Hi, a very interesting project and hope your new book will be available in English.

I spent a lot of by childhood and teenage years growing up in Ligar Bay and Tata beach. Apart from the usual seaside activities we used to spend a lot of time in the hills behind Ligar Bay. One of the highlights directly behind the old Ryder farm was the site of one of the lookouts that the local Maori used when Abel Tasman arrived in the bay-according to local Iwi. We spent hours on this site and I can remember finding the remains of wooden posts that were probably used as walls still in place and buried in the soil. The site had been hollowed out, leveled and covered several square metres. With the change in the bay now Im not sure that these sites are still there or if the local Maori have preserved them. From this site we could look directly down onto the ‘new’ Abel Tasman memorial which I can still remember being built. Sadly way back then in the 50s and 60s there was no preservation of these sites and hopefully now they have been preserved as they are a very important part of NZ (and Dutch) history.

Cheers and good luck with your project.

Hi,

On my mother’s side my third name is Visger which is an anglicised version of Visscher.
On my family tree I have FRANCHOYS JACOBZOON VISSCHER, Hydrographer and Pilot-Major on Abel Tasman’s ships Heemskerck & Zeehaen in 1642 in which they discovered Tasmania and New Zealand (13th December). He came from Flushing. My main line of the Visschers were the first settlers in Nieuw Amsterdam which at the Treaty of Breda (1667) was exchanged with England for the Island of Run!