Advertizing an Art Exhibition, and visiting history on the way..

With Janice I travelled up one side of the Coromandel Peninsular and across and down the other, delivering fliers advertizing the Art and Music exhibition we are organizing.
In Thames, Coromandel, Whitianga, Coroglen, Tairua and Whangamata we gave fliers to Cafes, Bars, Art Galleries, Bookshops and Tourist Information centres.

On the way we stopped to look at the Thames Cemetery, one of my favourite places.


The old Thames Cemetery, high on a hill North of Thames overlooking the Thames estuary and the Coromandel coast road.
Every gravestone tells a story; veterans of the Maori wars, the dangers of the ocean, the dangers of the early gold mines, the high infant mortality of the early European settlers and the toll of the Spanish flu epidemic which swept New Zealand in 1919 brought here by ships returning from the Great War. The grave of the first caretaker of the cemetery is there, he died in the 1880's of old age... given that New Zealand is such a young country this place is as old as it gets for New Zealand European settlement history.
My Great grandfather came out here in 1862 to escape the famine in Ireland and European New Zealand was 22 years old when he arrived. About as old as my Great grandfather was then.