A Sign of the Times

Te Kaha

East Cape, North Island

May 2009. Ajr

Museum Stories

I took these two photographs in Auckland Museum last year. I was taken not only with the beauty of the carving but also the story behind how they came to be there. The boards were created in the late 18th century by the Te Whanau-a-Apanui people of the eastern Bay of Plenty (East Cape) at Maraenui, near Te Kaha. The museum exhibit shows the central barge boards (maihi) and doorway (kuwaha) of a pataka (storehouse), which was dismantled in the early 1820s and moved to Raukokere, where new carvings were begun. Before they were completed they were hidden in a cave at Te Kaha to protect them from the 1823 raids by the Northland Ngapuhi tribe. They were recovered from the cave in the 1890s and bought by the Auckland Museum in 1912. I have featured the Maraenui Marae, Te Kaha and Raukokere on this blog previously. Just click on any of the names in the label line below this post to take you to photographs of each of them.

Te Kaha - An East Coast Marae

The skies were putting on a show the afternoon I rolled into the little east Coast town of Te Kaha - home to around 350 people, who live in homes gathered around the Te Kaha Marae - sometimes also called Tukaki Marae

The main coast road curves around the small hill that offers the marae a commanding outlook up and down the coast. Across the road, in total contrast, sits the new Te Kaha Hotel, which clings to the cliffs above a wide sweep of East Coast beach.

There wasn't a soul about the day I drove through and, with an eye on the clock and due in Hicks Bay later that afternoon, I only had time for a brief stop. But it was nice to sit there and reflect on how the marae scene might have looked back in 2007, when locals staged a massive powhiri (welcome), for Corporal Willie Apiata to celebrate his being awarded the Victoria Cross. Apiata - like New Zealand filmmaker, Taika Waititi, calls this marae home. I suspect the little community hadn't seen so much action for decades, as then-Prime Minister Helen Clark, Defence Force chiefs and Maori dignitaries arrived to congratulate Willie Apiata in the traditional Maori way. Also in the traditional Maori way, the crowd of over 3,000 visitors was treated to a traditional hangi feast - crayfish, mussels, oysters, titi (mutton bird) and more - prepared by the Te Kaha locals. All of that required tractors to help burrow out hangi pits big enough to cope with the numbers.

Te Kaha Marae sits within the rohe (tribal area) of Te Whanau-a-Apanui.

www.apanui.co.nz