The French Connection

n a hilltop towering over Matauri Bay is a large memorial sculpture with a heavy rounded stone arch, silhouetted in the sky, as if defying gravity. Attached to the central column is a ship’s propeller – a very significant propeller, as it belonged to the , an anti-nuclear protest ship that was bombed by French secret-service agents in 1985 while docked in Auckland Harbour. The incident caused a huge scandal at the time; the fact that New Zealand was the centre of an act of international espionage was unthinkable. The incident galvanised the antinuclear movement in opposition to both the French nuclear tests at Mururoa and visits of American warships to