Beautiful City Of The Heretaunga Plain

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

Beautiful City Of The Heretaunga Plain

Romantic Story Of The Foundation Of Hastings

SUNBURNT, muscular young men, gay lassies, hearty oldsters, merry Maori people, farmers, holiday-makers and townsfolk come and go in the busy streets of Hastings, central-city of i Hawke’s Bay. The first impression of a stranger to i that sunny city is that it is essentially a happy, care- ■ free city of youth and virile energy, lhe second impression is that it is a prosperous city of modern buildings and wide, straight streets, alive with the bustle of commerce and the business of trade. The third is that it lies lapped in a grand plain of bright gardens, rich orchards, fertile farmlands, stately poplar avenues —the Heretaunga Plain, gardens of Hawke’s Bay. , i; One hundred years ago that plain was one great :raupo swamp, broken by stretches of shining tussock, ■haunted by the shy pukeko, possessed by virtue of conquest and force of arms by the brown children of Kahungunu the Greedy. Kahungunu, son of Famatea •the Pathfinder, that bold navigator who brought his people to New Zealand in the canoe called Takitimu, ■first set eyes on the Heretaunga Plains. Later his descendants conquered them, led by the warrior chief Taraia. Later generations made good their tenure, re,polling the war parties of Urewera, Waikato, Ngapuhi and Ngatiawa invaders. The Pakeha’s Coming

■! But there was one invader with whom they could not cope. In 1839 the whaler William Morris established a shore whaling station at Cape Kidnappers. Trader and whaler, publican and missionary, beachcomber and pakeha-Maori, the insidious invasion of the white man took place in a quiet and unostentatious ■ fashion, which did not alarm the Ngati-Kahungunu until they awoke to the realization that the land was no longer theirs. For, although it was illegal to lease Native lands, 'the early' settlers cared little for the law, and paid “grass money” to Maoris who were glad to change a ■few acres of useless land for beer, tobacco, clothes, and iron -tools. Philanthropic pakehas lent money to the simple Maori, and did not press for payment; the happy-go-lucky borrower came again and again for gold —until the day of reckoning arrived. “Tomorrow ! Tomorrow!” said the Maori, but the white man, suddenly stern, answered “You must pay, either in money or in land!” And so the children of Kahungunu signed away their right to the conquests of Taraia.

Before ever the task of draining the great swamps at the mouth of the Ngaruroro River was undertaken, two far-sighted pakehas put their heads together. Thomas Tanner and William Rich leased from the Maoris th e Heretaunga Block, where Hastings city stands today. The chiefs

Karaitiana Tpkomoana and Henare Tomoana put their marks upon the deed.

Later the speculators formed a syndicate of 12, including the Rev. Samuel Williams, of Te Ante, the Hon. J. D. Ormond, later Provincial Superintendent, and purchased the block at 30/- an acre. The chief Tomoana had just returned from fighting Te Kooti arid the Hauhau rebels on behalf of his good friends the whites; he was deeply in debt, and had no choice but sell for the money's sake. Karaitiana strenuously opposed the sale of the land, but he was overruled.

It was then that belated public feeling began to regret —but not uncomfortably deeply —the treatment of the Maori tribes. The famous article entitled, “The Acts of the Apostles,” appeared in a local paper, satirizing the'syndicate, and branding them with a nickname that lingers yet.

As a sequel, a Royal Commission was. appointed: it confirmed the European tenure of the purchased lands. Mr. Sheehan moved a motion of regret in Parliament —but what good did that do ? And Karaitiana stood up in the House and said that if he had to carry his appeal to England and lay it before the Queen he would have his rights. But those clear-sighted, unswerving gentlemen did not turn aside for the babble of their enemies, or for the lonely voice of a brown chief crying of his alleged

wrongs. They laid the foundation of a city. They drained the swamps, planted and ploughed the plains, replaced the whares of the Maori with the red roofs of civilization. And today there stands on the Heretaurjga Block one of the prettiest and most prosperous little cities in the whole of this new land.

Rebuilt since the disastrous earthquake of February 3, 1931, Hastings is a model city. On the outskirts of the town, for holiday visitors, is a 40-acre camping ground, hedged for shelter, shaded with trees, equipped with artesian bathing pool, teniiis courts, golf course, ornamental lake with canoes, arid public cookhouse. Around the city spread fertile farm and garden lands, vineyards, maize fields, orchards, richer than those of any other portion of New Zealand. Pleasant villages, Havelock and Clive, nestle among English trees. Perky Indian hill-mynah birds hop about the grassy lawns. Roaring surf falls on the beaches of Haumoana and Te Awanga and Waimarama, beaches that count among the Dominion’s finest bathing places. The Gannet Sanctuary

Nine miles away from Hastings the le Awanga Road runs down to the shore. A tramp along the sea beach, between the towering cliffs and the surging breakers, brings one by a picturesque pathway to the gannet sanctuary of Cape Kidnappers, only mainland nesting-place of these birds in the whole world. On a level summit above the foreland named by Captain Cook in memory of an unfortunate incident that befell him there, brood the countless nesting seabirds. Squatting rank upon rank on the bare, baked clay, hundreds of thousands of them, big black-and-white parents sleekly preened, ungainly speckled fledglings, and brown bundles of down, they carry out the eternal mystery, of repopulating the sea's face. Ihe air is filled with their movement, their harsh voices, the whistle of pinions going and coming. A fine view of the plains can be had from Te Mata Peak, above Havelock. Almost at the traveller s feet lies Hastings, spread out like a map. A beautiful prospect —and Hastings is rich in pleasant prospects, days of enjoyment, happy memories, for those who holiday on the Heretaunga Plain, in the lands reft by the pakeha from the children of Kahuncunu.