Hokianga's History

From the water, or sometimes from the top of one of Hokianga's high hills, it is possible to imagine what the harbour was like centuries ago, before the human race arrived to make its modifications. To really find out, you would need to go back nine or ten centuries in time - that's when archaeologists and oral tradition suggest that Maori made their first landfall from their original island home of Hawaiki. It was the great Polynesian explorer Kupe who after sailing round the North Island and naming places as he went, settled on the Hokianga Harbour as his home. Te Puna i te ao marama (The spring of the world of light) was his rather beautiful name for the harbour, and so it stayed until in his old age he decided to return to Hawaiki. The words he uttered then about his decision became the preferred name for the harbour and immortalised his years here -

"Hei konei ra i te puna i te ao marama, ka hoki nei ahau, e kore ano e hokianga-nui mai" - "This the spring of the world of light, I shall not come back here again". So the name Te Hokianga nui a Kupe was given, and in time became simply "Hokianga".

Tradition has it that Kupe's returning canoe, Matawhaorua, was re-adzed for greater carrying capacity by a later descendant, Nukutawhiti, who renamed it Nga-toki-matawhaorua. Together with a brother-in-law Ruanui on the canoe Mamari, and no doubt the families of each, he followed Kupe's navigational directions to sail to New Zealand. Once arrived in the Hokianga harbour they settled, one on the north side, the other on the south, so founding the peoples of the north who are now known as the Ngapuhi.

Oral history takes on different versions as centuries pass and it is presented from a variety of view points. There is no right or wrong version, only different; the result is a rich range of traditions where it is impossible to summarise. The accounts of the subsequent populating of Hokianga, and the complex affiliations of the developing tribal groups, are best left to such works as The peopling of the North by S Percy Smith (JPS, Vol 5) or Hokianga by Jack Lee (1987) Mention must be made, though, of Rahiri, the 17^th century ancestor from whom all who call themselves Ngapuhi descend. Born on Whiria, the distinctive and impregnable pa at Pakanae near Hokianga's South Head, he made two strategic marriages whose offspring form the basis for many of the chiefly lines in the north. A monument to Rahiri now stands on the summit of Whiria hill.

1800, and European culture and artefacts are beginning to make themselves felt. The narrow Hokianga harbour entrance was missed by explorers credited with 'discovering' New Zealand and remained unmapped until 1820, but over at the Bay of Islands there was an early and rapid invasion of whalers and traders bearing iron tools, wool and cotton materials and of course muskets. The benefits of these were not lost on the Hokianga chiefs on their overland visits. By 1819, they had persuaded the missionary/trader Marsden with tales of the quantity and quality of the Hokianga kauri, to send an expedition across to assess the truth of it. Marsden himself followed soon after, overseeing the first sounding of the harbour entrance and making strategic contacts with the interested chiefs. Early the following year, the first known European ship crossed the harbour bar - the Prince Regent, under Captain John Rodolphus Kent, in 1820. The trade in Hokianga kauri was begun.

Trade of course was also in land. The first New Zealand company had bought, sight unseen, the promontory where Rawene now stands, and had sent the Rosanna with sawyers and other tradesmen under Captain Herd to form a settlement. The reality was less than attractive and the Rosanna moved on, with only four of the sawyers staying on in the area; just the same, Rawene was known for a long time as Herd's Point.

Across the harbour at Horeke is the site of New Zealand's first ship-building enterprise, established in 1826 by a group of three Englishmen. At its peak it employed 50 shipwrights and mill hands and three ships were built in the period to 1830. The owners went bankrupt shortly after and the business was sold; the milling continued but no more ships were built there. A small bronze plaque near the waterfront at Horeke commemorates the years of that first industry.

The harbour mouth opens to the Tasman Sea, turbulent in many moods. Like most west-coast rivers or harbours there is a shifting sand bar about a mile out from the heads, treacherous even to those who know it well, and especially when a south-westerly storm sweeps in as well few responsible sea captains would consider entering.

For the Maori, safe passage could be assured by a Tohunga who had special powers and strong karakia to control the wind and waves. No doubt common sense played a part too. But the Europeans were not so lucky: in the early years of the timber trade at least five ships came to grief in or around the entrance. This led John Martin, a seaman who had previously been Captain Kent's first mate before settling on land just inside the Heads, with the encouragement of local chief Moetara, to provide a pilot service for incoming ships. Later, on his own initiative but still with local Maori support, he also erected a signalling mast on the high point of the South Head. Signals were based on an accepted code of coloured flags and the flagstaff also worked on a pivot so it could droop to the north or south to direct a change of course as vessels approached. It is possible that John Martin's service, begun in 1832, was the first of New Zealand's navigational aids, and it seems to have been without remuneration until he was officially appointed considerably later. He retired in 1858 but the position of pilot stayed in the family until 1870, by which time the Marine Department had been established and made its own appointments. The pilot station, adapted and updated to suit the times, remained in operation until 1951 when technology and decreased harbour use brought its closure and dismantling. The final flagstaff still sees good use, however, atop the R.S.A. hall in Opononi.

For the next hundred years, the principal industry and export remained timber - mostly kauri, but puriri, rimu and the white pine kahikatea were also cut in quantity. Initially the demand was for tall straight young trees to form spars for the ships of the British navy: in the upper harbour these were plentiful right to the water's edge. The flax trade flourished at this time for the same reason (New Zealand flax made good tough rope) But squared and cut timber for building was in demand in Australia and elsewhere throughout the nineteenth century. Small individually owned mills dotted the harbour with varying success until the 1880's, when the giant Sydney-based Kauri Timber Company swept in with new technology and a firm financial base. They bought up existing mills and established new ones at Waimamaku and Koutu, in the latter creating a township with school, store and housing out of a quiet little peninsula. Within thirty years the hills were stripped of most usable timber and little but scrub and bare stumps remained, bordering a harbour which had lost its pristine clarity through the dumping of sawdust and the beginnings of erosion. With the timber dwindling the KTC moved on, closing its large mills and leaving a population searching for new employment.

During the slump of the 1880's, when unemployment in the towns was high, a government practice of buying up tracts of unused land for assisted settlement hastened this denudement. Families were leased fifty acre blocks cheaply in return for breaking it in, in many cases being supplied with fruit-trees to plant each year, with the hope that they would eventually supply the city markets with reasonably priced produce. Six of these settlements were in the Hokianga region. Given the isolation that still has its effect on finding markets, this was a pipe-dream: of those six settlements, only one (Waimamaku) survived to celebrate its centennial. Even before they arrived its settlers had formed themselves into a homogeneous organisation, and they had unfailing support from the adjacent Maori community. Early on, they also had the foresight to abandon fruit-growing in favour of dairy farming, establishing a co-operative cheese factory in 1903, only fifteen years into the existence of the settlement.

Some settlements, less cohesive at the beginning and with back-breaking, unforgiving land to work, barely got off the ground. In others, many families returned to the more familiar life of the towns, their 50 acre blocks being taken over or absorbed into other properties to make one or two large farms for those who stayed.

The first week of May, 1898, saw the culmination of a strongly-held sense of injustice on the part of Maori against the imposition of a European-made regulation, the Dog Tax, upon them. Hitherto Maori communities had not been generally subject to European taxes, but ten years earlier the Hokianga County Council, in an effort to control the increasing dog population and their depredations on local farm stock, had arbitrated that the dog-tax of 2/6d per dog applied to all dog owners. Posters in Maori and English were produced and, after the local policeman had intimated that he could not afford the time, the collection of the tax was put into the hands of a hired lay person. The people of Waima refused to pay. They were threatened with arrest. Under the leadership of Mahurehure chief Hone Toia they stood firm and continued to refuse to pay. After increasingly dire threats, such as banishment to ice-bound regions forever, they decided to march upon the County headquarters in Rawene in a show of force to settle the matter in their own way.

Twenty-five years had passed since the worst of the Waikato wars, but reaction was immediate and definite. The Government despatched a column of the Permanent Force, 120 strong, with two Nordenfeldt field guns and two Maxims and the gun-boat Torch; the Glenelg made an extra trip to evacuate the women and children from Rawene. The current Northern Maori MP, Hone Heke, left Parliament in session and came post-haste north to join other elders and chiefs in defusing the situation. Eventually the Mahurehure leaders lay down their arms and surrendered; they were arrested, taken to Auckland for trial on the grounds of treason, and imprisoned for a term in Mt Eden. Only one shot had been fired, and that was into the air through excitement. Hone Heke lost his Parliamentary pay for the time he was absent. The Dog Tax remained in force.

As the forest retreated, dairy farming proved to be the way to go, given the high rainfall of the region and the limited size of many cleared farms. Herds were small, families did the milking. In 1907, a co-operative was formed to establish a dairy factory at Motukaraka, one of the assisted settlement areas. It was built on the harbour, with its own wharf, and its catchment area ran from Mitimiti to Waimamaku in the west to Otaua/Punakitere in the east, taking in all tributaries of the harbour in between. Waimamaku farmers, who had their cheese factory already operating, had to choose - cheese or butter? Whole milk or cream only? Big cans or small? Local or distant? Cream was collected by launch wherever possible, being sledged or drayed from land bases. Collection was of necessity governed by tide-times, and launch drivers were skilled in navigating into and up the correct tributaries at any time of the day or night. The launches - named appropriately the Dairy Maid, the Butterfly etc. - were built to cope with maximum cream-cans, full or empty : empties being dropped off as full cans were taken on.

By about 1920 enterprising farmers were experimenting with milking-machines and also cream separators. The extra technology did not always make life simpler; the first milking machines involved the milk being pumped into large buckets which had to be watched and emptied at the right time. The separator with all its intricate parts took more care and time to wash and scald. Dairying was still a full family affair, and remained so as WW II took many of the men away.

Hokianga did not get electric power until the early 1950's; before that it was kerosene lamps and petrol engine for the milking machine, or diesel generator shared between house and shed. Morning and evening the countryside was filled with the throb of motors. The advent of electricity changed every aspect of life, even though the line to the more remote places was of such low voltage that, for instance, cooking could not start till the milking was finished.

With hindsight, these were the decades of prosperity - enough work, enough income, for all, and mostly generated from within the community. But the two local dairy factories were facing demands to upgrade, to tighten hygiene regulations, to instal new plant& Waimamaku's cheese now had to be made from pasteurised milk, changing its texture and taste (but not for the better). A merger was suggested, linking the two with the larger Bay of Islands Dairy company.

In 1957, this was agreed to; immediately, Motukaraka suppliers were notified that their cream would now be taken by road to Moerewa and Motukaraka would close - it was uneconomic, the launch collection cost too much to run. To the whole community, this was a body blow. The launches had been a lifeline for many small farmers around the harbour as their means of transport; even though roads were improving in the north, the river was still the main road, and the dairy factory had been a friendly meeting-place. With hindsight, again, this one action of closure is held to spell the end of Hokianga's prosperity.

Waimamaku's cheese-making limped on until 1972. Under local control, but monitored from the Bay of Islands Dairy Company, it had difficulty keeping ahead of increasingly stringent standards of production. Its suppliers were dwindling as farmers retired and the next generation looked for easier city jobs. So, regretfully, it was closed, and Hokianga no longer had any industry it could call its own.

The summer of 1955-56 will always be remembered as the summer of the dolphin - the few months when the village of Opononi was invaded by crowds of holiday-makers come to see a young dolphin willing to play with humans.

Dolphins normally live closely with family groups and no-one knows how Opo, a young female bottle-nose dolphin, came to lose herself so completely as to be living alone in the harbour. She was never known to go out over the bar but seemed content to stay close to human company, particularly, at first, if that human was running an outboard motor. Gradually she started to come inshore to join humans as they swam, and to everyone's joy she found she could take part in their games and play even better than they could. Given a ball, she shone: her agility in the water allowed her to keep it in motion effortlessly. Fortunately her antics were caught on film for everyone to see by two expert photographers: one the artist Eric Lee Johnson who was living in the Hokianga at the time and was contracted to supply the NZ Herald with photographs; the other, the veteran film-maker Rudall Hayward who was commissioned from USA to supply footage of the events.

One can only speculate what Opononi would be like now, had Opo lived longer. But after the few months of that summer of 1956 she disappeared, and a day or two later was found dead, stranded in rocks a little way up the harbour. There was no autopsy, so what caused her death will never be known. The whole community mourned for her. She was buried in front of Opononi's newly built RSA Hall, close by the stretch of harbour she played in and knew best. Later, a "Boy on a dolphin" statue by Russell Clark was erected in her memory close by.

With empty farms being sold for a song, the way was open for a further migration: alternative lifestylers in search of a truly alternative lifestyle. Hokianga had much to offer in this way and in many parts of the region groups of young people moved in - many of them well educated, creative and idealistic. Some moved into empty houses, others built their own using materials that came to hand. Some were fair-weather triallists, but others were stayers, determined to live out the difficulties and create a better life for themselves and their families.

Relations were often uneasy between the newcomers and the old established settlers. The County Council, the Medical Officer of Health and the Police each had their concerns about the possible effects that the newcomers' lifestyle might have on the community at large. Older farmers could not comprehend why anyone should want to return to such pioneering ways as earth floors and raupo roofing, and were sad to see fields which had once been cleared by backbreaking toil, reverting to scrub and bush. On the whole, though, toleration and co-operation won through; the children went to school, their parents took part in community doings, a new dimension enhanced what had been a depressed community.

Nation-wide changes to the social structure have not helped Hokianga. No bank operates in the area, the post offices have been closed (though postal agencies in the local stores carry out the day-to-day postal business) and lack of current employment opportunities means that most young persons are forced to leave the area. There is little spare money for anything but the basics of living and new businesses find it hard to stay afloat. Cell-phones won't work.

On the other hand, it is one of the most beautiful and relatively unspoilt parts of New Zealand: its low population means uncluttered beaches and room to move; the climate is mild at all times of the year and the gardens grow well. The people are an amalgam of Maori/ pakeha, old and young, academic and practical, way-out and conservative, in which everyone generally respects each other's ways. A small piece of Paradise? There are some who think so.