Peraki
{{Use New Zealand English|date=April 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Coord|43|51|30|S|172|49|27|E|display=title}}
Peraki, a Māori language place name with an initial spelling of Pireka, is a bay on the south side of Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. It is the site of the first permanent European settlement in Canterbury.{{cite web | url=http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Heritage/Chronology/Year/1837.asp | title=Christchurch: a history | publisher=Christchurch City Libraries | access-date=22 January 2015}}{{cite book | title=Wises New Zealand Guide | edition=7th | year=1979 | page=343}} George Hempelman, a Prussian whaler, established a whaling station in the bay in 1835, and from 1837 lived there permanently.{{cite news | title=The glory days of whaling long gone | work=The Press | date=6 April 2013 | last=Crean | first=Mike | page=C12}} Peraki has a small cemetery, one of the earliest European cemeteries in New Zealand.{{cite book |last=Du Plessis |first=Rosemary |author-link=Rosemary Du Plessis |url=http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/death-and-dying/page-4 |title=Death and dying - Burials and cemeteries |date=15 December 2014 |publisher=Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand |access-date=22 January 2015}}
The Wairewa and Akaroa Counties paid for a memorial to Hempelman that was placed on Peraki Beach in March 1939. The memorial is made up of a whale try pot with the following inscription:{{cite news | url=http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=AMBPA19390331.2.2 | title=Hempelman Memorial | work=Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser | date=31 March 1939 | access-date=22 January 2015 | volume=LXIII | issue=6522 | page=1}}
Erected to commemorate the centenary of the first white settler in Canterbury, New Zealand, Captain George Hempelman, who established a whaling station at Peraki in 1835.
Hempelman flew the German flag in front of his house, and in 1840{{Cite thesis |last=Berry |first=P. L. |title=Germans in New Zealand: 1840 to 1870 |type=thesis |chapter=II - Early Germans in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands |url=http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/3973/1/Thesis_fulltext.pdf |year=1964 |publisher=University of Canterbury |access-date=22 January 2015 }} he was ordered by Captain Owen Stanley of HMS Britomart to take it down, with the Union Jack raised instead.