Nga Korero WhaKahoKi

MaharaNgatiwai stories we remember-

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Whangārei,

New Zealandwww.ngatiwai.ac.nz.

ISBN: 978-0-473-28946-1 print | 978-0-473-34997-4 PDF

Published 2015

Aotearoa New Zealand

Copyright Ngātiwai Education 2015

All rights reserved.

Contact Ngātiwai Education for further information.

Ngātiwai EducationTe Au Here o Tūkaiaia

Nga Korero WhaKahoKi

Mahara

Ngatiwai stories we remember

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P Wellington, V Hall, T Munro, G Dowsett, E Wellington, Eds.

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Foreword 3

Bruce Davies 4

Te Manea Kaka 8

Roi McCabe 12

Kayleen Mackey 15

Takangaroa Moanaroa 17

Eileen Ngawaka 20

Koroheke (Charlie) Ngawaka 22

Pepuere (Dick) Pene 24

Raukura Gertrude Piripi (Phillips) 27

Ani Heta Raharaha 30

Jacquelyn Teepa Ruck 33

Don & Val Waetford 36

Parata Waetford 39

Tiuka Waetford 41

Perry Watts 43

Clyde Wellington 46

Eric Wellington 50

Mikki Wellington 53

Paratene Te Manu (Sonny) Wellington 54

Mabel (May) Wii 57

Freda Williams 58

Acknowledgements 60

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“You know, history is like a jigsaw puzzle, you get one small piece of it and it starts to build up slowly over time. There’ll always be pieces missing but sometimes you can make that jump.”

The stories featured in this book can be seen as a little like jigsaw pieces, working together to form a much bigger picture to give our tamariki and taitamariki a glimpse of what it was to be and grow up as Ngātiwai. Stories shared tell of times when speaking te reo Māori was cause for punishment, when kai was plentiful in our rohe, and there are also some uncomfortable truths disclosed for the history of Aotearoa as a whole. Ultimately, however, this book is a celebration; a celebration of our tangata, a celebration of our stories, and a celebration of being Ngātiwai.

Our Ngātiwai iwi is growing from strength to strength, with our tribal register of members sitting at around 7000. As our numbers grow to reflect our true strength, so does the importance of our understanding of what it is to be Ngātiwai – what that means as an individual both in our whānau and as an iwi. This understanding is enhanced by the sharing of our stories and supporting our young through tangible networks and initiatives reflecting our tikanga within our larger communities.

Ngā Kōrero Whakahoki Mahara is a meaningful addition to Ngātiwai Education’s educational resource kete. It supports our tamariki and taitamariki and encourages them to grow their understanding and knowledge of what it is to be Ngātiwai in this ever growing, changing and challenging world. Ngātiwai Education will continue to develop resources and educational initiatives to give our tamariki and taitamariki a sense of what it is to be Ngātiwai in our world today, and to take pride in their heritage while knowing that support is in place as they grow and develop.

Our oral traditions are still strong, but with the dispersal of our people through urbanisation and globalisation, many stories are being lost. We have a duty to collect and share these stories; by doing

this the stories of our tūpuna and our stories of being Ngātiwai will not be forgotten.

Enjoy these stories as they carry you back to a different Aotearoa. Some things have changed and other things not so much. Perhaps it might also encourage and inspire you to capture and share stories about your own whānau.

I’ll leave you with another excerpt from an interview:

“I saw the Whangārei Heads. I thought, ‘I’m home’. Even today, I’m 87 nearly 88 so that would be near 70 years away from home … This should be my home, I’ve been here in Palmerston North 54 years. Up there was always home. It still is.”

Haydn EdmondsChairmanNgātiwai Trust Board

Excerpt from interview

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I’m from Ngāti Rehua, I’m Bruce Davies, Gordon Ponga Kingi Davies is my dad, Wiri Kino Rewiti is

my tūpuna. His wife was Heni Waima Waetford and his mother was Raihi Miraka, also known by many other names. She was married to a Ngawaka first.

My whānau have been residing in Ngātiwai pretty much all our lives. My Dad was taken back to the Barrier where his grandparents looked after him. Raihi looked after him and Granny was a very, very capable mum evidently, and she took good care of the children. They were brought up well dressed, you see old photos of them and they were very

well dressed. Dad left school at the age of 12 and he went to work in the bush. My dad spent a lot of time on the Barrier.

Dad worked in the quarries, he worked in the limestone quarry in Hikurangi and then he moved to Portland for work. Dad was basically a manual worker all his life. He could turn his hand to farming, to quarry work, to explosives, to bush work. His father was a bushman, a very good bushman. My koro, we called him Tupe and that was short for Tupuna. He grew up on the Barrier for a good deal of his life, then he moved further afield. They lived in Hukerenui for some considerable time where he and Granny had a vineyard, just up from the Hukerenui Hotel, and he also worked in the gum fields at the back of Hukerenui. It’s said that he came out of the gum fields and went into the Hukerenui pub and the barman wouldn’t serve him a drink, so he bought the whole pub, and that’s documented.

Growing up we were never short of food, ever. Yeah we struggled, but growing up as Ngātiwai Dad always had food on the table. He made sure of that. We lived at Whangateau then Maromāku then Hikurangi, and we were involved more with Ngātiwai people in Hikurangi. We had a lot of the Barrier people living in Hikurangi, and out on the coast, and a lot of them worked in Hikurangi. It was a closer family structure up at Hikurangi because we went out to the beach and of course you met up with a whole lot of people out there, they had days where they would take buses out.

We had to walk across a paddock to go to school and by the time we got to school our feet were so sore because it was cold and wet and sticky with paspallum. It’s a grass, and it’s sticky and it used to make your legs go black and I was forever getting into trouble with sore feet, tāpā feet and cracked knees.

Mum and Dad bought a house in a Māori Affairs block which was up Three Mile Bush Road [Kamo],

Kāwa Marae, Whakapaumahara Marae, Ōmaha Marae – May 2013

Growing up we were never short of food, ever. Yeah we struggled, but growing up as Ngātiwai Dad always had food on the table. He made sure of that.

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it was originally owned by our tūpuna anyway, but it was subdivided and Māori Affairs built houses and we were in one of those homes.

I went to Kamo Primary School. The buses wouldn’t pick us up because we were Māori so we had to walk from there, it was about three miles I think. The only shoes that we had were our Sunday best. So [we] wore bare feet and away we went, and we used to warm our feet up in the cow pats on a cold day and then get to school.

We provided for ourselves by Dad working and I had a paper run, 12 shillings a week for doing a Herald run and also an evening paper run and the money went to Mum and Dad for feeding us kids. There were five boys and a girl. The others were too young to work, they were babies. We were allowed a couple of bob for ourselves, the rest was spent either in the house or in the church.

Then as us kids were getting older we ended up in Auckland because work was better and it was a lot easier for Dad. ‘Cause Dad was 18 years older than my mother, he was 40 when he got married. So when we were teenagers Dad was technically an old man, although he was very fit, always working. It was my job to get up in the morning at five and go and milk the cows, help get in the cows, come back, get into school clothes and go to school and then come home, change out of school clothes and work on the farm, bringing in cows and milking them. Dad organised a house at Birkenhead, we weren’t allowed to go down the road without putting

our good clothes on, ‘cause we’re now in Auckland, you had to wear good clothes everywhere.

By that time Koro and Nan had died, [but] we had a close relationship with our Aunties and Uncles from the Barrier. Most of them lived in Auckland, so we would go to regular whānau meetings, regular huis in Auckland with the old people. That was good fun, us kids used to really love that because it was catching up with our people.

Once Uncle Tassie gave me money to buy shoes. He gave me 10 pounds to go down and buy some clothes. Ten pounds was a lot of money, today I guess ten pound would

be equivalent to two or three hundred dollars. I went down and bought a new pair of pants and shoes, and tie and socks, and came back and still had money in my pocket. The shoes, I recall they cost five pound, half of what they gave me. I never got to wear them, my Dad took them off me and said they were too good for me to wear, and he wore them for a number of years.

It was good growing up Ngātiwai, we would come down to the beach here, most of our holidays we came home here at Whangateau, so we would come and stay with Nana or Aunty Elsie. We lived in the water, we loved eating seafood, we would always gather seafood as kids. That was our job, to come out and go fishing and catch whatever we could, and bring it home and prepare. It was our job to prepare.

Whananāki is the marae we had a lot of involvement with as children. Our involvement was basically hui and tangi, well, Dad never took us to tangi. I remember when our koro died I was about four or five years old and I can vividly remember them not taking me and yet I had a lot of time for him as a young boy. That’s why I’ve always encouraged the girls and Oliver and Mikayla to come along. It’s a huge learning thing.

I didn’t have much involvement in Ōmaha ‘cause the marae wasn’t there. I recall going to Tenetahi and Rahui’s old house as a young boy. It was a house I remember putting the power onto when I was working on the Power Board. There was no road to it, you had to go across the harbour and

Hukerenui Hotel today

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up the hill. There was never a road until recently. You could drive around the edge of the cliffs on a nice day and go through all the farm gates. When the Ōmaha Marae was blessed and opened, Dad insisted that I go onto the Committee which I did. I enjoyed it and had a huge role to play. Eventually I became Chairperson of the Ōmaha Marae. I spent 14 or 15 years on the Marae Committee. I was always involved with Ngāti Rehua, we always involved ourselves with things like that. But I got on the Trust Board, became Chairman of the Ngāti Rehua Trust Board. Spent a lot of time doing things on Aotea, especially things to do with kōiwi, and things that were found, bones etc and reburying them.

I spent a lot of time with Te Warihi [Hetaraka] teaching me how to do these things, as well as Hori Parata, they would take me on a lot of excursions. One in particular, I recall going out to the Hen and Chickens, they had found a kōiwi way up the top. Three hours later we still hadn’t made the top, ‘cause it was straight up from the water, straight up the rocks and just keep climbing. That was a fantastic experience for me. I just loved things, how they did the karakia, why they were done, we got called back down and we had a beautiful big kai with crayfish and kina and pāua. Underneath the trees, and we had a kōrero. It was all under Ngātiwai.

At Medlands [Aotea] someone was walking on the beach and found kōiwi. We buried those, the young girl’s bones, and then shortly after that, more came out of the ground. Hori and Te Warihi all came

down and blessed the ground and the area and we proceeded to take the bodies out. That first wahine was quite significant, the way she was sitting. The old people used to bury their dead in sand or wherever and dry the bones and put the bones in caves, and she was sitting in a foetal position in the sand dunes, probably with about eight or twelve inches of soil on the top of her. She had a greenstone pendant and she had a mako shark’s tooth, the front tooth. Having the front tooth meant she had a high status. She was only a young girl, we believe in her twenties, but obviously buried there because she was facing the ocean and behind there is a significant pā site, called Waiematā. She was at the beginning of the frontage so people coming up to fight at the pā site would have to go over, and she was there to protect. Evidently it wasn’t unusual that she was a woman buried at the front, ‘cause women played an important part in fighting. They probably fought just as hard, if not harder than men. They weren’t always just protected by the men. But they certainly, some of them, were very fierce warriors.

There was also bones, human remains that had been eaten, in fireplaces. Obviously the tribe had eaten them, there was kōrero about them, and there was a number of them. A number of little fire places, always made of rocks and so forth and the bones were still scattered in the fireplaces.

When the Crown tried to take over the whole of Great Barrier Island, just before the 1975 Māori Land March, there was a hui, that’s what started the land march, one of the things. We had a big

We lived in the water, we loved eating seafood, we would always gather seafood as kids. That was our job to come out and go fishing and catch whatever we could, and bring home and prepare. It was our job to prepare.

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hui in Auckland about it with the Māori Land Court, a huge hui with the whānau and that’s when Dad gave me shares so that I could speak on his behalf. Because the family would say, “you don’t have shares so you can’t speak”. The old ones, I’m talking about Uncle Walter Grant, and Uncle Toby and them. They were all still alive, all those old people, and Aunty Ellen and Aunty Ada, they had an important part to play and they said to Dad “you need to give that boy something”, ‘cause Dad would never talk, Uncle Tassie would never talk, Uncle Sid never had a problem. He would get up and say his piece. My uncles and my dad handed that to me.

We had that [the Great Barrier annexation] stopped and Witi McMath then approached me to come together as a Committee to make sure that that did go away, that did stop. Witi said to me, “you need to come on this Māori Land March”, 1975. By this stage I had encouraged Dad to come with us. Dad had an important part of that hui, it was the first time I had seen Dad get up and kōrero. He was part of the generation that was encouraged not to kōrero. He was whipped at school, they were never allowed to kōrero. That’s probably why he left school at the age of 12. Well, I understand he struggled with learning Pākehā, he used to kōrero Māori.

He didn’t speak Māori when I was growing up, when I was at Church College, he came to Hamilton and dragged me out of the Māori class that I was taking. And I had to, I had enrolled as taking Māori, and he said “you don’t need it, change the subject.” ‘Cause in those times we listened to our parents, whether they were right, wrong or indifferent, they were supposed to know best.

When I was on the Conservation Board I wasn’t a Māori representative, although I made it so. I made sure that I was there not for my own sake, for the public, for Ngātiwai and Ngāti Rehua especially. It wasn’t a position that you got as right, as an iwi or hapū, it is slowly changing, you were appointed by the Minister of Conservation. For five years I was the deputy Chair and for a year I was the Chairperson. The Conservation Board, it’s a funny situation, you really have no say. You are a go-between with the Conservation Conservator

and the Minister. You are a letter writer, but you do certainly have some input, and you can guide people, we got to the stage that we would have karakia before and at the end of meetings, that wasn’t happening. I insisted on that, insisted on the correct pronunciations of Māori place names and flora and fauna, and instead of putting Pākehā names with the Māori names in brackets, insisted on doing it the other way around, using the right information. It was very hard to do that, because the Government won’t just sit down and say “no you’ve got to do it.” So you’ve got to put pressure on. Hori Parata’s now on the Conservation Board in Whangārei, and he’s having the same problems. But he’s a little bit sturdier than I was I guess, and he stretches it out.

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I’m not too sure where I was born, I heard I was born in Mangamuka and my birth certificate says I

was born in Pokapu, September 12, 1940. Just after the war [started] or something.

My grandparents were Kaka Porowini on my Dad’s side and Rui Toeke Mangu Kaka was my father’s mother. My grandmother died giving birth to my father, Kanohi Kite Harry Ture Kaka. My mother’s side was Ngaronoa Kerepeti Wiremu Mahanga, he lived at Pātaua, his wife was Mereanewa Hineanewa Parata Mahanga, she was born in Manaia, Thames. And I lived with my parents for a while. When I was younger I lived in Pātaua with my grandfather Ngaronoa Kerepeti Wiremu Mahanga.

We lived in Pātaua South, where the old homestead is, just across the road was our shed.

Most of our time, when I was young with my grandfather, there I milked cows. We milked for the cream, milking and separating for cream. I was only young, I got caught in the milking machine, my legs got broken up. I spent five years in hospital before I could walk again.

Pātaua Marae – July 2013

I came back to Whangārei to live with my parents. Up at Porowini where the marae is now, used to be Kaka’s boarding house, that’s where everybody who came to Whangārei stayed when they came to visit the hospitals. I went back to Pātaua and stayed with my grandfather. I went to Pātaua School with all my cousins. Those days at school we would light a fire and take some milk from home and make our cocoa for lunchtime.

The hardest part was getting up early in the morning. My grandfather used to go to all the tangis and different meetings, and I stayed at home milking cows.

I didn’t want to get tomo’d to my cousin, that’s why I left, I wasn’t gonna let my grandfather pick me a wife.

My family came along, hard work, and I had to start feeding them, get work. Mind you, there was plenty of work in those days. You could finish one job and walk straight into another factory, there was plenty of work.

The mere Tatai te Rangi, that was part of a collection, the Mahanga collection from Tauranga, I think it’s a museum. Te Morehu Parata Munroe, my grandmother, was performing kapa haka with this mere they call Tatai te Rangi. When my grandmother had it, she was the keeper of it and the holder of it. Only a female could be the keeper of that mere. I don’t know how it got its name. I even have photos of it to this day. It’s a very rare pounamu, when you hold it to the light, when the light is here, you see light ripples on the stone. When you turn it the other way, you see the taha. I think it looks like when you see the photos of the sea, one side is very light and the other side is carved, it’s difficult to explain. This mere was a weapon that was used for kapa haka and all that. But the other mere was used in the wartime ‘cause it had blood stains on that one.

The school was on the north side, we had to cross it by boat, there was no bridge and sometimes we

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couldn’t get across the Pātaua River, ‘cause it gets rough, and our boat won’t cross it. The likes of Harry Mahanga, and his sister Mavis, they had to cross the Taiharuru River and come across and cross over the Pātaua River. Tata and them, Huia’s brothers, if they got to the pick-up late, they put their clothes in a plastic bag and swam across naked to get over to the other side, then put their school clothes on and walked up to school.

We had three old ladies that used to come up from Taiharuru by boat. They’d come up all the way from Taiharuru, they came up on the full tide and they'd go home on the full tide. They came up to Grandfather’s for a whole day, 'cause in those days all the families had māra, gardens. All the different people came from different areas, to come and help. They’d come and help us and we’d go to do the maize, down to Taiharuru into Waiwhata to Horahora and all planting and that, everybody plants and at harvesting time, everybody shared kai. One place some would give you corn and another one would give you other kai; all the kai was shared in those times. You never ran out of kūmara or rīwai.

Not too many had tractors, they weren’t rich enough to buy a tractor. In those days [it was] horses and ploughs. My grandfather had bullocks, our house, the old fullah’s house, the timber was drawn out of his bush at the back of Pātaua by bullocks. Later years I was around when he had big ploughs and horses.

My grandfather put up all the telephone poles from Pātaua to town and then if any of the people out there wanted to get on the phone, they had to pay him to get onto his line. It was one of those party line phones. Our telephone signal was three shorts and one long. Yeah, you get on the phone, or if you hear the phone ring you pick it up and listen to what’s going on over here, everybody could listen in. My grandfather used to, as soon as he would ring town, you could hear the phone being picked up he would start swearing in Māori to get off the line. “Otherwise I’ll cut your fullahs’ phone off”.

Maukoro maunga used to be a pā, my grandfather said it used to be used as a lookout point. There used to be raiding parties; other Māori would come along and they’d come in and raid all the kai, take

all their kai and that, and take the females. But there’s a high piece between Pātaua and Taiharuru Harbour right on the peninsula, which is Maukoro. On the Pātaua mountain they used to have fires, wood stacked on top of the hills. If they were seen in Taiharuru, Taiharuru would light their fires, it would pass on and everyone would know they were coming that way, to Waiwhata, Horahora and over to Ngunguru and from there to Whananāki and that’s how they used to let them know, they were waiting for them.

Pātaua – you’d get a big storm and you used to find a lot of skeletons on the beach side. Granddad said those were some of the raiding parties, ‘cause when they came in they used to watch from the

My grandfather put up all the telephone poles from Pātaua to town and then if any of the people out there wanted to get on the phone, they had to pay him to get onto his line. It was one of those party line phones.

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top of Maukoro, ‘cause the mist would come in, the tohungas would do their thing and the mist will come up. All where the school was, all the warriors to protect Pātaua were there, ‘cause as soon as they hit the sand bar well that’s when they were killed off. A lot of the bones they picked up, Pākehās were taking all the heads and selling them The heads weren’t there in amongst the bones. They were headless.

Might be the fantail comes around, if they come inside the house, you’ve gotta get them out the house very quickly. Between the fantail and hineruru, those were our warning signs. If I hear him cry, but there’s different cries to it, but I can’t explain that on camera what they are ... a bird you don’t talk about. But they come, and you know straight away something’s not right. For sickness they come, if someone is sick in your family, there’s just different pitches in their voice.

All the foundation underneath my grandfather’s whare is all pūriri, every one of them. If you go in that house at the back, you’ve got to step up cause it just looks like a big block, but the back was built in like a kitchen, the cooking area was built much later. Yeah, it was our whānau marae, well weddings, tangis, big meetings, the marae was the old fullahs’ papakāinga. Yeah, a lot of people when you had a tangi all came to there, and then they were taken by bullock to Taiharuru or by vehicle. Oh, they came from all over, from Ngunguru, they came from all over the place.

Everybody koha. Even when there was a wedding or something, everybody pooled in, a beef or pig, doesn’t matter, kai moana was coming left, right and centre. Everybody had everything, there was no shortage of kai. Even a tangi, we had quite a few beasts, others had sheep and others had poultry, everything was there. Never went to Pak’n Save, your Pak’n Save was there. Nowadays $100 won’t get you nowhere.

The kai moana in Pātaua was plentiful then. We would fish where the footbridge is now, you just chuck your line in early in the morning when you finished milking. Snapper on your line and you’ve got breakfast. There were all different type of pipis in different areas. Right where the school was, there were the red ones, you go up near the cemetery where the urupā is, there was the orange, yellow shells on them. You don’t see mussels at Pātaua now, all where the point is, all in the channel used to be all mussels. Because it’s all gone shallow, there’s so much sand there. That’s why all the pipis went. The sandbar just buried all the pipi beds, the whole of them. But before we used to have big pipis, must be about two or three inches. The sand there, where the pipis are now is black and if you dig it up – and I think it’s the pollution coming from those bachs the overflow goes back in the sea – if you dig it up its black and smelly. The pipis used to be in white sand. Effluent soaks back into the sea, or into the sand and when a big rain comes it

Pākehā, they come in when they’re fishing and they clean all their fish and dump all their stuff back in the sea and my grandfather used to tell them off for doing that, ‘cause it would bring the sharks into the river, make it unsafe for the kids.

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goes out into the rivers. There was a lot of fish and a lot of seaweed in there, but now there’s nothing. There’s no seaweed, the seaweed used to grow on rocks all along underneath, and that’s why the fish were plentiful there.

What my grandfather said was, he was called the kororā, that’s his kaitiaki the penguin. Today that’s why when asked we still call ourselves that. Our kaitiaki in Pātaua is the mako shark and the kororā, the old penguin. Right along the coast there, eh, for Ngātiwai the mako is a kaitiaki.

Pākehā, they come in when they’re fishing and they clean all their fish and dump all their stuff back in the sea and my grandfather used to tell them off for doing that, ‘cause it would bring the sharks into the river, make it unsafe for the kids. He used to call to that one [the mako] to keep him out at sea, don’t come into the harbour.

They are not too happy about getting kina when the wheke is around, I’m the one that calls it. That’s what my grandmother said, that was my kaitiaki. The wheke. Just around where the Taiharuru urupā is, just around the corner from it, when the tide comes in that place is just full of stingray. The water just goes black. We all say, don’t get in there, that’s the kaitiaki of Taiharuru. When you see one come underneath your dingy you just see black.

Paratene Te Manu when he went to England to meet the Queen, there are some of the stories from my grandfather. He saw unusual animals, and he came across a lion. He asked the officials of the Queen if there was any law, can anyone fight the lion and the official asked him “what’s your weapon?” and he

said his mere. He said to them, “if that lion jumps in the air, before his feet touches the ground I’ll have his guts spilt on the ground.” Apparently they did go to the Queen to ask if he could get permission to fight it, but the Queen wouldn’t let him, because she thought to herself if that’s his only weapon – but they didn’t know how powerful that mere was. But there’s a plough at Ngunguru Marae, he brought it back to cultivate Ngunguru which he did. He got it going and everybody wanted their places done with a plough and disk.

These are the old kaumātua corn, kanga wai they call it. This one here is the one they used, the husk is down and you put ‘em in a bag and you leave ‘em in water for about six months, and that’s rotten corn. Because these are the old kaumātua seeds, you plant this in one part of your garden, and you plant this in another part, cause if you plant them together, they’ll cross – some corn is being planted too close to it. Well these corn come from the old kaumātua and kuia. When you look at the grain of the corn, that’s a beautiful corn that. We don’t know how old it is, we’ll try and see if we can keep the seed going. Myself I got seeds for the ruruhau, what we call the Chinese cabbage. I keep my seeds, and if I pass them on, people should keep those seeds, ‘cause you’ll never get another plant like them. It’s like our fruit trees. You see some of the fig trees, they have big fruit on it. Those are the plants that belonged to our kaumātua a long time ago and they’ve looked after them, and to this day you’ll find some of those fig trees, at Taiharuru growing. Round Pereri’s home, they are very big, those are all the old kaumātua fig trees.

Te Manea with his grandfather, Ngaronoa

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Ōmaha Marae – August 2013

Bear in mind that in times past there were intimate marriages between Ngāti Manuhiri and

Ngātiwai. Now at Te Ārai, there are a lot of bones there and there was a battle fought there. Te Ārai is just to the south here and it’s a prominent rock point. The actual name is Te Ārai O Tāhūhū which is the altar of Tāhūhūnui and that’s one of our main Ngāti Manuhiri ancestors who we obtain the mana of the land through. Just slightly north of Pākiri there was another battle at a place call Pukeariki and there are a lot of bones buried there in the sand, and that was a battle with Ngāpuhi. Around about 1650, Ngāti Manuhiri defeated Ngāi Tāhūhū but then integrated so there was a lot of inter-marrying, and we can whakapapa back through into Ngāi Tāhūhū. Ngāti Manuhiri retain mana whenua over all this side (East Coast) although they did have kaitiakiship over the Hoteo area.

I refer to my Ngātiwai relations as whanaunga tapiri, those intimate lines. Our origins, here [are] of Ngāti Manuhiri, we obtain our mana firstly from Ngāi Tāhūhū and that is recognised in our whakairo in the wharenui. The waka we have up there is Māhūhū Ki Te Rangi and we have Manaia out the front of that which connects our Ngātiwai lines.

So that gives probably just a window or glimpse of the origins of Ngāti Manuhiri. As time went by

[there were] more marriages. At the time of the missionaries there was a battle there at Pākirikiri. (Ko te ingoa tuturu o Pākiri, ko Pākirikiri). My great-great-great-great-grandmother was taken in war and her name was Kupapa. Ngātiwai whakapapa shows that she married Turua and from that union begat Te Wera. They took her to Whangaruru. Te Wera returned here and she married Te Matiri of Ngāi Tāhūhū. Te Matiri and Te Wera begat Te Urunga and Te Kiri.

So that brings us down to the present time. As time progressed, of course there were those later marriages into Ngāti Manuhiri with Ngātiwai. My particular whānau is Te Whānau O Taiawa, we are particularly linked to Ngāpuhi. The other whānau, they have particular links because of their marriages. The Haddons had a particularly close relationship with Ngātiwai because the grandmother of the present generation was Tihoi Amos from Tūtūkākā, Paratene Te Manu Marae.

When I was a young boy I never knew I was Māori. One day, Dad was talking to Mum and he says Ngapeka Wi Taiawa and I asked “who’s that dad?” He says “that’s my mother.” So that’s how I found out.

My marae is Ōmaha. My family never knew their history, didn’t really know who the iwi or the

My marae is Ōmaha. My family never knew their history, didn’t really know who the iwi or the hapū were, and it wasn’t till I came back after the first marae was burnt down that I started to get interested.

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hapū were, and it wasn’t till I came back after the first marae was burnt down that I started to get interested. The marae was burnt down about 1986. You can understand the real hurt that the uncles and aunties felt when the first marae was burnt down through raruraru. The first marae wasn’t insured so we were starting off from scratch again. We started off with a committee raising funds for the new marae. I came onto the committee up here and eventually my wife and I came up here to live once I retired. The rebuilding started in 1990 when Aunty Gracey turned the soil. We then commenced the build and the new marae was up.

The style, the kōrero of the whakairo changed to reflect our origins. There you can see ki te taha matau te whakairo o Rahui, ki te taha maui ko to whakairo a Tenetahi Te Heru, kei runga te waka Māhūhūkiterangi, ki te taha matau kei runga te waka Moekakara, and that’s reflected on the pare that goes from Tāhūhūnui through to Te Kiri. So once our history started to evolve the perceptions changed. But that doesn’t diminish our strong links to Ngātiwai. Suddenly the realisation of Ngāti Manuhuri being the origin of those people, and then you get the influence of Ngātiwai now travelling around at the time of Paratene Te Manu.

When I came home, my uncles at Pākiri came up to me because they knew that I had been looking and writing the history. You know history is like a jigsaw

puzzle you get one small piece of it and it starts to build up slowly over time. There’ll always be pieces missing but sometimes you can make that jump you can assume things like just the name Pākirikiri. One of the old uncles said “you know how Pākirikiri got its name”. Everyone seemed to assume that it’s Pākiri the Pā of Kiri but it’s not because that would be called Te Pā o Kiri. He said “my old people told me that’s the fish in our river Pākirikiri”.

My great grandfather Wi Taiawa would travel to Aotea. He sailed to north Whangaruru and he drowned there, he fell overboard. He is buried at the marae ki Whangaruru, Tūparehuia. A strange event happened [when] I was looking for his tohu. I found his tohu, took a lot of photographs – got home and there was no film in the camera. So I went back with a film and I said a karakia because I didn’t say a karakia the first time. So we found our links there and I was fortunate enough to meet old Waipu Peters. He told me the story of the death of my great-grandfather. He said he was a boy of 12 years old and when they realised that his scow hadn’t arrived they went searching for him and his body was found at Helena [Bay].

I was never brought up as Māori. The last fluent speaker in my whānau was my grandmother. My grandmother being Ngā Peka Wi Taiawa. She was the second daughter of Wi Taiawa and Erana Peka.

Ōmaha Marae

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Erana Peka ka whānau mai ia kei te Hokianga. Nō Ngāti Hau. She married Wi Taiawa and her sister married into the Brown family at Pākiri.

We grew up in Waitemata. Occasionally we’d have different relatives popping in mainly to do with land sales, they wanted our signatures. So when I became old enough and a bit more mature I said to dad “you’re signing your land away, will you leave it for me and my brothers.” So he wouldn’t sign any more papers, so that was good.

My great-uncle Hāwi Tenetahi Te Heru fought in the Pioneer Māori Battalion in World War I. He was wounded in Gallipoli and wounded in France. And when I tried to obtain his medals they were sorry to inform me that because he had assaulted an NCO in Samoa – they took his medals off him. I went out and bought a Pommy set and had the name ground off and put his name on to them, so I have his medals. All my uncles they fought in World War II, as did my father. One uncle in the Māori Battalion he wrote a letter to my father saying don’t join the Māori Battalion tell your brothers, because too many brothers are dying and getting killed, and it’s driving them crazy.

All the uncles, my grandmother had 13 children, they’d always get together singing and all that stuff that our people do. Talking about the war – so that influence was very strong although none of them

spoke Māori. My uncle that served in the Māori Battalion spoke a little Māori. We were all brought up as Pākehā. With my particular family, the little girls, my granddaughters, can say their karakia. They’re in the kapa haka so they’re slowly being moved towards learning te reo Māori.

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Whakapaumahara Marae – July 2013

Na tupuna Eruena Maki, Ka puta Katene Maki,Tāna ko Hori Tauwhitu Maki, Tāna ko LeahTau Whetu Maki, Na Kayleen Mackey.

I have memories of my grandfather, who was Hori Tauwhitu Maki. On the flat at Pitokuku, there’s

a pōhutukawa tree down near the end, Hori and Te Hira, or Hiria (who were my grandmother and grandfather) had their house there, where they had seven of their children. The first children were born in Rawhiti. After a while they went back to Rawhiti because of Pū Katene’s first marriage to Hariata Heke Te Hai. His grandfather, Hare Titihau and Hori Tauwhitu are full brothers. Pū Katene married at Matapōuri and carried on the family there. When we went to Sir James Henare’s tangi, there was such a big crowd of us from Whananāki, Whangaruru, it was “here come Ngātiwai flowing in”.

My mother was known by Leilani, her stage name at the time of Tui Teka, in Aussie. They were all in the same entertainers club. When we left Australia, [it was there] that Entertainers Club had started the idea of the Marae in Sydney for the people who lived there that were dying and there was nowhere to take them to. That started in ‘73. They decided as a group that every time they did a function half of that

money would go into a trust to pay someone to take their loved one back home. That’s how come Mum got given that taiaha and that patu over there from Tui Teka, because of what she’d done for the Club.

We moved back here in ‘76 and I learnt to fence, to dig wells, dig drains, how to tighten the wire with a crow bar. I learnt how to hold the spade on the batten while Mum was hitting staples in. She used to soak that part in oil, to make it stronger, so the batten won’t split when she was pounding it. That’s why, at the wāhi tapu at the back, there’s a big drum full of oil to soak the tools in.

Aunty Iri Palmer was one of the first kuia we met when Mum and I came back to Whananāki. When we first came back we went over to Aunty Iri’s. She gave us our first chickens, four banty chickens and the rest. She just came rowing from the pipi bank to our place on her little boat. On the estuary with a bag of pipi and she was in her 70s.

When I came home my focus was at the marae, I started in the dining room. I worked my way up with our pride in presentation, I polished the floors in that marae, on my hands and knees, because of the pride of the beauty in the wood. I learnt how to dress the marae, I learnt how to do the photos of the marae, I learnt a lot about the marae, and how it can give back to you just by being there. We

My first step in the marae was 1980. When they had a big family Christmas there everyone was invited. Mum didn’t speak on the marae. It’s the way she was brought up. When I first heard Mum calling Aunty Flo’s body onto the marae I couldn’t believe it, she had such a beautiful voice.

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didn’t have much money but we brought veges up, that was our way of koha, veges we had in the garden.

I hadn’t even been at the marae. My first step in the marae was 1980. When they had a big family Christmas there everyone was invited. Mum didn’t speak on the marae. It’s the way she was brought up. When I first heard Mum calling Aunty Flo’s body onto the marae I couldn’t believe it, she had such a beautiful voice. It wasn’t long after that that my mum died. I think that she knew she was dying and something was wrong, maybe it was just something about tūpuna or the spirits made her bring it out, it was in her heart.

It was all in bush up the top of Parore, the hill behind us. You’ll see two little knolls, the bottom knoll was where they slept, the top one was where they looked out.

Out at the islands here, they call it Sugarloaf. I was told by Aunty Ani, Kūmara, the other little clump of islands, Peruperu, and in the island itself at dead, dead low tide you’ll see the waka, cutting and blocking the entrance. She told me the story of those islands, that when the people came in the waka and the waka was taking water, they had to unload to keep afloat enough to get to the island so they unloaded the kūmara and the peruperu, ‘cause they floated and they would’ve floated into the island, so they still would have got them.

When I’m gone, there’s a lot of things I’ve collected and kept, even newspaper clippings, because to me we should have a big archives place where they could be put. Maybe this knowledge should go up to the marae archive office to be kept there safely. If the family wish to go and see anything they can. I started the collection of photos, because I did

remember the ones that were in Aunty Ani’s house that got burnt. You know you never stop learning, there’s always something every day, something else you can learn about something of the past. Or someone will come and visit you and bring you a new story.

Whakapaumahara

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Tangi Amio ana Te Karoro i te awa. Ngā tohu o te ipo unukia noatia.

The seagull circles the channel crying. They are signs of those who have gone.

I was nurtured by my Ngāti Kororā kaumātua and kuia while growing up with my tūpuna at Ōwhetu.

We lived right in the ngāhere, in a nīkau whare. He used to moor his boat down at the bottom of the ridge, and we would climb up the side of the cliff to our whare. His boat was always on the go. I was a baby when I first went to live with my tupuna matua and whaea from birth. They took me straight from the Whangārei hospital on their horse and buggy. They left my mother and father standing on the hospital steps. My parents, they were living at Te Toiroa. I never ever went to Te Toiroa.

My grandmother was a very hard worker, she milked cows and ran the farm on her own. She had a small shop for selling small goods and also conducted raranga workshops. At Te Pāpuni my grandmother was a prolific gardener, she had gardens all over the place. She had a pātaka on the sand hills to store a lot of her things from the garden, and my grandfather would go out fishing and he used to bring home his fish and he had his smokehouse and smoke his fish. On his boat he would travel to work where the timber mills were located or he found work in the ngahere. He sought work to help finance their farm. There was no government assistance for Māori.

My grandmother died when I was three, and I remained in the care of my grandfather. Takangaroa is my grandmother’s name; I don’t know where that name comes from. My mother did not name me and she never ever talked about it. She did not believe in naming her children “tūpuna” names. My siblings have a problem acknowledging their tupuna whaea’s name.

My tupuna Hohepa Maihi Mahanga died when I was about ten. My tupuna and I, were not still

Pātaua Marae – July 2013

living at Te Pāpuni when my mother and father came back there, we were living at Ōwhetu. So I was never with other children, I was always with old people. By the time I came back to my parents, they already had four kids. I was thrown straight into looking after kids and became the housemaid, nursemaid and laundry maid. I had to do all the washing by hand, no washing machine. I had to chop wood, light my own copper because the rest of them were not allowed to help. I had to light up the copper to give them all a bath. My sister Marie was the farmer from when she was only a child. She was also the wood chopper, cowhand, cow herder and chief “gofer” all the while still a child. My sister Marie’s life began in the care of my grandmother’s brother and his family. I don’t know when she came back to my parents.

My mother had a hard time. I was born in 1939. She would’ve been 15 when she gave birth to me. My mother and I were more like friends, or confidantes. My parents were cousins. They were tomo’d and married at Te Ngaronoa’s. When her mother was sick, she nursed her mother by herself, and when her mother died she had to handle all that on her own. She also had to deal with a brother who was born after me but died. There was an epidemic that went around Pātaua.

My brother and a Mahanga tupuna both lay at Te Ngaronoa’s whare. I remember my tupuna building the caskets for my grandmother and my brother. Tangis were held at Ngaronoa’s. A lot of hui used to be held over there. Rāhui, tangihanga, hui-a-iwi. If anybody in the hapū had a problem, the people would get together and hui about it. He used to even have boxing bouts for people who might have been throwing their weight around, at his cowshed, even the women had to do it, my mother and Te Manea’s mother. Apparently Te Manea’s mother was very good. But I think compared to today; the way problems were handled back then was really good. Any problems that impacted on the whole hapū, they hui’d about it, not like today,

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in a Pākehā system you are on your own, and if you have a problem it’s confidential, you go home with it and it’s still stewing in your head.

I went to Pātaua School, I was about six or seven when I started school because I wouldn’t go, I used to watch my tupuna all the time and he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without me. Even when I was at school I would always look up the river to see if the boat was still there. He knew Pātaua River and Taiharuru, especially Pātaua. Scallops were all the way up the river in the channel. And that rock that they talk about with the seagulls, Ngaronoa used to eat the eggs of the kororā.

Māori and Pākehā worked well together in those days. They were my tupuna’s close friends. They would go out fishing together and make their paikaka [homebrew] together. Pātaua Māori and Pākehā kaumātua would compete as to who could build the fastest boat, or the neatest looking boat. No motorised boats, only my tupuna and his was diesel. Very few motorised boats in those days. Most of them were row boats. Now they have more motorised activity on the river, what will happen with our kai. Our tangata whenua have no jobs and they depend on those rivers for their livelihood.

School was good but very, very British. Boys had to hoist the flag in the morning. We had to stand under it and sing God Save the King. Then we would have an inspection for fingernails, hankies and kutu. In those days the schools, we were issued with boxes of apples. And you could always smell those apples, ae. Children of farmers used to take milk to school and make cocoa. But at the end of

the week it was our job to tidy the classroom, scrub the floor and the boys’ job was to empty the toilet drums in a hole down the back somewhere.

My parents struggled. Sometimes it was hard and I used to go and look for puha or watercress, or dandelion – tame raiona, for kai. Even though my father would always kill meat and they always had a garden. But with a lot of kids, kai would quickly be depleted. We used to keep our kūmara down in the sandhills in a rua. It was terrible when we had to go down and get the kūmara, and those great big bugs, those kūmara caterpillars would appear, big and white, they look like huhu bugs. You had to stick your hand in and get some kūmara out. We didn’t have my grandmother’s pātaka, that was gone. Once my father started farming, we didn’t have too many fences, so the cows ate all my grandmother’s garden, and she used to have all varieties of fig trees and fruit trees. Hydrangeas and spring flowers that went all the way down to the beach.

The boys got their horses from over the back of the island as there were always a lot of wild horses there. Now that area is dotted with whānau homes. We had annual sports days between Pātaua and Whareora schools, the Mahanga boys from Taiharuru, good at sports and especially athletic. There was always fierce competition between the Mahangas of Pātaua School and the Coopers of Brynavon and Whareora. And then after that when the school left there they started having general sports and community picnics, they were good too, they’d have tug-o-wars and lolly scrambles for the kids.

Kororā

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The tapu at the front of Te Pāpuni was lifted by Te Ngaronoa. My tūpuna wanted the area made safe for his mokopuna. To other members of the whānau it’s still tapu but all their mokopuna go there for a swim. Whenever the moana came in, it would wash out bones and my father would pick them up and put them back into those holes up the cliff. Half of Pātaua maunga and all along the beach used to belong to my mother until it was deviously stolen by Pākehā bureaucratic swindlers.

I went to the Whangārei Girls High School. We had to walk across the land, get a boat and row across the river and hurry up, because you had to wear full uniform – we were flat out putting our socks or stockings on. Ours was a passenger bus and my parents had to pay passenger rates and then be reimbursed by the Education Department, but they had to apply for it. There was no bridge. The bus was over the other side of the river. On kaumātua pension day or the races it was lucky if we got to school by nine o’clock because when our bus driver picked up all the kaumātua, he was so nice and courteous, really good to all the kaumātua and kuia so he’d wait for them to go all the way up the bus and hongi and kiss each other, he’d wait for them. The same would happen at the next stop. So we were well known for not getting to school on time.

My role models are the kaumātua who nurtured me. They engendered in us a sense that it was going to be our job to look after our old people when we grew up. Such was the tikanga of my old people. As children we were not dictated to. I have much respect for the elderly Māori people.

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Kāwa Marae – July 2013

Kia ora. My name is Eileen Ngawaka, my mother and father were Verity and Iris Tepaia Ngawaka,

my grandparents on my dad’s side were Nupere and Mihi and my grandparents on my mother’s side were Tame and Sarah.

I’ve lived on Aotea coming up 78 years. I’m 83 years old in December [2013]. My dad was working, he’d work down on the farm, he would work down here for Aunty Ren and them’s father. But before that he worked in the bush. While he was there, my brother and sister died when we were living at Whangaparapara, that was around the same time that families were dying off from typhoid. There was no marae, they had all the hui at Pū Papa’s. Most of them were at Pū Nupere’s down in Kāwa. Like out at Te Kawau, there were some out there that were sick, but the majority were in Kāwa, they were all together there. And it was after that, that we moved off the island. My mother passed away when I just turned 10, so I was with my grandmother. When I was about 12, my dad decided that he was coming back here to the Barrier, so he rung for me to come back and this is where I’ve been ever since.

The only kaumātua that I remember from my younger days are my grandparents, and my dad’s sisters – Aunty Suey, Aunty Ellen, Aunty Tilla. Oh, and then at Ōruawharo Pū Hannah, and Pū Hepara, and their daughter Aunty Ani. They were the Grants. Uncle Eru and Aunty Winnie Marsh, they were also

living at Ōruawharo. We were living at Te Kawau. We had gardens, fruit trees, animals, [and] they had cows, that’s where some of the meat came from. Actually they used to milk, my grandparents used to milk cows and send the cream off – that was a bit of income.

My grandfather crayfished, he had crayfish pots out. He was Pū Tame, he used to row out and lift his cray pots, and then when I came back from up north with Dad, Dad used to work here, help out on farms, then him and Uncle Reg used to cut scow-loads of firewood and send that off. That sort of gave some income. They had big gardens at Kāwa, Mōtairehe and Te Kawa, and they used to have gardens at Te Roto. They mainly grew kūmara and potato, and pumpkin.

They used to go out after muttonbirds between Christmas and New Year. November was too early, December [and] not too far into January. They used to go out, we had no freezers in those days so what they used to do they would huahua them in the kerosene tins. They did it all out there on the beach and brought it home. Sometimes they would bring home just a few fresh ones. Huahua is preserving them by cooking them in their own fat. They used to bring home the part where there was a lot of bones, then they used to salt them as well.

They used to row out to the islands. It took two or three hours to row out and then they’d stay out there, stay there for about a week or more. Lots of families went. Sometimes they run them out on a boat and then come back and go back later. The tāiko [black petrel] is a bigger bird. I don’t think they used to get those out there. A lot of them are here on the island, up Hobson way.

They only fished for a feed. I don’t remember Pū Papa fishing, like Grandpa Tana was the only one that used to sell crayfish. I don’t remember the boat that used to come in as a child, but after I was married and we were living at Fitzroy, and even at Kāwa, the boat used to come once a week. I can’t

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remember the name, it was a scow. It used to bring the goods in and take people off.

I remember having church at Ōruawharo and sometimes it was too rough we would have church at Te Kawau. I remember meetings being held at Ōruawharo too. At Pū Nehanga’s place, the old home at Ōruawharo. He was a Grant, Pū Hepara was Pū Namu’s sister.

I went to school at Kāwa. I think it was the first school on the Barrier, the first native school. When I first started school we were living out at Te Kawau. It was so far to walk, but then there was a boat, we got a boat through the Education Board, a rowing boat and we used to row from Te Kawau to Tūkare and walk from there to school. The landing was looking straight across to Ōruawharo. There’s a landing there, you know when you go out to Tūkare, and there’s that dip by the point there, well on the other side of that dip is the landing. When it was rough, if it was too rough to come by boat, well it didn’t come. Uncle Charlie and them all walked around from Te Kawau to Ōruawharo and to Mōtairehe and over around to Kāwa. I think it must’ve been about 30 in the class, they were from Te Kawau, from Ōruawharo from Mōtairehe, from Kāwa itself. The teacher that was teaching when I started was Mr Dobbs. We only spoke English at school, no Māori.

They used to row out to the islands. It took two or three hours to row out and then they’d stay out there, stay there for about a week or more. Lots of families went. Sometimes they run them out on a boat and then come back and go back later.

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Kāwa Marae – July 2013

I was born on July 20, 1925. That makes me 88 years old. My mother was an Eglington, she came out

from England, she was married when she was 18.

When we were at home, we lived a good life really. We were living at a place call Te Kawau. They didn’t have a marae on the island, the only marae we had was the homestead. The Nuperes, the old homestead down there. Everything was done there, mind you it was a big house. Aunty Kiri’s big house. We were milking around about 20 cows, all by hand. We sort of kept to our own on our side, you know, the only time we came over was when we came to school and when we came to Sunday School. The old whare down there used to be a chapel too. That whare is of the old people, Uncle Nupere, Dad’s brother.

We had big gardens at Te Kawau, like the gardens down here, big ones and we also had one on the ridge too, going over to Poroto. We had horses. We had a plough. That used to be our orchard up there; we had two orchards. We’d grow kūmara up there, and Dad had a wire running down to the creek, where you can pull it up in the kerosene tins, to water the kūmara. It was hard those days, but we weren’t too bad, we mostly lived off the land. The only thing we were getting from town, [were] the odd groceries, like flour and that. As for the poultry we had about 300 fowls, or 200 fowls

and 100 ducks. You know Mum loved her poultry, she loved duck and of course six cats, the cats had all the food they wanted too.

We used to come to school. It used to be in the old tin shed down there in Kāwa. When they built the school here, the old tin shed, they shifted it down below near the pear tree. The first school teacher we had was Hunter. The one before was Dobbs, well he was the cruel one really. He didn’t believe in straps, he believed in supplejack. I’ll tell you how good that was (laughter).

We used to row to school. The Education Board used to pay us for each child, mind you there was a lot of children, sixpence each per day. That’s good money to us. That paid for our boat. They got the new boat, a clinker, brand new, well our school money paid for that. If it was rough we had to walk from Te Kawau to Mōtairehe right over here to Kāwa to the school, but the Education Board won’t pay us because the agreement was made out by boat. The dances over home, well Uncle used to take them over on his launch called the Old Board (laughter). The Board. Gosh, they used to dance ‘til 8 o’clock, ‘til all hours of the morning.

Dad built another clinker boat, a 12 foot 6 inch clinker. So we had two. Dad used to keep one of us back to help, to rivet the boat. I said “Oh Dad,”

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The fishing in those days was very good, plenty of fish, not like today. It’s sad that, fish being very scarce these days. You threw a line off the beach you got snapper. You throw a line off the beach and there’s nothing there today. I would have to put it down to overfishing, because ever since those big trawlers came things started to get harder then.

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and he said “Well look son, we’ve gotta get this boat done. I’m not satisfied with one.”

Rowing on a row boat for crayfish. You know what, when he said “I want two boats” that’s what he meant, that’s why he built that boat for himself: for crayfishing. They pulled them all up by hand. He made up about five or six pots. He didn’t use muka, he used rope. Of course there was plenty of crayfish. We got sick of crayfish. We used to throw a lot of them back over the side, you can’t keep it, not like today, no modern refrigerator. We’d just let them go, they’re there when we want it, but today now – sometimes there’s nothing and sometimes it’s one or two there.

The fishing in those days was very good, plenty of fish, not like today. It’s sad that, fish being very scarce these days. You threw a line off the beach you got snapper. You throw a line off the beach and there’s nothing there today. I would have to put it down to overfishing, because ever since those big trawlers came things started to get harder then. And half of them never stuck to the rules which they’re supposed to stick to. Some of them are still doing it to death. They’re still getting away with it. It’s mostly done at night. It’s very hard for the local families that want to go out and get fish and it’s not there.

Dad used the launch The Moana. They stripped that launch down when they bought it and they took it to Kaikoura. You know down where the flax is, where the old homestead used to be. Uncle Jim and Dad rebuilt the whole thing again. A lot of the timbers were rotten. They had all new ribs and that.

I left school when I was 14. One of the first jobs I went to was working at Smith and Smith warehouse. I was getting 14 shillings a week. To me, that was good money in those days. Then [I was] working stowing cargo from off the ships that came from overseas. Then at Westfield [freezing works] I was there for about 12 months. After that I was driving for Winstones, tip trucks. I didn’t like sticking to the same job all the time, because those days, I tell you what, there was plenty of work.

I went to the Marine Department. We were doing the outcoast from Auckland to Tauranga on what

they called the trawler patrols. We inspected them, all their nets and things. It was exciting. I was in the Officer’s Mess at Whenuapai for a while, dishing out food. I was right amongst the food (laughter). It was a good job but it was the roster I didn’t like. They can call you out about one or two o’clock in the morning. Some of the planes come in very late. Then I took Hector’s job after he left and I was there for 16 years, right up until I retired.

When I was younger I went to Whananāki with Liza and Tanu, they were share milking for a fella named Ron Hailes. So I went there for a while to help milk the cows. I was staying with my sister Bessie and Sam. That’s how I knew Whananāki very well. Winston Peters he was going to school then. I bumped into him a few times, I wonder if he remembers me. Ngunguru, Matapōuri, Whananāki, I’ve been all the way round, right up to Te Kawau, Takahiwai. Well I bump into the Ratas, you see, Herbie Rata ‘cause I stayed at sister’s for a while. I went up there to her daughter’s wedding.

My grandmother is buried over there. When Dad died, well Mum couldn’t cope with it any longer. Then I came back on and off until I got myself organised. Now Mum and Dad are buried at the old grave down here, that’s the old grave, at Onepoto. There is a name on that point too.

Kāwa Marae

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Tūparehuia Marae – August 2013

Kia ora tamariki ma, I am privileged to be able to speak to you tonight about the history of

the area. Actually this marae wasn’t a marae. I remember being up here, it was built as a soldiers memorial hall, and I remember my Uncle Billy Peters [saying] when they were going to change it to a marae “over my dead body” so they waited till he died and then they changed it to a marae.

So basically I was born here, I’m a true blue Whangaruru-ite. You can see one side of my head here is flat. When I was born they couldn’t hang onto me and I fell on the floor, my head is lop-sided they used to call me Panikeke. First I’d like to tell you about the migration that happened in 1897 to 1947. They [Ngātiwai] used to leave the Barrier in early September and they were to row their wakas up and stop in Matapōuri, and Whananāki and Ōmaha, Pākiri, Takahiwai and all that and meet up with all their relations. They all joined together and they came to Bland Bay or Tūparehuia (its proper name). They used to stay there or they used to grow gardens all along the coast on the way up and then they used to arrive in Tūparehuia in late September and they stayed there till early December, and [then] they left to go back. The migration stopped in 1947 so I said to the kaumātua “why did the migration stop in 1947” and they said “all we can

put it down to boy is that’s when the first two and a half [horsepower] seagull motor came out and when they could come up here under motorised power they went fishing instead”, that’s when the migration from the Barrier stopped.

Bland Bay’s original name was Tūparehuia and how it got its name was that the place was overrun with huia birds in the old days. When the huia bird got angry the plume on its head used to stand up and the plume in Māori is ‘te pare’. Hence when the huia bird became angry ka tū te pare o te huia bird or tū pare huia in short. Then Captain Cook circumnavigated New Zealand into the map of the world – when he got back to England, he named it Blind Bay because he missed it when he went past.

When they had the track down from the junction there, it was no road just a track down to Bland Bay and they had the sign up there ‘Blind Bay’. When the kaumatua saw it, he pulled it down and threw it away. Then it was Bland Bay because there was nothing there, there was only one village down by the old school. The first school in Whangaruru was in Tūparehuia – Whangaruru Native School in 1892 (my great-grandfather – Mohi Kaingaroa – his father, Kaingaroa, was the older half-brother of Hongi Hika) and then they opened the Ngaiotonga

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Bland Bay’s original name was Tūparehuia and how it got its name was that the place was overrun with huia birds in the old days. When the huia bird got angry the plume on its head used to stand up and the plume in Māori is ‘te pare’.

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Māori or Native school just along here in 1939 and then the Punaruku school after that.

So the history about this place is that there’s a pā down there. I don’t know whether you saw it when you went down or not, there in Tūparehuia. The pā's name is Whakatūria which means to ‘stand there’. In the old days, my tupuna Patupohanoa was the last chief to live on the pā and in his battles with Ngāpuhi he saw a pretty young girl who was only about 17-and-a-half or 18, and these warriors were going up to Hokianga for a feast. They were taking sea food so he made a special dish and he said to them “if you see this young girl, this dish is for her”. So anyhow, they met up with her and they gave her the dish and she ate it and said “who made this”, he said “oh”, they said “we’ll show you after”.

He didn’t know that she was coming all the way to Whangaruru. Anyhow she came down to Tūparehuia and Patupahonoa married her. He was 66 and she was 17-and-a-half/18 and all the young fullahs in the area were envious of his young, pretty young wife. He was a fisherman and when he went fishing he used to tie her to a karaka tree, used to be on the second run there was a karaka tree and he used to tie her there so he could see her from his fishing ground and keep an eye on the young people and hence the name of that pā Tupae-a-Whakatūria which means ‘to stand there’. She had to stand there all day tied to the tree till he come back from fishing. So that’s the history of that pā and how it got its name.

The other pā which is the main pā out Whangaruru is Whakaruru where Rahiri’s second wife Whakaruru,

was born, she was born in Bland Bay in Tūparehuia on Whakaruru pā, our main chief in Ngātiwai was Manaia.

I started the Ngātiwai Trust Board in the early 70’s, I came back because when it shut down it was called the Whangaruru/Ngātiwai Trust Board because my old man and them used to ride the horse to Whakapara and they used to hold the meeting at Uncle Lou Davis' place in Whakapara. Then, when Paraire Pirihi (the old Paraire) and all those other old people died off there were just the people riding on their horses to Whakapara from Whangaruru that were going there so they stopped in and started having meetings here in Whangaruru and [it] became the Whangaruru/Ngātiwai Trust Board. I got my old man’s papers and I went around to all the areas and told them about joining.

We started up and now it’s one of the biggest organisations for Māoridom. But I didn’t take the chairman seat because I wanted to keep an eye on things, so Pat Hoskins was the first chairman when I started it up.

Many of the people in Ngaiotonga were the Takas, the Penes, the Pitas and the Martins, and all that lot. But they say to me “why don’t you talk Māori” I say “nah-nah I’m Portuguese” so I gave them my whakapapa. My fourth great-grandfather was the King of Portugal, Emperor of Brazil. His name was John the 6th King of Portugal, Emperor of Brazil and his son was Joseph King Demora. He left Portugal and he wouldn’t take on the Kingship, and when my great-great-grandfather was born, Peter Antonio Candera Demora, he was told to go back and tell his uncle to come back and take over the throne

Tūparehuia

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and my tupuna said “No Dad, you left because you wanted to be a sea farer,” he said, “so do I.” So he came to Whangaruru in 1838.

He arrived at Whangamumu, he came over with the American whaling station and stayed at Ngaiotonga, his name was Peter Antonio Candera Demora who married Ruiha Te Kauwhata and they changed his name, that’s where all the Pitas, they changed Peter, P-e-t-e-r they changed it to Māori P-i-t-a then that’s where Waipu Pita and them all the Pitas came off Peter Antonio Candera Demora. He stayed in Whangamumu for quite a while in the whaling station there, when it got rough they moved it to Bland Bay.

Actually [talking] about rugby, I played against Waka Nathan and Mackie Herewini back in the old days. Waka Nathan was playing for Ōtāhūhū College. It was the top college in Auckland in 1954 I think. And he bowled over about six people, old Waka bowled over about six of my mates. He started heading straight for the line and came for me and I broke his leg. He damaged his knee [and he] had to go off and we beat them 17–6. This was back in 1954.

I had the only dive license from Taurikura Bay to Cape Brett and if I came home with under 40 crayfish it would be a bad day. But I never used to sell them even though I had a license; I used to drop them off to all my relations along the road. It was 40 crayfish a day, most I got was 94 in one catch! You couldn’t even use scuba gear, not in those [days] with a licence you couldn’t use scuba gear you had to free dive, we had gloves, not those leather ones though sometimes just a sock, just

a sock and you put a hole in it and you put your thumb out.

It was different in those days, I could sell my catch but I didn’t, by the time I got home I had hardly any left. I'd given them away to all my relations. My boat was just about sinking when I had 94 crayfish. Years ago, my son and them wanted me to take them out to my grounds. I said, “no you fullahs might rob it.” I used to take a thing with dishwashing liquid in it down with me to places where you can’t get a crayfish out. I used to stick it down in the hole and squeeze it, and they would all come shooting up. I just grabbed them and put them in my bag ‘cause it upset their breathing. Oh, I shouldn’t have told you fullahs that.

Anyhow, I’m 74 now. Oh the other thing, I had to give up diving because my stomach had had it. There was no snorkel, no scuba gear in those days and because of the salt water getting in my stomach it took all the lining off it. I had to drink half cream and half milk for about six months. Had to hurry up and they said to me I have to get the lining back in my stomach otherwise cancer.

That’s basically it, never had cell phones in those days. We had a party line for Whangaruru, everybody had a number ours was dit-dit-daa the Thompsons was dit-dit-dit the Daniels was daa-daa and when the phone rang everyone used to pick it up. Anyhow, that’s basically it.

Old homestead (next to school)

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I was born 23 December 1910 at Helena Bay and there is an oak tree growing there, planted the

day I was born and it is one day younger than me.

My Aunty Makere and her family were living at Parapara Whangaruru North, on her land there, and her daughter Hine Hokio died when she was 11 years old. Te Rapu, her younger sister, fretted so much about her sister, when she saw me she wanted me for her sister. So she asked my father and my dad said yes, so I’m being given away.

I was 10 years old when I came to Ngunguru. The day before Christmas, we left our house at 7am on Mr Soloman McGee’s launch loaded with vegetables of every sort – sea eats, jams, preserves, cakes, pork, meat, mutton – you name them we had them. Fresh, corned, smoked, bottled, pickled, bagged, dried. The rest of the older boys rode [horses] bringing more eats [including a] bucket of home-made butter.

We arrived after five hours and later in the afternoon the boys arrived. The place was full of people who brought their food also. Whananāki, Great Barrier, Pākiri, Ōmaha, closer to Ngunguru, Pīpīwai, Waikare, Three Mile Bush, Glenbervie, Parua Bay, Tōwai, Kaipara.

Mōkau Marae, Ngunguru Marae – 2009

Country races Christmas day – that was the big attraction. I was dumbfounded having seen so many things I’d never seen before. The next day after arriving there were horse races, the day after there were sports, New Year more sports and we never ran out of food. Dances at night after every do, hangis at homes of locals and home after all those events, whoo-ee, and after all that excitement school in February 1921 – the teacher was Mr Fred Blackwell.

I helped with milking, plus where any help was needed. Reading, writing concentrated on learning to speak English as I couldn’t speak English at all. I had rheumatic fever, a recurrence of it, and when the doctor visited home my right eye was blind. I had anaemia hence school was not part of my life much.

I made free time learning time. I loved reading and I used to ask my cousins what a word meant – it helped me a lot with my English and Māori languages, writing as well as my spelling.

I made time to take a course in ‘cream testing’ the local farmers’ herds – Jerseys, Black Poll, Shorthorn Cross, Holstein. I kept confidential reports and in

I made free time learning time. I loved reading and I used to ask my cousins what a word meant – it helped me a lot with my English and Māori languages, writing as well as my spelling.

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that way the farmer got rid of poor individual cows whose cream yield was poor, low.

I rode a horse to Whangārei. I learnt about sanitation and hygiene, the Red Cross, first aid, and Civil Defence with Helen Knapp – I graduated from all courses. We had barn dances at the Fergusons at Tūtūkākā some Saturday nights. Haymaking summer. This helped local farmers, ourselves and extended family. Pātaua Country races were a repeat of Ngunguru races, a great day for everyone. Talk about race day hats, they had those too.

Mr Brake had ostriches on his farm. His servant got very busy a week before race day pulling feathers off ostriches – believe it or not – for the large sum of one shilling a feather. Of course the ladies were present to view and buy and for another shilling he dyed each feather, to match their frock and shoes, boots, etc.

I was taught by my cousin Brown Wellington how to dance and never refused when I was asked to partner someone young or old.

One day at school the teacher had a meeting at his home just at the back of the school so Hokio was left in charge, being the oldest pupil, and we had extra play time. He went home for lunch, a ten minute walk through paddocks and back and after the others (who had brought their lunches) had eaten, Hokio and the teacher were still away. The other pupils asked us to teach them how to do the square dances – Lancers and Old Alberts. There was

a caller – everyone sang, we moved to the side of the school at the back, poured water on the ground and we were off. We were really enjoying ourselves, grass stripped, mud sloshing everywhere, when the teacher and Hokio both appeared, well guess what happened. We older ones got the cane, one stroke on the hand for stripping the lawn, the younger ones scolded. We had to wash our feet in the tide, then the older ones wrote out “I must not repeat said event again”, two hundred times for Standard 3 and 5, 100 times for Standard 1 and 2, and Primers 1 to 4.

On Friday at low tide, the lower standards swam across the river for their Life Saving medals. One hundred yards at high tide for the older pupils, plus the teacher, back and forth. Kiripaka School challenged Ngunguru for a game of cricket. Our teacher had taught the boys how to bowl and our two experts were Peter and Jack Mahanga. Mr Howzler was the teacher for Kiripaka and some of Glenbervie’s children were included in their school. Tūtūkākā and Matapōuri were included in the Ngunguru School.

Kiripaka travelled on a barge brought by launch, usually on a Friday and what a great day. Families came and after the game the ladies turned on lots of good country eats, lashings of cream, etc. Locals put up a hangi of spring meat, pork, plum pudding and vegetables, topped with pipis. During the game there were lolly scrambles for the children. We usually won, so we went to Kiripaka. There was a post office, butcher, baker, general shop, taxis, coal mining town, and a bus to Whangārei.

Locals were involved in rugby, cricket, hockey, basketball, boxing, wrestling, local boys against girls

Ngunguru netball team photograph 1939

Ngunguru School Shield – Aunty Gertie won the Annual Examinations' Award in 1925

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and other teams. Portland, Convent, Whangārei, Hikurangi. They used to say our girls were rough but they played against the girls and they were really good. Our girls always won whatever game they were in and so did the boys.

In 1937, our elders of the Māori race were concerned for our youth, forsaking their culture adopting Pākehā culture, dropping out from school. So the oldies met from North and South islands to talk about what to do about it. War was looming and getting uncomfortably closer.

The elders included John McKenzie, Sir James Henare, Sir Here Hadfield and Bert Wellington. Recruiting Officer for soldiers was Paratene Te

Manu. The decision was to send someone older to go into professions – to train – but who? And train in what? Should it be a girl or boy? Should it be navy, air force, army, doctor, anthropologist etc, nursing.

At 29 years old, Raukura Piripi was chosen to attend a fund for Māori girls. I refused because I didn’t think I could do it and I didn’t like the smell of hospitals and I felt like vomiting when I saw blood. After a lot of talking my great grandparents, uncles, aunts, mum and dad finally got me to try it out for one year.

So April 1, 1938 I am in Cargen Hotel Auckland starting my training as a Nurse – three months of lecture study – learning all about 'Jimmy' – human bones strung together with steel wires. Every Tuesday afternoon we had gymnastics, keeping the class room and our own room clean, clean clothes, uniform, cap, cape tidy at all times, stockings, underclothing clean. Our uniform cap had to be sent to the laundry twice a week. We learnt to eat fairly fast, we only had 30 minutes the first time then breaks were down to 10 minutes or less, that’s it. After four months I walked to Park Avenue, Grafton. It took 15 minutes to go through under the hospital, then to the hospital proper, be there for one whole day and back to the hotel, tired out but happy.

But when I sat third year they failed a lot of us because we were in the war and the hospital was in financial difficulties and the rich of Auckland paid to keep it functioning. So it’s Thames for some of us and I graduated 12 months later.

I went to Rotorua and did my maternity training – I joined the Health Department as a District nurse. I did Plunket training in Truby King Harris Hospital in Dunedin, then joined the Health Department as District Nurse. I signed as exchange nurse to go to Alcatraz Life Prison, John Hopkins Hospital in USA, but never got there. Raymond Robinson, a soldier, I used to write to once every blue moon, he turned up and made my life tough, we got married.

Old Ngunguru School Illustration by Dorothy Waetford

Gertie with her brother Jimmy Piripi

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Ngaiotonga Marae – July 2013

The old Tūparehuia Marae was a hall but it was used as a marae at that time. This is where we

used to have dances, weddings, whatever. There were a lot of people here and on the other side of the cemetery, there were places all along. It’s a very tapu place you know, they used to have taniwhas in those days. A lot of wāhi tapus over here, even where these houses are. We weren’t allowed here, but maybe they’ve been blessed and taken away. We’d get a hiding if we go up there and we weren’t allowed to swim around there. Have you heard of a taniwha? It’s a broken log, but it’s a naughty one.

The island [Motukauri] is where the Pākehā stayed;

they had a little shop there and they had the launch. Quite a lot of the Whangaruru children, my father and them, would come to the wharf at Tukituki, to catch the launch, to come to school over here. This was the only school.

The main maunga of this place, I was told by my Aunties and by the old people of those days, is Whakatūria. They reckon from that maunga when the chief looks out to sea and sees ngā waka, and he knows, well they are coming for war. They told me that when these wakas came they landed down the bottom there and they gathered together, they huihui. I suppose talking about how they were going to attack probably. And of course at that time the chief was also preparing his people up there, his warriors. The ones that came in the wakas didn’t get what they wanted, because [we] were well prepared. When we were kids, we were very nosy and wanted to know everything. We asked them where the wakas come from and they said, “nō tawhiti”. And tawhiti means a long, long way, could be from anywhere.

This was Tūparehuia kanikani. We used to come from Ōakura, Ōhawini or Mōkau. You come by boat, there’s no other way, no road. Otherwise, [you] make the horse swim across when the tide is low. Point to point, but we wait ‘til the tide's down. If they’re gonna have a kanikani over here, well you get across alright. Uncle John and Aunty Roma, they were round the corner, so we go there and get dressed, and we used to make sure our clothes won’t get wet. We make sure we wrap ‘em up nicely and all that. When we’re coming across we held onto our horse, with our hand up high holding our clothes up, letting the horse drag us across. We were pretty good at that. Wasn’t only our family, it was a lot of us from Punaruku, you know, we all used to get together in those days and talk about it. Then we’d go over the hill on the horse and get to Uncle Haehae's. There’s a lot of oysters around here. We’d either go by horse or we’d go by boat and row across to there. They’re good memories.

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We all knew how to row a boat ... All good swimmers, good rowers, horse riders. Because that’s the only way we can get anywhere, by horse. There was no such thing as a car, you know. No such thing.

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When you come across on a boat it wasn’t only two, we had a boat full of us, us youngies on a boat. We all knew how to row a boat. We were pretty good rowers. All good swimmers, good rowers, horse riders. Because that’s the only way we can get anywhere, by horse. There was no such thing as a car, you know. No such thing. If you want to move anything you gotta use a horse and a sledge, or walk.

All the boats used to come from overseas, they used to pull in over here, there used to be a wharf over here. They reckon the tide all went out, a big wave came and the water all went back down and the wharf went with it.

When the tide is high you can go up the creek. We used to go up there to go to Whangaroa or Tūtaematai. We used to go there to get flax, me and Sarah. We used to go with Aunty Kahu and Aunty Hoki ‘cause we had to row the boat and carry the flax when they cut it. We were only young, we were still going to school. We gotta carry it to the marae, and they’d all get together and that’s where they’d work. But we had to get a lot of flax, because they worked as group.

Before they make a kete or anything, they prepare everything. They get everything ready then they all weave, even for making whāriki, they prepare the things then they all weave, the whole lot of them, they all do the hard work, then they never take long. All the whārikis are ready, all the ketes. They used to make a kete whakapaipai, the one with designs on them. Ngā kete karaka. At the time it was only purple and white, ‘cause they can make the flax white you know. What they do, they put the Taniwha soap in hot water for a day, and then they get the flax and they put one side in, just for a few minutes, out, into the cold water, turn it over, put it in, that’s what I saw them doing. And I still do that, ‘cause I remember what they did, if I want a kete that’s white. I learnt off Aunty and them, I wouldn’t have known nothing if it wasn’t for Aunty Hoki and Aunty Kahu.

I grew up there at Ramaroa and then below our place the creek is down the bottom. Then see on that flat; that used to be all in garden in my day, that’s Waikaramihi. No-one lives there now. That marae, everything was Waikaramihi – the marae,

the urupā, the gardens was Waikaramihi. We used to have gardens down there – kūmara, you name it. Even sugar cane. The sugar cane was for us kids. We used to go and get it and twist it and mote mote it. Yeah, it’s all Waikaramihi. But where the homestead was, was Ramaroa.

I been wanting to turn our place into a holiday place, but I can’t do it, gettin’ too old. Because after all’s said and done, it belongs to us. It was left to our dad by our grandfather and it was left to us by our dad. He used to help all his daughters, when they had babies, and my mother, Aunty Biddy, all his daughters-in-law, he used to help whakawhānau them. In those days how are you gonna get to the hospital. They used to use a big tub, not cast iron, they were tin tubs for washing clothes and that. When he knows it’s time for them to have the baby he helped them. This is our maunga, Kaiarawa.

This awa is where we used to trap the kanae. That’s where my father put the tea tree, the wood part and stick it across the creek. We used to weave those branches, as children. When the tide come up that’s when we go to weave those branches, we weave it in and out and when the tide goes out the fish get blocked in. That’s when my aunties used to come and give us a kete each. Us kids we’d jump in with our kete; they still kicking I think. We’d put it in

Ani with her brother Jimmy Heta Peneat the Kaumātua and Kuia Ball

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kerosene tins and they’d tell us to get some more. They’d bring it up on the horse and sledge. We used to do that for our marae. When someone died, we had kids to go out to pick pipis or oysters. Go out diving for kina, usually my dad and my Aunties, ‘cause my aunties were all good divers.

Both Era and I went to school here. It was my grandfather and all the other kaumātua that named it Punaruku School and now I don’t know who changed it to Whangaruru. They have no respect for the old people.

Us children, we used to sit here and listen to all their kōrero. Every time my childhood friend and I get together we have a little tangi about different things that was told to us. It’s the memories that was given to her and I, the stories, the wonderful stories that they told you.

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Ōmaha Marae – August 2013

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“My great-grandmother is Rahui Te Kiri, that’s

on my mother’s side, my great-grandfather of course is Tenetahi. My sister and I have got two grandparents in there, because my grandfather, my father’s father also comes down through Tenetahi. So those are my great-grandparents. My grandmother is Jane Brown, who married George Harris. She was the only girl out of all Rahui’s children, although Rahui married twice. She had two girls, one to the first marriage and then the second marriage was my grandmother Jane. That was their farm over that way.

My grandfather is George Harris who was born at Kaipara; he’s a Harris from further up in Mangamuka. He was born in 1865. He married Jane in Auckland and he died in 1926. They were married in 1898 and then they moved here. There were 11 children, but a lot of them died.

My parents grew up here, and when they married they left here and moved down to a sawmill just south of Mangakino. So that’s where we were brought up. But we came home here quite a lot because the family farm was here. This is the Harris family Bible, it’s got the family register in it. In the old days people didn’t move out of the district, because they didn’t have the vehicles, and

everything they needed was here and the work was here. Our parents, they sacrificed a lot for us to get educated. I know it was important to our mother, that we had a decent education to be able to not be in the same position as them. And I think that was probably the general thing for all parents. So they worked to provide. The down side of that was that the kids got educated and then left home because the work wasn’t here. I think that’s where communities got broken up.

When you’re younger it’s about going out and having fun and the last thing that you want is to be sitting in a marae, and I’ve learnt that once you set your foot in there you never, ever, ever get away from it [the marae]. I’m an advocate for kids to have a good grounding in that, but they need to go out and live, they need to go out and see what the world is all about, you cannot be wise about the way the world is, without moving away from your roots. I just think that when people, as they get older, there’s a part of them they know is missing and it’s that.

When I was overseas I thought “well who am I? What am I?” Because I’m nothing there. At home, I’m who I am and I’m Māori and that’s it, but not over there, you’re just one of a whole big mixture

Our parents, they sacrificed a lot for us to get educated. I know it was important to our mother, that we had a decent education to be able to not be in the same position as them. And I think that was probably the general thing for all parents. So they worked to provide.

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of people. When I got home back to New Zealand, that’s where it all started for me somehow, getting involved with the marae after it burnt down, the first marae. I got involved with the new marae from the ground up, with Uncle Tuck and Aunty Connie and Aunty Sarah. I got my toe in there and now I can’t get it out.

We did the tukutuku panels, so it was that kind of involvement. While you’re doing that, you’re actually learning stuff. I don’t think I actually really asked about things, it all started from that, you’re in the kitchen and next thing you’re out the front, probably the scariest part of the whole lot. It still terrifies me, the kaikaranga. I just think when you get fearful like that, I just go “well this is mine, I don’t care what anyone thinks”, it’s just good manners really.

There never was a marae when I was younger. No, the Marae was down here. It’s a shearing shed, it’s called the Manawa. When people died that’s where they went. Everyone used that like it was a marae. That is the heart of this place, I don’t care what anyone says. This is where all the people live. Beautiful as that is over there, it’s lonely because nobody lives around it. Rahui, when they moved into the Ratana movement, she was one of the first miracles of Ratana. Pākiri was very much a Ratana place really.

There’s a strong female influence here. You know, the women are strong. The women worked the farm, then there was the flu epidemic, and then there was the war. I can remember Laly’s grandmother, Aunty Grace, I mean they were all workers, they milked by hand. Our farm was a dairy farm then, as were all of them, it's dry stock now.

I look at kids now in the marae running around and I think “wow, in the old days did we get whacked around knees for that!”. They were lessons that you learnt then, and its missing now, and in lots of ways it’s sad. The roles of the kids in the area at tangi was just about mucking in, I mean it was expected. Nobody was shy of a tea towel. We were spoilt rotten, so when we came back here, all the other kids here were already in training, already knew how to cook, if there was a tangi or something on, they all had their roles. We were never kind of looked at like that. But as we’ve come back, we fitted in that role like we were born in it. It’s just something that’s in you, that’s there, you just get stuck into things.

I have a vivid memory of those oldies out there, doing the dishes, the food was cooked outside over an open fire by men. In those days the men had a role, they did all the cooking. They had to gather the firewood they had to keep that fire going,

The Manawa

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they cooked the food on the pots. That role has disappeared for them, they do the hangi and stuff now, but in those days they did everything. They did the cooking. The women served it up. They did the cakes and that.

The tangi was held here and they were taken down to the Leigh wharf, and they used to row the bodies over and the people who weren’t able to walk, like the old people. They would just row backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards to just below the marae and the rest of us walked right round. The other memory that I have of down there, is that we all used to sleep in the old house, the bodies used to go there and then we ate in the Manawa and all the food was served in there and then we slept in there as well. Going to sleep when you’re a kid listening to all those old people talking and laughing all through the night and that’s what you went to sleep with. Or your grandmother rubbing your back or your feet. And you’d go to sleep and all you can hear is this mmmm-mmm in the background all night long. That was just lulling you off to sleep, you’d wake up they’d still be going. There was always a light on somewhere. They’d get up and have a cup of tea. But you always fell asleep with that going on in your ear.

Obviously there were no toilets to cater for a whole lot of people down there, so every time there was a tangi on they’d just dig this great long trench. Instant toilet, planks, corrugated iron, you just sat next to each other. Men on one side, women on the other. There were no walls, you sat on the same bench. I can remember as a kid being totally constipated ‘cause I couldn’t deal with that. I can remember us getting washed down in front of everyone, and even if you felt shy you just had to forget that. You know, in those days there wasn’t any toilet paper, instead there was a sack on the side of the wall with newspaper in it. When I think about it now we must’ve had the blackest of backsides from newsprint!

With regards to the food we had, the sea was abundant, and tuatua were too. They had big vegetable gardens, and I think a lot of the health problems came out of rich food, I mean there was

cream and butter on everything. They cooked all the time and they preserved. I always remember rows of bottled everything and it wasn’t just put in the jar, it was all prettily lined in the jar, so nothing was wasted. Mum always baked. I mean, even though everyone was poor, poor in the sense of money and possessions, I suppose, you never starved. Rich in that sense, and your parents were good providers, our parents wasted nothing.

You know your clothes were made out of whatever, flour sacks. Although I lived on hand me downs and stuff like that, so you were well provided for really. But I think you don’t realise that, until you’re older, just how good your life was. We didn’t even have a TV, we sat around listening to the radio and stuff like that. We sang and danced for entertainment, and for the Dennis and Harris families, singing was a huge part of our life. They all played instruments. When a new sheet of music would arrive, they’d go “okay time for a dance” and they’d practise this new music, they’d get on horseback, go down to the hall. It was piano, violin, banjos, this community was a singing one. Uncle Perry and of course Laly played the saxophone.

I always think if it wasn’t for Māori land ownership, it probably would’ve been turned into Auckland.

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Don: My father is Pera Waetford. My grandfather is Eugene Waetford. He’s buried up the hill away across the river. My grandmother is Te Reokaha. The homestead here, this is where I grew up.

Val: My parents are Marsh Mahanga and Edna Nikura from Whakapara. I was brought up in Hikurangi. My dad he was born and brought up in Ngunguru, and my mother was brought up in Rāwhiti by her grandparents ‘cause apparently her mother died when she was three or four. Marsh is my brother.

Don: My mum used to milk about 60 odd cows, and we had pigs. So she was pretty busy all the time, bringing us up. I went to Whananāki Primary School and Whangārei Boys High School. They kicked me out then I went back milking cows. Didn’t like school anyway. I mainly spent my time on the farm. The farm goes right around those hills. That’s part of Onekainga, right to the top anyway.

Whakapaumahara Marae

We were hard out fundraising and that was our focus: to get our marae up and running and lovely, and just to have everything. We achieved that goal. We had three fundraising committees. Firewood was a big fundraiser for us in the valley. All the whānau in Auckland had a fundraising group. Whangārei used to do Housie and that was a big

money spinner. We even had a fishing contest. We ran the fishing contest down here for years and had really big prizes, it wasn’t just a few hundred dollars, it was thousands. A couple of years running we even had a Whananāki beauty queen, which Leslie won, she was Miss Whananāki. On a truck from Hikurangi Dairy Factory, it had a big flat deck, we had talent quests at the beach.

The marae was really somewhere special, but now there’s not that same feeling. We had a lot of things going on. We had sports on Labour weekend. Lots of people came, we had rugby games and netball and then we had a big social. On Sundays we’d have a big brunch. People would exchange kai and do mahi for each other. Same at tangis and what have you, you know the women’s committee would rush off and do a shop. It is different now. Now the younger fullahs they’re not really interested. It must be a sign of the times, I guess, and people just have other commitments.

We’ve had tar seal for a long time. I know when we first got married it was metal roads, and then you'd go to town and you’d have blonde eye lashes and blonde hair; the dust was terrible. I used to go to Hikurangi to my mum and dad’s home and have a shower there and put some town clothes on. So you look like you have not just come out of the bush.

Don was a shearer for lots of years, shearing about 20–30 years. He even went to shear for the Queen over in Mimiwhangata, she parked her yacht out at Mimiwhangata. I wasn’t allowed to go. There weren’t many of them. They went over there and she and Prince Philip came to watch. They did it specially for the Queen; big rams, they were bigger than him.

We must have had a couple of hundred sheep then. Just used to shear down there. But that shed in the old days used to be a dance hall. I used to hear them laughing that they had one pair of shoes between

Whakapaumahara Marae, Kāwa Marae (Don), Ngunguru Marae (Val) – July 2013

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them, and they’d wait outside while the other one danced and then they’d bring the shoes out and the other one takes turns dancing. Whangaruru fullahs would ride over, play sport and have their dance and then they’d move on.

I used to come and stay with Uncle Jim and Aunty Ena for school holidays when I was little and I used to go to church with him all the time. Uncle Jim Walters. We used to go to Pū Hokimate’s place for church and have lovely pudding. It was hard work cooking back then, but they had those huge pots. They weren’t like the ones we’ve got, they were sort of those black oval pots. I think there’s one hanging up in the barn. They’d put it in the embers of the fire, they had some railway irons and then they just put the pots on there and they just fed the fire from underneath.

Fullah was funny, and that’s how he spoke, everybody was a fullah. His proper name was Tohe. The Pākehās called him Posie Waetford. He would go away for maybe a week or so and he’d come home and his car would be chocka block with fruit, preserving jars and sugar and Aunty Lou. They’d arrive here and we would preserve fruit and make jam for about a week. Aunty Lou would come and she’d be the boss. That’s how I learnt to bottle and pickle.

They always had a lot of gardens, see nobody has gardens anymore aye. Mama reckoned they used to have gardens all up there, and I said “where the hang did you get the water from?” She said “from the creek, walk down to the creek with the bucket and walk back.” She said they would spend all day

weeding. We had a big kūmara garden up here one time and Aunty Rewa used to come down, and they’d sit up there all day with their hats on and their hoes; they’d be talking and laughing. I just used to think I don’t want to do that.

One thing I learnt from her was to make rotten corn: what a chore! We used to grow the corn and then just dry it. She’d come back in the school holidays in August and we’d pull all that silky stuff out and just leave the cover of the corn on. Then we’d layer it all in sacks. We’d tie them up then we’d go all the way up the back there. She had this special hole up there. We put it in the creek and it stayed there till Christmas. The water would just run on it and, oh, it was rotten corn when it was finished. She’d come home at Christmas then we’d all go up there and pull all the covering off and wash all the corn. She had a pot lid that had all these nail holes like a grater and then she’d be grating away. Ooh I tell you, what a job. Then she would come home and sometimes she’d light a fire and cook it on the fire, or otherwise we’d put it on the stove. These fullahs all used to eat it. I couldn’t. She’d say “hold your nose.” I’d hold onto my nose just about get it in my mouth then, nah! She’d say “it’s sweet; it’s just like pudding!” Everybody who came home at Christmas would have that for porridge. Fullah would have big pieces of bacon hanging up that you’d smoke and he would cut a slice off and fry it up and he’d eat his rotten corn with bacon. But see, we haven’t made rotten corn for years.

When you dug the kūmaras, all the broken kūmaras she would grate them and make a cake and it was a special time. They all used to come up, “oh this is our birthday cake” they’d say, and she’d make

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But I think all of Mama’s mokopunas consider this place to be their home, they all think they can go home to Whananāki. It’s good to know that some things don’t change, they change in some ways, but I guess their memories don’t change.

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it with lard. She didn’t use butter ‘cause she said in those days they had no butter. It’s pork fat, it’s really nice.

They made their own jam jars out of beer bottles. She said they’d get a hot wire and stick it on the top of the beer bottle and it would just snap off. Then they’d sand it with sand paper or put it in sand and grind it.

The kids just used to love doing things with Mama ‘cause she used to teach them all the time. They’d be gone all the time when she was home, and that would be our kids and Tuika and Patsy’s kids. She used to do some really neat things with the kids. Pack them some lunch and they’d go for miles in the bush. One day Leslie came home and she said Nanny said all that green stuff hanging on the trees that looks like spider webs, those are ghost shit. She used to tell them some really hard case things.

She’d take them down the creek and they used to tickle the eels. The eels were huge. There were heaps of them. They’d spend ages down there, with her in the water and the kids up on the bank. She’d be feeling around and then she’d get one and she’d throw it at the kids and they’d be screaming and carrying on.

We’ve never moved away from here, not since we got married. Our kids, they just automatically say “we’re going home” and they know where they’re going. There’s a lot of fullahs that can’t say that. But I think all of Mama’s mokopunas consider this place to be their home, they all think they can go

home to Whananāki. It’s good to know that some things don’t change, they change in some ways, but I guess their memories don’t change.

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Whakapaumahara Marae, Ōmaha Marae, Kāwa Marae – August 2013

My grandfather was Nupere Ngawaka. Well I’m 77 now, so take another 20 years on top

of that before then, that’s how long my whānau have been residing in Ngātiwai. My mum was from Ngāti Rehua, from the Great Barrier, her name was Waiwera Rose Ngawaka and my dad from Whananāki there, his name was Erepohu Waetford. My dad spent time over the Barrier, where they first met there. He worked in the bush and they met up there. My dad was one of the younger ones of that generation but he was old enough to have a contract over in Great Barrier and set up a lot of the roads over there, my dad and his team of horses. They married, Mum was 17 when she met my dad and then they came to Whananāki. Their grandfather purchased land and my dad was the farmer. OK, a big migration of Ngāti Rehua went to Whananāki and settled there.

We lived at Tangiterōria for a while. We virtually had to half-pie go to school and develop it, built the house, built the cowshed. It was hard work. Most of the time was farming really. Education wasn’t a strong point to my dad. And he was quite astute in his dealings, I suppose it was the way they were brought up too; self-reliant. They always had that and when you came to the wider world, ok you’re meeting other people there but they’re really no different, see, you treat them as a family.

You always had a strong thing with Ngāti Rehua, the Barrier. Ngātiwai came in later really. So you take Manuhiri, but really Browns came from the Barrier too, they all came from the Barrier. I’m talking about my dad’s age and your grandfather’s age. They’re all from the Barrier yet they all came over.

I was affiliated with Whakapaumahara Marae when I was younger. Well it wasn’t then, they used to call it 'Dixieland'. That got burnt down. That’s why they had to build another one. It was hard getting it off the ground ‘cause nobody had the money. You had to go and borrow, see? My dad, he was one of the initiators for that too. He helped build the new marae, and the Moore family, George was one of

his cousins, he was working for one of the big, big developing firms in town. He came down and they all pitched in and the marae went up in a short time. That’s why they were so close together. They came together, they almost knew one another’s talk. Well, Ngāti Rehua and Ngātiwai had really close relationships, especially back then. Even when they were older they talked for hours, all night and all that. Well we’re doing that – we’re all coming back together and building those relationships again, it’s awesome.

Dad had a big role on the marae. When somebody died, Whananāki was the place. They all headed

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Dad had a big role on the Marae. When somebody died, Whananāki was the place. They all headed back there then.

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back there then. Eugene, my oldest brother, he looked after 80 acres down there, he looked after that. We had to pull him out of school at 17, he had to go back and look after the farm until he got married. He went courting and then he got married overnight.

Nobody, even the old fullahs, talked much about it [the marae fire], it was the way it was built, open fire, big open fire in there, the wind could have been blowing the wrong way. Whoosh. We had a makeshift everything. Half of it burnt, so they kept it there, and patched it up. It was primitive.

But when my uncle came with the big bulldozer, he cleaned it all out and he expected to get paid because he was only a teenager himself. He said, “well somebody's got to do it.” I remember Dad talking to the fullah, well he never got paid. It started there, and you’ll find that family’s still there.

We'd lean on one another for that sort of thing. That’s more or less like a bond with one another you had, you couldn’t do that to a stranger, you couldn’t do that to Ngāti Whātua or a different tribe. A lot of those old fullahs there that had a big input in building the marae, they’re all gone, they all went in a short time after that. I think we’re happy with our marae nowadays. Coming here for the younger generation, they wouldn’t know that much about it. We try, we try to go back there for them, but that’s changing too, families get married and that’s their own world.

Some of the things that we had there, we had Winston [Peters], he was a Māori Minister and we went down there. It was all of Ngātiwai, at least he had that from his own marae, that was Whananāki. That put us on the map really, there were three or four hundred there that day.

And another one that stood out, for us down there, was a fullah Jim Pugh. He was the head of the Taxation Department in Whangārei. He died, it was a big miss to the district, put it that way, and to the marae too, ‘cause he was excellent.

We had the opening of the kitchen that was blinkin’ excellent. Eugene headed that one off, by gee that was a good one. Each family had to contribute five minutes, you gotta sing after that. He just called it and they’d respond. That was a big thing having the kitchen finished and rounded, and all people just

turned up to it. To top it off there, to have it well organised. Eugene had that, Eugene and his wife really, she just got up and sang, she’s got a beautiful voice.

And that’s just three highlights. I think those sort of things stick out, history. It’s Ngātiwai really, and a lot of them can remember.

We had Pūriri’s down, good strong members there, they come from Ngunguru – that’s on Kiri’s husband’s side, the Browns, and they’re from Ngunguru, they’re all Ngātiwai.

Aunty Gertie had a big influence on my up-bringing. Oh, she was a strong person you know. Stronger than you think. You get used to that really, not many people can snap at me without me answering them back. But her, you don’t snap back at her. She was right up with the latest currency of things happening, and that appealed to me. You’ve got to be friendly to people, you get a conversation working, it’s a downfall today, you got to learn how to talk with the people. Not for five minutes, you got to go that little extra mile. It's communication skills. But when the time comes, you can’t go away without just sitting down and having that little rapport, eh? Gertie would be one of the stand outs for that sort of thing.

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I was born at a hospital in Waikato – I was the only one in our family of six to be born in a hospital.

Our father died when I was aged five or six. We were all farmed out to whānau. I went to Mōtatau. I slept top and tail in a two bedroom bungalow.

When I lived at Mōtatau, we rode horses to school. Six or seven of us rode. Nobody knew my horse was pregnant. One day she dropped a foal. I had to walk all the way home with the horse and foal. My cousin wouldn’t give me a ride.

In the family we spoke both te reo and English. Mum remarried, then we lost some reo when we got back together and went back to Whananāki to live as a family again. We spoke reo at school as well as at home. Our teacher was Māori and he spoke to us in te reo. We were not whacked for speaking te reo.

I had to milk cows before school. We got up about four or five am. At that time we were just going over to a milking machine. I had three or four years of hand milking, turning the separator by hand. We used a sledge to take the cream can to the stand at the roadside where the truck picked it up to go to Hikurangi to the Dairy Factory. Our hardest job was catching the horse for the sledge. When the wooden runners on the sledge wore out, we had to replace them with timber ones we cut in the bush and shaped. We mostly used tea tree. Sue’s [cousin

Whakapaumahara Marae, Kāwa Marae – July 2013

Sue Waetford] family had a wheelbarrow, they had to make two trips for two cans.

After milking we had to get ready to go to Whananāki School. We did have a bus, but it was not flash. The bus then went to town for parcels for cow cockies. There were two more settlements, Ōpuawhanga and Ōtonga along the way to Hikurangi Dairy Factory.

Our playground games were marbles, bullrush and rugby. We had no competition but we went to Moerewa to watch interschool games. We didn’t have a full team. We enjoyed running races, but there was no competitive running. We would go to the movies in Kawakawa by school bus on Saturday.

For our school lunches we had takakau – it was made in the oven – and scone bread (some called it banny). Panekeke was dough that was fried. We ate lots of tuna, we had jam (sour plum jam!) and we loved taraire berries and pūriri berries. Fish was our staple diet at Whananāki.

Down by the bridge where the sea water starts, we used to chuck a gelignite stick and the fish would come to the surface. We had a good pipi bank there too. We used to go down the beach on the horses, we raced up and down the beach showing off to girls. But we had to bring a sack of pipis home. We used to ride over the hills to Pareparea for mussels. We slung sugar bags over the [horse’s] withers full

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When I lived at Mōtatau, we rode horses to school. Six or seven of us rode. Nobody knew my horse was pregnant. One day she dropped a foal.

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of mussels. You had to be careful on steep hills or you lost the lot sliding down the horse’s neck. We had muttonbirds in season – man they were good to eat. We had some good holes at Whananāki on the hill going down to Pareparea. I haven’t been there for years. I heard Tawhara was quite plentiful for muttonbirds too. Sometimes we killed a sheep for meat, but they were mostly kept for wool.

I was grown up before I ever heard of Matapōuri village. One day Uncle Posey drove some cattle to the field in Matapōuri for grazing, we were supposed to be helping drove but we just mucked around on the horses. Uncle Posey was never grumpy like Dad.

We had massive tuna in our creek below the cowshed. Nanny Hiku would call “tēnā koe, tēnā koe” and her pet tuna would come. It was really huge. She would give it a finger stroke on top of its head. She fed it scraps from the kitchen. It specially loved corn cobs.

The weather back then was much the same as now, but we had more frosts. We used to put our feet in warm cow pats.

At home we did have a radio. Uncle Dave made it, and connected it up with wires everywhere. He used to listen to football. Then we got a more modern one, so the old one went to the cowshed (the story was that music made cows let down milk into their udders and you got more milk).

Patsy and Tuika Waetford

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I can’t remember Mum. I was 18 months when she passed away. My granny brought us up in the

Kaipara. She couldn’t talk Pākehā. She’d talk Māori and although we could understand it, we couldn’t talk it properly ‘cause we were talking Pākehā all the time, and Dad was in favour in us staying with English all the time. My dad said “Māori no good to you kids because the world is all speaking English. What’s the use of Māori?”

I went to a Native School. We went by the ferry boat, it used to come up and pick us up. But if it was rough he wouldn’t come because they had an accident and nine of our kids got drowned. Nine of them hopped on the dinghy and one run to the front of it, and the dinghy [capsized] and trapped them all underneath.

We had a hundred acres, and we were milking 20 cows all by hand. Most Sundays we’d go from house to house and have church there. If the tide was right and the weather was right all us kids would go down swimming – girls, boys, all in the water, no clothes on. You never thought nothing of it.

I was 23 when I moved to Pākiri, and Sarah was 20. I had a real good job. We were building those steel towers for the Power Board. We had to go to night school in Ōtāhuhu, once a week. Learn the numbers of all these steel bars, and the angle towers and how to put the blocks up. I really loved it. But I married Sarah and they had a farm in Pākiri. When we married her parents were due to retire so they offered us the farm. And that’s where we spent the rest of our life bringing up our children. We married in 1951 and we were there ‘til 1980 and all the kids were grown up and left the farm.

We were dairy farming in Pākiri. Our factory in Te Hana was only a little factory and our cream was going to that factory. We were too far off the main road and we were costing them money, for them to come down and pick up my cream and Laly’s cream. They put us on every other day and our income went down because a lot of our product

Ōmaha Marae – August 2013

was second grade straight away. So we decided we’d sell the farm. I loved the sea and I was always out fishing with a couple of my friends in Leigh. So we bought a boat and settled down fishing and I never ever regretted it.

I ended up commercial fishing. I had to sit my skipper’s license. We loved what we were doing. We’d go over to the Little Barrier and work around the top end of Great Barrier and stay the night.

Our kids went to the Pākiri School first, my wife was teaching and she would take our kids to school. We sent Edward to St Stephens College and my eldest girl to Queen Vic. Edward went fishing too, he had his own boat. My daughter is a district nurse now. We had an adopted girl and she’s married now and got a family of her own.

It was bustling when I first went to Pākiri. It wasn’t a marae, it was a wool shed. We had our church in the wool shed, and it became the church and the hall. We had weddings in it and everything happened in that wool shed. When we built this marae here well everything changed. We brought the bodies over here but before that we used to bring them on the punt, the rowboat and take them to the beach. Around here just below the cemetery; tie the rope around the coffin and pull them up the hill.

We all cut those trees down and cut the timber up, and built the marae. We had a fighting woman, Gracey Haddon. Look out when she got wild, and we loved her. But anyhow that was the start of the marae. Wyatt and his team cut the pine trees down. They'd cut it up to logs, bring the logs over to the mill, cut them up for timber for the hall and the marae – that was the birth of the marae. About 1986, I think it was started to be built. The cost was just about nothing – they did it all for nothing – old Wyatt they donated all that. Then they opened it.

When the big event came we all got a ring up at 2 o’clock in the morning. The marae’s on fire. Not very long between the opening and the fire. Three or four maybe six months roughly. Big shock. We

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all got together, decided well we do need a marae there’s no two ways about it. We brought them all together Sam Brown, Gracey, Bunky and all of us and the elders. Roi McCabe and all his family, his father was there, his brothers they were all there, and Roi was a powerful man. He took over the costing.

Ōrākei, that was Ngāti Whatua. Ōrakei gave it [money] because they sold a railway station in Auckland and they gave every Ngāti Whātua marae money. They christened it as Ngātiwai, Ngāti Whātua marae with the name of the old one, Te Kiri marae. Because of the fire they took that off and they called it Ōmaha. Te Kiri’s the wharekai, yes they didn’t want to let that name go. Some of them do still call it Te Kiri but that’s alright.

Gracey dug the first spade full. Sarah and Connie made all the tukutuku. Connie learnt, she knew exactly how to do it, what to do, what history, when you do it, what it meant. Like that poutama up there – to most people it’s a tukutuku but it’s got a story.

Taki and I were elected to go and get the pīngao and it’s a big job, walking over the sand hills. You get a big bundle of pīngao and it’s hot as ever, and there’s no water out there. Gotta carry your water with you day after day after day. Then when we get it here, you gotta strip it and strip it till you’re down to the fibre, a white or golden colour.

Laly and I – I miss him – we were like brothers. I learnt to shear when I was young because all our people were shearers. I came to Pākiri and this fullah was talking about “oh can’t get any shearers” and I

said “oh I’ll shear your sheep”. I thought he only had a few, but he had a few thousand sheep. I got Laly, he couldn’t shear – he didn’t know the first thing about it. So I showed him, and he was captain of shearers, blood everywhere. He finally got it, he could shear. Then he did his first hundred sheep and I was knocking off 220, 230. Ooh there was a big party that night. When we finished up he was a good shearer. So we were only young and we sheared all around Tōmarata, Pākiri, Whangaripo and one or two sheds out at Wellsford. That’s in between milkings. Milk in the morning then away we’d go and come back in the afternoon and then we got sick of that. We had a run for about three or four years.

We decided to have a band. Pākiri wanted to throw a dance: can’t get a band. Tōmarata wanted to throw a dance: no band. Leigh couldn’t get a band. We love our music. Laly played saxophone too, harmonising. Billy Vaughn was absolutely brilliant. Harmonising. We had all his records. So we got three guitars, a drummer, him and me. Yeah, and we practised and we practised and we practised and we were finally as good as that record. We listened to them play on the gramophone, and when the battery went flat we’d turn it by hand. We’d play it, play it, play it till we got it right. Sail along Silv’ry Moon, that was the one we liked right from the start, and we got that absolutely right, harmonising it. Oh it was beautiful, soon as we played that they all got up – everybody got up and danced.

It was good living in Ngātiwai, true we had our ups and downs. But they were good to us. We were related, when we went back on our whakapapa. We were all one, all the same people. Ngāti Whātua

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“ I was 23 when I moved to Pākiri, and Sarah was 20. I had a real good job. We were building those steel towers for the Power Board. We had to go to night school in Ōtāhuhu, once a week. Learn the numbers of all these steel bars, and the angle towers and how to put the blocks up. I really loved it.

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links to Ngātiwai and they were Ngāti Whātua too. They’re all gone now. Every house in the road had a family in it, now those houses are all demolished. Laly was the only one that was holding it together now he’s gone. So the road is empty and it’s sad really.

We had a beautiful life, Sarah and I. The first time that we made good money we decided we’ll tour the world. We had other plans, one was to buy a camper van. A minute’s notice and we’re gone. But anyhow she passed away, we were having a cup of tea here one day and she fell off her chair, dead, quick as that. She was 71 when she left.

In fact her marae was Reweti, Ōrākei, but she was brought up in Pākiri with all the Pākiri children so she decided Pākiri’s my place. So I got in touch with Laly. Laly was our Kaumatua. I was older than him, but I looked upon him because he was original from Pākiri. And she is buried here at Pākiri. I’m here at Pākiri and I’ve got my grandchildren living with me. So I’m quite happy with that.

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Ngunguru Marae – June 2013

Growing up in Tūtūkākā

We used to play by the staircase round on the fourth gable, all along there. Dad would go fishing and sometimes Hoki’d come over and they’d go way round to the second gable. This day they went for muttonbirds up this gable and they were away a long time and I started to get frightened. You know how the gable goes up like this and down like that. These two had gone over the cliff and down the face of the gable which was pretty steep, but those muttonbirds used to be in there. They came back with a couple of muttonbirds. There was a good little muttonbird place out just inside the main entrance below the lighthouse, just at that little beach in there and you just used to go in amongst all those burrows in there. We used to go with our father and he’d stick his hand down the hole – once he stuck his hand down there and there was a penguin in there and it bit him.

We’d go out and set the pots, the crayfish pots. We had the bait hanging from the side, tied with flax, couple of them hanging down in there. When our father was alive he used make his pots out of tea tree, mānuka, the little thin sticks of mānuka about that thick. It’d take him hours. He’d build this pot and it’d be round, made out of tea tree, all tied. He used to tie it together with supplejack. He’d split the supplejack just like cord, you know into

thin cord and he’d sort of sew them all together all the way round from the bottom, start at the bottom and went round and round and round. Oh they were great pots, then after he died, there were no more, they were all made out of timber, timber and wire.

School holidays we worked on the farm. Cutting down pūriri trees and splitting them into posts, with our father. We’d be with him and we’d be dragging them out of the bush with a horse. With battens, we’d go and cut down a big taraire tree. We’d put them in the sack, as many as we could carry, and we’d put them on our shoulders and then we’d go and do the fencing, Eric and I. It was hard work, especially in the summer with the clay. When we got all the posts in, Dad’d come back and we’d line them up and straighten them up and ram them in, then we’d run the wire, you see. Then we’d get the strainer and strain them and we’d help him batten them. We were about 12 and 14.

We’d make a boat, a yacht. Eric used to do the sewing, he was good on the machine old Ec, the old treadle. We’d scrounge one and six off Mum, and we’d go to our grandfather’s store, buy a yard of linen to make our sails and we’d cut them out. They were model boats and we’d have one each. We’d race them across the bay, see which one would get to the other side first. And if we reckon the boat’s no good, we’d make another one. They were

They’d be talking in Māori and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about ... They were at school together, you see. They spoke Māori of course. That’s how they learnt, in the playground. Māoris weren’t allowed to speak Māori. You had to speak English.

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pretty rough jobs. We made them out of any slab of timber or sometimes totara, sometimes rimu. We’d bore holes in them and get the chisel, pretty basic tools we used, and a plane and we would chop the main shape with the axe and then we’d sort of plane it. Then we’d get the auger and put holes in it and get the chisel and hammer and chisel it out. We’d put a piece of boxwood over the top and flatten it and that’s the deck.

We cut a piece of tin in the shape of a keel and we used to get lead and melt it and put on the keel. We’d have the lead, and then we’d get a mast, make a mast, and stick it in and Eric would sew the sails and this thing was too heavy. Ted Amos, they would challenge us to a race across the Ngunguru River. So Eric got on one end and I got on the other. We’d carry it over the top up the hill and along the ridge then down through Mackie’s to the beach in Ngunguru. So we met them over there and they had real flash, beautiful looking automatic steering and all this sort of stuff on these flash yachts. We set them all off, and our boat, there was a good breeze too coming down the river.

They’d put me to shame, they’d be talking in Māori and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. We weren’t allowed to speak Māori. Boy, (Ralph) he learnt to speak Māori at school with the other Wellingtons, big Jim’s father and them. They were at school together, you see. They spoke Māori of course. That’s how they learnt, in the playground. Māoris weren’t allowed to speak Māori. You had to speak English.

Dad, he never ever spoke Māori in our home, only when his brothers came to see him, and they’d get out on the verandah or go somewhere and they’d sit down together and speak Māori. Of course old Granny Wellington she used to speak to us in Māori. She was a lovely person, old Granny Makere and sometimes Mum came over there with us and she would take Mum up to the bedroom, and she would talk to Mum in English. She learnt to talk some English. But she spoke to us kids in Māori, she always used to have a smile.

They had apple trees, and she had a big strawberry garden. All us kids used to sit and she would say “Haere, Haere, Haere,” up to the strawberry patch,

up to the garden. She had this big strawberry patch. She only grew it for us kids to eat. We used to just sit there and eat them. Usually we were there for Hoki to cut our hair. Real bald round the sides. That was a big day out, because we’d get our hair cut, and Dad used to take his axes over because they had a big grindstone, and we turned the grindstone after we got a haircut. If Granny was around and the apples were ripe, she’d come down and grab us by the hand and take us round and pick an apple and give us one, and then we’d head off home and milk the cows.

I think we milked 40 cows that was at the flush of the season. Yeah, we collected cream. We milked 10 each, 10 cows each, Elva and Eric and I at that stage. We were the last home you see. Des was only a little wee fella. I must’ve been about eight. Not many would milk 10 cows every morning at eight years old. Mind you, Dad gave us the easiest ones to milk. Some of the milk was hard to come out, we used to get the easy milking ones, he’d milk the ones that were harder to milk.

Boon, we used to call him, our brother, he was out on Mum’s rock fishing, early in the morning and he drowned. He was epileptic. Anyway, after he drowned Granny Wellington came over, and she did all the things, she washed all his blankets in the creek. She did it, she came over and she took charge of all that. She went down to the creek, never used the wash tubs, his clothing too, washed them in the creek and hung them out to dry.

Sundays, there was no work on the farm, all we did was milk the cows. Dad used to take us for a picnic, and we’d go to the big hill, down below the mountain on the flat rock down on the beach. Just off there was a sort of a shingle, and there was a clear place without any seaweed there. A good place to swim, see. We thought “oh we’ll go for a swim.” Eric was with me and I was ahead of him, and I’m walking in there and here’s two big blue cods, not rock cods, big blue cods, and they swum right up to my feet. I’m standing there watching these things, I said “Eric, Eric get a line and two hooks and bait it.” And I sorta backed off, they were just lookin’ around and we put this line in and boom, got ‘em both. I’ve never seen a blue cod in shallow water, and they were right there on the

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beach just two on their own. Never caught a blue cod there. Plenty of rock cod, the blue cod are out in the deeper water. Yeah, I’ll never forget that. If I had put my hands in they would’ve gone.

Our best point for snapper was round the rocks on the right hand side to that little beach. That was Eric’s and my spot. We used to go out in the dinghy and just off that point there was a nice little snapper spot. We went out rowing, no outboard motor then. I haven’t ever lost my enjoyment of seafood, I love my seafood, especially when first you get them straight out of the sea they were great stuff.

We would walk over to the Wedge, that’s where you go outta the harbour, round to the right below the motels, through that narrow gap. That’s the Wedge, that bay that goes in there. We used to walk over there, over the hill and into the gully and round the rocks there. Round there was a good point, quite steep off the rocks, that’s where I fell in. It was a sheer face, or rock shale. Father, he knew and he just walked across it, there’s sorta steps across it, and we followed him. The first time oh we were scared but once we’d done it a few times ah, no trouble.

They used to drink kūmarahou the old people. Hoki and Maraea, they used to have a lot of kūmarahou they’d hang it up in the kitchen ‘til it dried out and

they used to boil it and drink it cold, use it for bad backs, everything, the kūmarahou. We used to use kawakawa leaves on boils as a poultice, boy she’d drag the guts out of it, you’d never put it on until the boil was ready, otherwise boy oh boy, she’d drag it out, and half the flesh with it. We’d go and get them and put them in boiling water and we used to bang them on.

We used to eat the fruit off just about everything. Oh yeah, tau berries, they were nice, they are a different taste to taraire berries, and they didn’t have as big a seed, we used to get them. We used to eat kahikatea berries, there was a kahikatea tree round there, where your sister’s Carol’s living. When all the things were ripe, all the fruit would fall off on the ground and all the ground would be red underneath the tree. There was this orangy red piece on it and there was purply seed on the other end of it, and we’d sit there for ages eating these little wee tiny kahikatea berries.

Remember on the old farm there used to be these little wild rose bushes and they had a little pink flower, they had a beautiful scent. They used to grow wild. Well, that scent, it must’ve stuck in my mind from when I was a kid. And we were in mass one day, Mavis and I, and that scent came across, and straight away, I said the little pink roses you know? Those little pink roses, that was the most beautiful scent I have ever smelt, I reckon. In the summertime on a clear evening you could smell them for miles, these little pink roses. They used to grow in the clear spaces. There used to be quite a few different places on the farm and oh they had a beautiful perfume.

Building the Tūtūkākā Block Road

Making the Tūtūkākā Block Road was hard. It was Bert and Ralph and our father, Eric and I. We had our time on the pick and the shovel. It wasn’t metal, for a long time it was clay, and when it rained you couldn’t use it anyway. They worked out the grades, how it would go, somehow, Dad and Bert. We’d start there and we’d dig the first bit out, and then we’d get the pick and the shovel and later on they had an old horse, Archie and they got one of these drays that you drag along. Boy had this old Vauxhall, funny looking thing, he had to leave it down on our

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flat under the pines, because when there was just a shower of rain you couldn’t get up the hill. That was a real family effort, and we had to get the bank at the right angle. We weren’t old, about 13 and 14 I suppose. We knew what the work was like, the hard work. That was just an ordinary day and we’d knock off and milk the cows. Still milking by hand.

The old man wouldn’t have a machine, he was scared of machinery. He was the old horse and sled man. When I went into the Airforce, Eric said “if I’m gonna milk the cows I’m gonna have a machine.” The old man said “if you get a milking machine, you’ll be in the shed on your own.” And that’s what happened.

The farm needed a hell of a lot of work. I went home once on leave and Eric was draining the paddock. I went down while I was there and gave him a hand, and some of it didn’t have any bottom in it you’d go down up to your neck. All water and you’d be digging and trying to dig and water would just be coming in. How he finished it off on his own I’d never know, but he did.

The well was across from the old house when it used to be on the flat. Just across the old flat at the base of the hill. Eric used it for years. We used to clean it out every so often with Dad, we had a bucket and we’d bucket all the water out of it when it’d start to go off a bit, and there was always an eel in the bottom of it. A little eel and the old eel kept the well clean. We made sure we got the eel in the bucket when we cleaned it right out and washed out the hard sides, clay sides.

We used most of the water from the well for Mum’s washing and all that. But the well water, it wasn’t any good, so we had to go up the water gully to the dam to get our water and carry it in the four gallon kerosene tin. That was hard work walking all the way up there and all the way back with these kerosene tins.

Home will always be home to me

You leave the area and you forget people after you leave the area for so long. I’ve been away from there since I was 16, I only went home on leave at times, you know? No good going home for a weekend from Ōtaki or wherever I was. We used to go up there in the car on the holidays, and as soon as we’d hit

the top of the Brynderwyns, I saw the Whangārei Heads. I thought, “I’m home.” Even today, I’m 87 nearly 88 so that would be near 70 years away from home, only going back on holidays. This should be my home I’ve been here in Palmerston North 54 years. Up there was always home. It still is.

You don’t tell those stories to people round here, you tell some, but not the ones from home.

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Ngunguru Marae – September 2012

Manaia’s journey

Hawaiki was where the waka Māhūhū-ki-te-rangi came from and the tupuna Manaia sailed down to Motukōkako. He went from there to the North Cape of New Zealand. He went down to Taranaki, to Ōakura and Mōkau, and there’s a place called Manaia there. Then he went up to Auckland, carried the canoe across the land and went from there to Hauturu and on to Aotea, and he stayed there for a while and then came back to Aorangi and Tawhiti Rahi, then he went back to Motukōkako. The waka got wrecked at Taupiri.

I think the wreck was off that island, there used to be a whare on the island and the canoe is still there,

and at low tide you can see it lying under the water. At high tide you can’t see it, it’s a rock shaped like a canoe, underneath the water. All the fishermen from the Bay of Islands have seen it. Well, I knew the rock was there. When you are trawling around for swordfish, you go past it all the time, and you’ve got to keep off it a little bit otherwise you get wrecked on it.

Tidal waves at Tūtūkākā

I can remember tidal waves at Tūtūkākā through the years. There was a launch washed up onto the flat in Wallie’s Bay in my mother’s time. There was a launch on the beach in front of Barbara Cotterill’s store at Tūtūkākā, it belonged to Mr Catanac – that was before the Tūtūkākā foreshore was reclaimed.

About 1960, I went to take the cream to Tūtūkākā and brought back some timber. I put it on the beach above the waterline so I could carry it easily to the cowshed, and after carrying some to the cowshed I turned around and the tide had gone way out! As I went to get more timber the water returned to high again.

When Mikki and I were on the Sou’ East, by the island in Tūtūkākā Harbour, about 1980, we were just sitting on the boat and all the water was rushing out to sea. We saw a yacht, which was moored in the marina, dragging its mooring out of the channel still tied up to the mooring pile.

Ngāti Takapari boundary

We had an agreement with Charlie Mackie that the third gable was where our fishing grounds stopped and theirs started. We didn’t worry about boundaries much. The old man and I went with Charlie Mackie one day for maomao, you go down the devils staircase, its pretty steep, you have to be careful. Another time, Clyde, Uncle Hoki, the old man and I went out to the second gable. Clyde and I waited on the top in the pōhutukawa. The Old Man and Hoki went down the front with a rope tied round them. They were after muttonbirds. They only got two, they were baby ones, the fluffy ones.

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We had an agreement with Charlie Mackie that the third gable was where our fishing grounds stopped and theirs started. We didn’t worry about boundaries much.

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Pretty long walk for two! The nearest place for muttonbirds was the lighthouse. The nests are all gone now, they wrecked them when they put the track in. When we had the boat, The Wairere, we used to go to the Chicks [Hen and Chicken Islands]for muttonbirds.

Kākahu and taiaha

There were some in the front room at Granny Wellington’s house. I remember seeing them plenty of times. I don’t know where they are now. Aunt Maraea told us one of them belonged to Paratene Te Manu. I remember seeing the taiahas too. Maybe Aunt Maraea or Cissy gave them to the Whangārei Museum.

Home Guard training

All that part of Ngunguru round Chloe Place and Kōpipi Crescent was paddock then and swampy ground. We had to try and get to a lantern at one end and put it out to show we could creep up on the enemy without getting caught. Pat Mahanga crawled on his stomach the whole way and he put out the lantern. We all got caught and were ‘POWs’. The old man had a uniform with a sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. He looked very smart. We had wooden guns, there weren’t enough for us to have real guns. Then later we had WWI surplus guns, they were old 303s.

Dance bands

We had a dance band called The Hawaiian Rhythm Boys in the 1940s. Sammy played the piano, Neville played the Spanish guitar and I played the steel guitar. We played in the Druids Hall in Whangārei. Neville and I and Frank Cross played in the Waikiekie Hall, we worked out there in the quarry when the cows were out. It was the late 40s. And of course we played at the Ngunguru Hall. Every Saturday night we had a dance there.

Ladies never wore trousers to the dances, only dresses, always dresses. The fullahs wore suits. Neville came to see me before he died. It was Neville who made me my walking stick with the bird’s head on top. He made one for Rita too, but she broke hers trying to get kina off the rocks.

We had Basket Socials during the war. The band was King Gilbert on piano, playing a bass line, Fred Solomon on violin and Tui Gilbert on violin. They played old time dances like the Maxina, the Veleta, the waltz and foxtrots. At the end they played God Save the King. The ladies brought a basket of food to the dance, baking, and cakes and such. The baskets were auctioned. The fullah who won the auction got to have supper with the lady who brought it. When Ivan Erceg went to the war, old Karl bid on lots of baskets, he didn’t care whose it was. He was a real good sponsor. The money was to put in the kitty for the Red Cross for the soldiers at the war. Charlie Snell was the MC.

Everybody learned the jitterbug from watching the Yanks. The Yankee soldiers were blimmin’ good at it, especially the Negroes. We went to dances in the old Town Hall in Bank Street. Me and Totty went with Zete and Cissie and Elva. Cissy used to drive her old man, Bert, round the North to recruit soldiers. It was the only car in Northland with new tyres and lots of petrol.

One time, we sneaked the car to go to a dance in town. The girls met up with some Yanks at the Camp at Kiripaka and picked them up. They made me and Totty wait in the cream stand there. It was freezing. They got back about 3 in the morning, dropped off the soldiers and picked us up. We were sworn to secrecy. When we got home Auntie Missy said “did

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you enjoy the dance Totty?” She never knew to the day she died that we never went to the dance!

Te Reo Māori

Nobody much spoke Māori in our family, only Granny Wellington and Uncle John, and the old man when people came to ask him things. Sometimes the Gilberts at school, when they didn’t want us to know things. But not a lot. One time Ngārārātunua Native School came for a sports day. They all spoke Māori, even the white kids, especially one girl, she was so fluent.

Ngunguru was dominated by immigrant families then, they had arrived really early on. My brothers and sisters never learnt Māori, only Ralph a bit because he lived with Granny Wellington a lot of the time. Auntie Missy and Pratne (pet name used for Paratene Te Manu Wellington during his school days) talked Māori most of the time, but not their kids. When my mum was visiting Granny Wellington they would go into the front bedroom and speak. Jim and Sadie too, and all their kids. But I don’t know if they still can.

Paua shell lures

My father made lures from the shell.

In days gone by my ancestors made the hook out of pōhutukawa branch and bound the hook on with muka. We didn’t do that with the hook. We relied on the old number eight wire. We had more modern tools – a file and a hack saw and cotton.

When we went fishing the paua lure would be trailed behind the boat and we waited for a strike. We never heard of rods, so we fished with hand lines. Also, we rowed our boat, so the action of the lure was made so as to spin at slow speed. It was very effective. Kahawai would be the target. Although they made a lure out of pōhutukawa wood for kingfish. Now people who make lures call them jigs.

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Ngunguru Marae – August 2013

Ngunguru wharenui

When Eric and I came back to Tūtūkākā about 1962, I remember Eric and Uncle George Wellington unloading timber for the wharenui, they got it from Ngaiotonga. Grand-dad wanted Eric and I to wait and build our house until the timber came for the wharenui. We lived in an army hut on the flat by the beach, we lived with Granny and Grand-dad Wellington until we moved to the army hut. The wharenui was built by Johnny Williams, he wasn’t whānau, he did it on the weekends so it took several years. The wharenui opened in the early to mid-70s.

Fundraising for the Ngunguru Wharekai

The fundraising started in the 1970s. We had monthly meetings, called ‘bring and buys’. Everyone would bring something to sell, like veges out of their gardens, and we would all buy everyone else’s things they had brought. We had it in the wharenui.

There was Cissy, Zete Pitman, Millie and children, Bub (Naphelia Pitman) and Lovey (Ngamihi Pitman), Sadie Wellington and others. The building started in the late 70s to early 80s, it was a shell. There were no toilets yet. Cissy got a Lotto grant to finish it off – $100,000. Adrian Pitman lined and finished the wharekai about 2002. We had the opening in 2003.

“The fundraising started in the 1970s. We had monthly meetings, called ‘bring and buys’. Everyone would bring something to sell, like veges out of their gardens, and we would all buy everyone else’s things they had brought.

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I was the youngest born and I had four sisters. My mother was Mihi Mackie and my father was

Paratene Te Manu Wellington. My father was given the nickname Bert. I named my son Bertie.

Our hapū is Ngāti Takapari. Te Rangi Tukiwaho was our tupuna who was the beginning of our hapū. He was a warrior chief and when he got older he was war battered. He got his eyes cut walking through cutty grass the story goes, and was blind. He used to walk around his whenua and up to the hill that is now the lighthouse hill. He got too close to the edge and fell to the rocks below and our hapū is named after that event (taka = fall, pari = cliff).

Paratene Te Manu, our tupuna, was matua whāngai to Rihipaea, my great-grandmother, who he left all of this whenua to. You know, Uncle Willie (Wiremu Wellington) was given Rehuotane and my Dad was given the next whenua block, Te Maika. I live in the house I grew up in. I remember the timber for the house came in on a barge and it was so exciting that all Uncle Willie’s family and other locals came over to watch. They brought the barge up and let it beach when the tide went out then loaded the timber onto a horse and cart and took it along the road. My dad and his brothers moved the house up here from the flat when I was about five. The old wash-house out the back was from the old house the rest was built new.

Uncle Willie and Dad built the road up to the house, the same one we drive on now. The engineering of it was something to behold you know. They were amazing at that those old fullahs. They followed the tracks the animals had made because that was always the easiest terrain. We had the phone on first in the area, and because we can see Eric’s house from our house, my mother hung a tea towel out the window when you kids were born, so Eric would know she had had the call from the hospital.

My mother was a good lady and I was really close to her. She was the local midwife and used to travel around by horseback but she was a terrible rider,

Ngunguru Marae, Takahiwai Marae – May 2014

“Uncle Willie and Dad built the road up to the house, the same one we drive on now. The engineering of it was something to behold, you know. They were amazing at that those old fullahs.

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get a kūmara, we were scared of the rats. We had a garden up at Dolphin Place, by Rehuotane maunga, Eric and I were taitamariki, we worked in it all the time.

As well as our gardens, we lived on kina, pūpū, fish and other seafood. We would go to Rehuotane Bay at low tide to get kina. Then wait, as long as it took, with the spear in the water for a snapper to swim along. We could get snapper off the flat rock just before high tide.

I remember going to get kai in the bush. We had to get pigeons in secret. Dad had a double barrelled shotgun but only one barrel worked. We used to go up the bush when the taraire berries and miromiro were ripe because the pigeons would be there and they would be fat. He used to take me up the gully, to the slide – it was called that because they used to slide the taraire logs down there. Well he would tell me exactly where to sit. Then he would shoot the pigeon, he was a really good shot, sometimes he would get two with one shot. They always dropped right beside me. We would scrape the leaves aside and pluck them warm and then put them inside my shirt and I would be sent to walk back to Mum who was waiting just down the hill by the house. She would put them straight in the pot to cook. That was what we did – we only got three or four, enough for a feed and they were good.

We had about 15 cows, and me and Millie milked every milking with our mother, Mum was a really fast worker, she milked much faster than us. She would say to us “Come on you kids keep going”. You could hear her squirting so fast into the bucket. The older girls had left home by then.

When we were young, we played around the rocks and over on the island [in Tūtūkākā harbour]. Mostly we went there to get kina. I wanted a boat like my cousins and Eric felt sorry for me and gave me a yacht they had made. We always played with boats, I can still make them, made like an outrigger yacht made out of the dried flower on the flax. Later, I made yachts for my boy, Phillip. I got an old piece of wood and shaped it, smoothed it out, carved out the insides and put two sails on. He wanted a schooner. We used to take them down to the bay and sail them over to the old wharf and around the harbour. We used to put them in the

she kept falling off, so I always went with her. My mother was always looking after people in the district. She used to ride to Ngunguru to look after Henare Haehae (my grandfather’s brother) when his wife died.

My mother had a big garden down in Church Bay, right up the valley. She had her own way of ploughing the garden. We had a big pig and Mum would tie a stick to its back leg and she would lead it around the garden to plough the ground. While the pig was going around the garden, it would go to the toilet along the way, and that was how Mum fertilised the garden! You know we had fantastic vegetables. My mother was a real worker.

We would do our work by seasons, and change our karakia each season. We had a whānau garden up at Dolphin Place too, by Rehuotane maunga. We loved rotten corn and had it heaps. We grew the corn and it was hung in sacks in the running creek for months until it was really rotten. Waikanohi stream was great to make rotten corn, because it flowed so fast. We also grew popping corn which was a special sort of corn, and we popped it on the stove in a pan with some butter. We had a kūmara pit, and every time we reached into it to

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water and then row around with them. They blew the bought boats, that the campers had, out of the water for speed.

When I was older, we used to love going to dances on Saturday nights in the Ngunguru Hall. I played in a band with your father too. I played the banjo ukulele. I got that from Granny Makere’s house, Uncle John gave it to me one day. Uncle John was so kind to me always looked after me when I went to stay with them. He told me I could have that uke if I learned to play it. He also said I could have a piano accordion that was there but my sister said no. Uncle John was always a real gentleman.

There are many places of significance that I learnt about growing up out here.

That creek at Rosie Wellington’s is where the warriors used to say karakia before battle. The stream is called Waikanohi. (When they wanted to name the wāhi tapu Waikanohi, I was happy because it is on the same whenua.) That stream is tapu and if it was ripply when the warriors went to say karakia by it they knew that wasn’t a good omen. When it was smooth they knew they would have a successful expedition.

When we lost our baby teeth, we didn’t have the tooth fairy but we had to hold our tooth up and there was a karakia that was always said. It was a big deal losing a tooth; we had to have a karakia, it’s a karakia to the rats. They say a karakia to make sure a new tooth grows strong in its place to eat with.

I talked mostly Māori before I went to school. I went to Ngunguru School, and got there by walking over the hill. My sister Zeitoun used to walk with me when I was little. At first I cried all the way. One day, when we got to Ted Amos’ he asked what was the matter, and when Zeitoun told him, he said, “hop in the truck boy and I’ll drive you.” That was the best thing, and I stopped crying and felt really choice. My teacher at Ngunguru School was Miss Davis.

The coal scows used to go up the Ngunguru River and carried granite and sandstone for ballast, and then when they got the coal and fireclay they would drop their ballast in the river. Some of that ballast still washes up when there is a storm. The river was a busy place when I was growing up.

Paratene Te Manu with his cousin Ericat the Kaumātua and Kuia Ball

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Mōtairehe Marae – August 2013

Dad was from Great Barrier and he was a Davies. His name was Wi Taiawa Pitekino. He grew

up on the Barrier. My Mum was a Hakaraia. After our mum died, Dad took her back up to where she came from, Rāwhiti up the Bay of Islands.

My family were born Ngātiwai. It was good growing up in Ngātiwai, I enjoyed it. It was a big whānau atmosphere, and we all lived close together in Mōtairehe. Our marae is Mōtairehe. We were brought up there. My grandfather and grandmother were from there. Grandad grew up on the Barrier; he was a Davies. I had two brothers, no sisters.

The people growing up around us were the Ngatai family, my cousin Bertha married Morris Ngatai. Then there were the Taki family, my cousin and her husband and family and further along from them was the Harris family. That’s another cousin’s family. We lived on Great Barrier ‘til I married my husband and we left the Barrier. His name was Richard Wii.

Dad used to go fishing and hunting. The whole area wasn’t fenced. Just one big island where we owned it all, family you know. There were cattle and horses. We didn’t have wheels then, it was all done with horses.

Dad was farming. Our families didn’t need help ‘cause there was enough of them to do the work. We all

worked on the farm. Mum worked the farm but she stayed home and made sure that we had something to eat when we came home and she also did the washing.

Going to school at Aotea, the school was over the hill from us. It wasn’t a big school but there was enough family to fill it up. There were no buses; we used to have to walk over the hills to school and walk home again, but once we got over the hills well, it’s all beach and you know the tide comes in.

“

“

My family were born Ngātiwai. It was good growing up in Ngātiwai, I enjoyed it. It was a big whānau atmosphere, and we all lived close together in Mōtairehe. Our marae is Mōtairehe.

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Mōtairehe Marae – August 2013

My mum is May Wii. She was Mabel Davies, she’s Mabel Wi Hoete now. Dad’s Richard

Wi Hoete and his dad was Hemi Wi Hoete – Hemi married Pani Grant, so that’s how Dad and them became family on the island. I had four brothers and one sister all brought up at the Barrier.

We had an amazing childhood growing up on the Barrier, we really did. Aunty Eileen and all her family lived next door, and it was kind of just us really. ‘Cause we lived so close together – there was Aunty Daisy Henry and Uncle Jack down on the flat. We all lived in Port Fitzroy, they all worked in the Forestry, and then of course we have our whānau out on Flat Island. They were all going to Ōkiwi School too. Of course we also had the place at Mōtairehe. So, from the time Mum was 14 until she got married to my dad, that’s where she basically lived.

Uncle Mick Wii, lived down there [on Aotea] all his life and he died down there. He had a sister that married a Mahanga from up in Pātaua.

Dad was born on the Barrier. Mum’s mother lived on the Barrier, but when she died they took her back to Rāwhiti. That’s how her dad met her step mother. She’s from up there. Her name was Kahu Pita. Her step mother and Dad are buried in the urupā at Bland Bay, her mother’s in Ōroto.

My dad used to feed everyone really, he used to go hunting every weekend and fishing. He fed the whole community sometimes. He had cows that he ran over in Mōtairehe, like his brother, Mick Wii; he had stock as well you know. That was a food source but there was plenty around. In those days you could walk around the beach and see snappers feeding in the rock pools. There were huge schools of sprats you know, that went in Mōtairehe ‘cause we always had a net and we’d net enough to eat – the creek was black with sprats. You only caught what you wanted and then you’d let the rest go. Of course it’s a bit different now, there’s hardly any sprats.

I went to school at Ōkiwi. There was probably about 10 or 12 kids there. Just one teacher. It was pretty isolated for school teachers, they'd come and go all the time. I was the eldest daughter so I helped look after my brothers. I would help Mum in the house. But then I used to go hunting with Dad as well and fishing, you know what boys and dads are like. You don’t really see girls going out hunting and fishing with their dads.

The first time I left the island was for high school. I went to Avondale College [Auckland]. Of course it was really different, coming from the Barrier. These days the kids come from off the island and it’s nothing to them but in those days I probably came off twice in my whole 13 years: what a shock. I boarded with Aunty Freda Toki and her family. It was quite scary, I found it really hard and it’s a shame ‘cause I loved school but I couldn’t wait to go home.

I only did two years of college. I went and got a job when I finished school. My first job, I went

“Great place for kids at the Barrier, ae, it’s still much the same for the kids down there now; they’re always so happy and active.

“

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nursing at the Wilson Home for Crippled Children at Devonport. It was an awesome job, you could get a job over there when you were 15. It was a rewarding job. One day I went home and I met my husband on the Barrier. So I married Brian Williams, he was the mechanic for the New Zealand Forest Service.

We had quite a lot of involvement with the marae, it’s a bit hard you know when your kuia and kaumātua and them say “we’re going to build a marae.” But the point I was making was that all the family my age, they were just having children and they all wanted to live on the Barrier and they were pretty committed to their family. But then again we had to participate and support the marae. It was quite hard really trying to bring up a family down there and then try and get involved with a project like that.

I don’t think we knew what Ngātiwai was then. There was one thing about living on the Barrier, all the family used to come over and visit, and we kind of got to know who everyone was and how they were related. This is from all parts of the family, whether it was Mum’s or Dad’s side of the family. It’s different now. It was really quite good teaching for us. You just got to know lots and lots of people.

It was a real whānau environment, whereas if they lived in Auckland they were kind of separated. The Barrier is a great place for kids, ae, it’s still much the same for the kids down there now; they’re always so happy and active. I must go back there one day.

Mōtairehe Marae

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NgātiwaitangaTaipari Munro (Editor)

Moana-Aroha Henry

Te Rahingahinga (Era) Reti

InterviewersAndrea Gordine

Makere Lawrence-Bade

Rodney Ngawaka

Joanne Waata

Gayle Wellington-Dowsett

Yvonne Wiki

Sub-editorsWayne Miller

Carol Whitfield

Ngātiwai Education published a book – Ngā Kōrero o Ngātiwai – used in primary and intermediate schools with stories and articles all based on these interviews. If you’d like to find out more or purchase a copy please contact Ngātiwai Education for further information.

All interviews have been approved (by the interviewee or their whānau) to be featured in Ngā Kōrero Whakahoki Mahara. Ngātiwai Education would like to thank all the kuia and kaumātua for sharing both their time and their stories.

Unfortunately not all our Ngātiwai Kaumātua and Kuia were interviewed in these initial interview sessions. Ngātiwai Education is looking to undertake more interviews and capture more of our stories in the future.

Visit our website to view excerpts of the filmed interviews.

Visit our website to find out more about some of the kupu in this book. Our glossary Ngātiwai Kōrero Mai! can be downloaded as a booklet and you can also listen to audio clips of the words featured in the glossary.

www.ngatiwai.ac.nz

Ngātiwai EducationTe Au Here o Tūkaiaia