NOTABLE OCCASION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23811, 18 May 1939, Page 8

NOTABLE OCCASION

NINETY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY ARRIVAL OF FIRST MISSIONARY COMMEMORATION AT KARITANE The ninety-ninth anniversary of the arrival at Waikouaiti of the Rev. James Watkin, the first European missionary to preach among the Southern Maoris, was celebrated yesterday when a special anniversary service was held on the Kantane beach in the afternoon, and another service was conducted in the Waikouaiti Ghurch at Waikouaiti in the evening. The afternoon service, which was conducted by the Rev. Basil Metson, of Trinity Methodist ■ Church, was attended by a large gathering of Maoris and others interested, and the evening service, which was also well attended, was conducted by the Rev. L. B. Neale.

To the Methodist Church belongs the honour of introducing Christianity to Otago, and indeed to the South Island, for the Rev. James Watkin, a Wesleyan minister, was the first white missionary to establish a mission station in the South Island. He had a remarkable record as an evangelist, for the great part of his 56 years in the ministry was devoted to mission work. Of Welsh extraction, he left Gravesend with his wife in the ship Lloyd on August 7, 1830, and five months later' reached the Bay of Islands. After a short stay there they sailed for the Friendly Islands, which they reached on March 10, 1831.

The Rev. Mr Watkin did a tremendous amount of work in these islands and in the whole of the Tongan Group which he left on September 11, 1937, for Sydney. Early in 1840, Mr John Jones, who owned a whaling station at Waikouaiti, made application for a missionary before the Wesleyan Mission Board i - Sydney, and Mr Watkin was the one chosen to come to he South Island of New Zealand. With his family he sailed from Sydney In the ship Eegia, which anchored off the shore at Karitane on May 16, 1840, and on the following day, a Sunday, the party landed and Mr Watkin preached his first sermon to. a congregation which included the first batch of settlers who had arrived by the shin Magnet only two months previously. The same year Mi Watkin established a mission station at Otakou Heads—a strategical point of great importance, for at that time Otakou Peninsula and harbour possessed the largest population south of the Waitaki River. In addition to the development of these two stations, Mr Watkin regularly visited and preached at the various kaikas frbm Moeraki to the Molyneux. ministering to Europeans as well as to the Maoris. Apart from a brief call at the Heads by Bishop Pompallier in 1840, it was not until 1843 that any other religious teachers arrived, when Anglican Maoris, despatched by the Rev. M. Hadfield from Otaki. paid a brief visit. In 1844 Mr Watkin left for Wellington, and subsequently returned to Sydney, where he died on May 14. 1886. after 56 years as a minister of the Gospel.