning haiku is engraved onto a rock along the way. A lovely idea. We photographed some of the best.



Back in the town centre we didn’t need to look far for the murals, they were on every wall where there was space and they were stunning.



All in all over thirty murals line the streets and decorate the buildings. Some are portraits, others are farm scenes or gardens, a couple were memorial murals. We had fun photographing them!




My favourite one was the winking pukekho!




Historically, Katikati was settled in 1875 by settlers from County Tyrone in Ireland through the Orange Institution, which would explain all the colonial murals.




Two groups of settlers arrived there aboard the ships Carisbrook Castle (1875) and Lady Jocelyn (1878). The land upon which the town was built was confiscated from local Maori after the land wars, and was given to the settlers by the Central Government.






The settlement was formed from two distinct groups "the settlers useful and the settlers ornamental" referring to the tenant farmers and those with wealth. An interesting turn of phrase!



The coffee was "damn fine" too !