A good first stop on a visit to Gisborne is the Visitor Information Centre on Grey St on the northern bank of Waikanae Creek.
Gather all the information you can get on the places that interest you and plan a practical itinerary by area.
Grey St, in fact, is very much in the heart of the city. If you walk down Grey St and into Salisbury Rd, you find yourself by Waikanae Beach and, further west, Midway Beach.
Statues by the river
If you walk east at the end of Grey St, instead of entering Salisbury Rd, you can stroll by the mouth of the Turanganui River where you can see Young Nick’s statue.
Young Nick -- Captain James Cook’s cabin boy Nicholas Young -- is said to have been the first of Cook’s Endeavour crew to sight New Zealand in 1769. Cook named the white cliffs across the bay Young Nick’s Head, known in Maori as Te Kuri a Paoa.
There is a statue of Cook himself across the river in the Cook National Historic Reserve.
Up the hill
A walking track from the Cook monument leads up to Titirangi (Kaiti Hill), with good views of the area. There’s another monument to Cook near the tip of the hill.
The James Cook Observatory -- "the world’s easternmost observatory" -- is at the hill’s summit. The Gisborne Astronomical Society meets here once a week on Tuesday evenings.
And down to the beach
Down the hill, in a southeasterly direction, lies Kaiti Beach.
Next page: Where Three Rivers Meet
- Photo: Wade Manson, courtesy Destination Gisborne
