Originally the required info needed to be obtained from a flyer at the entrance to the church. These were often unavailable, resulting in several DNF's. I've since included the history and required information into the cache description. The info required to work out GZ is on this page, and in the church grounds, on a large boulder with a plaque on it in the cemetery.
In the 1840's, the area now known as Pukekohe East was purchased from local Maori. By the late 1850's a few European settlers had started clearing the land from thick bush and were establishing their livelihoods - their farms. They needed a place to meet as a community and to hold church services, so a temporary meeting place was built.
Here met the first form of local government in Franklin - the Pukekohe Roads Board in 1862. They were locally elected trustees, whose first priority was to improve transportation in the area. To help with this, they collected 4p (pence) and acre from their fellow settlers and started building roads and bridges - and early form or rates. By April 1863 these settlers, mostly Scots and English, had funded and build the present day Pukekohe East Church on the same site. The building continued to be used as a community meeting place and as a local school.
These were troubled times. Just two months after Governor Grey's proclamation of July 1863: "For all Maori in the Manukau District to give up their arms and swear allegiance to Queen Victoria, or forfeit their lands", the church was attacked by Maori, keen to progress the Kingite movement. The settler women and children had been sent of to Drury, and then to Auckland for safety while the men tended to their farms by day and slept in the church by night. The church had be "stockaded" with logs laid horizontally with loopholes cut vertically for the firing of rifles. A deep trench was dug on the outside all around and this is still clearly visible today.
On 14th September 1863, two hundred Maori warriors came in three war canoes down the Waikato River specifically to attack the church. Leading one of the groups was Rewi Maniapoto's brother. Many being Christians they were incensed that a house of God was being used as a military outpost. It was also a "soft" target away from the Great South Road. The setters numbered nine volunteer militia and a boy, and ten special constables plus and officer, Segreant Perry. Together they managed to hold off the attackers all day' until military reinforcements came from Drury and Ramarama. The building still holds the scars of the bullet holes today. Have a look at the outside of the porch. Captain Jackson and Gustav von Tempsky of the Forest Rangers alter visited the site.
In 1929 the congregation commissioned a plaque honouring the six Maori warriors who were left on site and later buried by the British soldiers. This is sighted on a memorial stone that used to stand by the door of the church and was used for sharpening pencils when the church was a school form 1863-1880. They also commissioned a plaque inside the church, naming the settlers who defended the church. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission now cares for the Maori plaque. Six direct descendants of those settlers are members of the church society today.
The church stands proud on the edge of the Pukekohe East Tuff Ring, formed by and effusive volcano between 560000 and 730000 years ago.
Final cache location: S 37 11.ABC E 174 56.DEF
Where ABC = Defenders prior to reinforcement 21 + attackers 200 + day of the battle 14 + 5th and 6th digits on boulder plaque, treated as a two digit number 63 +1(Total 299)
and DEF = (Upper limit of volcano age /1000) 730 + 4th and 5th digits on boulder plaque, treated as a two digit number. 86 (Total 816)
Use the info on this page for calculations.
Figures may vary from other online sources.
