A slice of paradise: New Zealand's Bay of Islands

Land for the church was purchased and construction begun in 1835, during the height of he village's prosperous shipping, whaling — and licentious — heyday.

"No law enforcement existed here," declares a booklet available inside quiet Christ Church, "for it knew no authority save that of the Maori chiefs. There was no wilder, wickeder or more disorderly community in the entire Pacific, nor a more favoured refuge for ruffians of all races. There were a few, a very few, respectable citizens."

Darwin apparently felt much the same about Kororareka and Paihia. Capt. Jack Sparrow of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, though, probably would have felt quite at home.

By 1844 the Bay of Islands population had begun to decline. The shipping trade found new harbors, and the colonial capital moved to Auckland and then to Wellington. Kororareka assumed the name of Russell, which had previously been applied to another settlement.

The village, and the church, then became a center of Maori unrest, including Hone Heke's War, named for a dissident chief who led repeated attacks on Russell's signal staff and its British flag, a symbol of colonial rule. That led to a Maori attack on Russell on March 11, 1845, and a battle with a naval detachment from H.M.S. Hazard outside Christ Church itself.

Six Royal Navy men and an unknown number of Maoris were killed. During the mayhem, Russell's ammunition supply exploded. The town and church were looted.

Ultimately that evening, with refugees aboard ships in the harbor, "the Hazard turned her guns on the town and swept the semi-circle of hills with their fire," scarring even the church, the booklet reports.

Residents were evacuated to Auckland, and for a time Russell was a deserted ruin.

One would hardly guess all that today from the village's white-clapboard houses, church and inns, or its beautiful summer flowers, gnarled ancient trees and small-seaside-town charm.

No, today Russell, Paihia, Waitangi and this bay of many islands — "a place of rolling green hills, sheep grazing above the crystal blue waters," Lawson notes, is "a place where you truly feel 'down under,' far from the troubles of the world — a place the New Zealanders refer to as a "Godzone" because so many of them are people of faith, believing their homeland is God's best work, and you live closer to God by living in New Zealand.

"So naturally, the best way to be closer to God is to be out in the "zone" doing things like hiking, fishing, sailing and admiring God's work," Lawson says.

Much has changed in the 240 years since Cook visited and named the Bay of Islands. In 1769 the harbor, to Cook, seemed a veritable Maori metropolis.

"The inhabitants of this Bay are far more numerous than at any other place we've yet been in, and seem to live in friendship with one another although it doth not at all appear they are under one head," he wrote in his journal.

Today, his "Bay of Islands" is pleasantly laidback and peaceful, a place where Mother Nature retains her sway and one rife with recreational opportunity. It seems nothing like the bustling modern cities, roiling with humanity, on New Zealand's Pacific shores to the south: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin.

By comparison, Lawson says, the bay seems "a kind of paradisiacal playground for New Zealanders and the few lucky foreigners, like ourselves, who get to see it on a perfect-weather day."