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. George Hempelman, a Prussian whaler, established a whaling station in the bay in 1835, and from 1837 lived there permanently. Peraki has a small cemetery, one of the earliest European cemeteries in New Zealand. 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.