Webber Lookout to Audibert Point (Grey Rock)

Audibert Point is named after Joseph Antonie Audibert. He was a sailmaker and boatswain on the Astrolabe commanded by Admiral Jules Dumont d’Urville in 1827. The Astrolabe was a French Naval exploration ship and the first European vessel to navigate the Te Aumiti / French Pass.

South of the point is Ponganui Bay named for the large ponga or tree ferns that grow on the surrounding land.

Toka-tapu Point means sacred rock point in Māori.1

Webber Lookout in on the bluff above Toka-tapu Point. It is named in memory of Wallace Webber, one of the early European settlers in the area.

Primarily a farmer, Wallace Webber was also postmaster at Anaru in Elmslie Bay from 1877 to 1900. Wallace Webber died in 1922.2

 

1. Olive Baldwin, Story of New Zealand’s French Pass and d’Urville Island (Plimmerton: Fields Publishing House, 1979) 133-134.

2. Nelson Historical Society, “French Pass Post Office”, Journal of the Nelson and Marlborough Historical Societies, Volume 2, Issue 3, (1989), accessed June 12, 2018, http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-NHSJ05_03-t1-body1-d7.html .