Mercury Bay Museum

The Cook display, in the full sized copy of the great cabin of HMB Endeavour depicts Cook in full dress uniform, Joseph Banks, botanist and a cabin boy. The intricate carving on the stern is copied from the replica Endeavour. At the start of the Museum there is a full sized statue of Kupe, his wife and his tohunga. Kupe named an area along the beach after his marae in Tahiti, Taputapuatea. Down the ramp into the Museum is a display of artifacts, then onto the history of the Te Whanganui o Hei/Mercury Bay including a timeline of our history and the people that helped shaped this area. There is an exhibition of the wreck of HMS Buffalo, (1840), a town model showing Whitianga in 1943 and a Coastal Port exhibition. Further into the Museum is the agricultural exhibition, including the butter churn standing in the same spot as it did when the building was a butter factory. Take a walk down memory lane through our General Store, Haberdashery and onto our school room and a blacksmith shop. In our Backyard is a gallery full of the natural history of this area, including the very popular Kauri Room.

Right across the wharf and the ferry service, our Museum stands on an historic site, as before the dairy factory was built it was the site of the Kauri Timber Company Mill. Prior to that, the site was an Huki Huki urupa