Peraki

Peraki, a Māori language place name with an initial spelling of Pireka, is a bay on the south side of Banks Peninsula, New Zealand.

It is the site of the first permanent European settlement in Canterbury.

[1][2] George Hempelman, a Prussian whaler, established a whaling station in the bay in 1835, and from 1837 lived there permanently.

[4] The Wairewa and Akaroa Counties paid for a memorial to Hempelman that was placed on Peraki Beach in March 1939.

The memorial is made up of a whale try pot with the following inscription:[5] Erected to commemorate the centenary of the first white settler in Canterbury, New Zealand, Captain George Hempelman, who established a whaling station at Peraki in 1835.Hempelman flew the German flag in front of his house, and in 1840[6] he was ordered by Captain Owen Stanley of HMS Britomart to take it down, with the Union Jack raised instead.