Historic Waipu Cemetery

We stopped off today at Waipu Cemetery. A well maintained area, the most popular surnames there seem to be Gordon, Finlayson, McDonald, McLeod and McLean.

Waipu is about 40km south of Whangarei and is located in the Bream Bay area. It was founded in the mid 19th century by Scottish settlers from Nova Scotia

This particular group tried living in Canada first, then Australia before settling here in NZ.

Around 1854 they secured land at Waipu, led by a preacher named Norman McLeod and were then followed by more Scots from Nova Scotia and Scotland.

5 shiploads containing over 800 settlers arrived in Waipu in the 1850s afterwards.

.In Waipu itself there is the McLeod Pizza Barn, the Waipu Museum and the House of Memories.

Every new year's day on January 1st the town hosts the Waipu Highland Games in which there is dancing, stalls, tug of war, pipe bands and cable tossing.

The reason for the migration of the Scots people was the highland clearances back in Scotland and they arrived not just in Waipu but all over NZ.

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