Cate and I recently hosted two of our friends (Feleti and Janine) over the weekend and, while at the Matakana Farmers Market, we met a couple of their friends, including Ena Hutchinson who has a place in Leigh. As it happened we were all invited to Ena’s the following day and had a great time.

As the discussion and the wine flowed, it turned out that one of Ena’s ancestors, George Ashdown, was a crew member on board the ship Adventure along with Dicky Barrett when, on their first trading voyage in mid March 1828 they were enticed to go ashore and set up a trading post at Ngamotu. George, like Dicky and at least several others of the crew soon had female partners from local hapu … so there possibly an ancestral link between us too.

What a small world then, 198 years later two ancestors of Dicky and George met and discovered their mutual links to that historical event in Aotearoa’s history. What a buzz that was! It was a real delight to meet Ena.

Ena and I proceeded to have a long chat that day about our ancestral links. One of the resources Ena has drawn on is The Interpreter, a biography of Richard ‘Dicky’ Barrett by Angela Caughey. Soon after when Ena joined Cate and I at our place I produced my copy of Angela’s book which I purchased soon after its publication in 1998. I’d had it in storage in New Zealand at the time of writing the postings for this blog while living in Australia.

So I have a good deal to add to and update my blog postings here with material Ena gave me, plus information from The Interpreter. This I intend to do over the next few weeks.