Overseas adventure
Posted 17 July 2009 // Emily Tutaki
Souda Bay war cemetery in Crete (click for full image on Flickr)
I’ve recently returned from Europe after spending five weeks travelling. We were in Greece for a family wedding, but also ended up tiki-touring around western Europe.
My family has quite a few connections to Europe, mainly through war, so we made an effort to pay our respects to a few of these places.
First, we travelled to Ireland – my great-great-grandmother, who married Īhāia Hūtana in Waipawa, was Irish – so we went to her birthplace Dun Loaghaire just outside of Dublin.
We then travelled to London and managed to go to Guildford. Clandon Park in Guildford is home to the original Hinemihi meeting house from the Tarawera eruption (my partner is a descendant). Ngāti Rānana Māori Club use her as their ‘base’ in England. She is truly beautiful up close!
After that we made our way towards Greece, visiting places like Paris, Venice, Vienna and Munich.
After the wedding we travelled to Chania, Crete. We paid our respects at the Commonwealth cemetery, Souda Bay. We have family who fought on Crete and an uncle who died there during the Battle for Crete.
Lastly, we travelled to Rome. We had a day’s outing to Cassino. My pa, like many others, fought in Cassino as part of the Māori Battalion (and was later captured in Florence). So it was amazing to see Monte Cassino and be able to walk around the monastery. We also visited the Commonwealth cemetery in Cassino – one of the largest in Italy, with more than 4,000 people buried there.
I am now missing the sunshine and settling back into working life.
That sounds so interesting Emily, I had no idea you did all those things- I imagined your holiday was all sunshine and dollar drinks on the beach.
If you went to Cassino, you might like to see the Takirua production Strange Resting Places, if it ever comes back. Here’s a link:
http://www.takirua.co.nz/strange-resting-places/
Love those pics of Hinemihi - what a lovely wee house. There’s an 2006 article here about its restoration by archaeology students. So it spent a while being used as a Wendy house and a goat house - gee! Reminds me of those stories about Maggie Papakura’s carvings being used as fence posts and pigpens in the English countryside - you don’t know whether to laugh or cry eh?!