* New Zealand's first European-style farm set in English village-style countryside.
* The first inland European settlement in the country.
* The only place in New Zealand that Charles Darwin gave a positive write-up in his journal.

This 1832 gracious Georgian home was the heart of the Church Missionary Society's model farm. Its peaceful pastoral surroundings were once the busy scene of New Zealand's first large English-style farm, with wheat fields, a water mill, and blacksmith's shop, as well as the chapel, schoolrooms, houses and cottages.
Missionaries taught farming techniques and Christianity to local Maori and the house was the site of the second signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Powerful, evocative and striking, Te Waimate offers stories of endeavour, conflict and perseverence during the early encounters between Europeans and Maori. Te Waimate introduces visitors to stories of courage, war and failure that will stay with you forever.