AFTER FIFTY YEARS

Opunake Times, 30 October 1931, Page 3

AFTER FIFTY YEARS

PATEA AND ITS PIONEERS. RICH JN HISTORY. Patea, a rather drab little town with many old buildings and situated on the western bank of a .small tidal river near the southern boundary of the Taranaki Province, has been celebrating the jubilee of its constitution as a borough, writes J. F. MacDonald iii the Auckland “Herald.” The average city motorist on holiday tour would probably never recall passing through Pacea at all but for a very bad turn on to a harrow bridge at the

southern entrance of the town, a distinctive water tower, and the surprise of seeing an excellent post office, an imposing courthouse, a large brick municipal building, and a pleasing pillared and tiled construction all in close proximity, after lie had resigned himself to a succession of shops which looked as though they had seen better days. The pretty tiled building he finds to he the Hunter Shaw Memorial Library and Plunlvct rooms—and vaguely remembers that his paper of 1929 enumerated a list of handsome bequests. But Patea is more than a dying township. The centre of a large dairying land, it boasts two growing industries. Of the first the average tour,at is unaware unless connected with some branch of the dairying business; with the second, and a south wind, every traveller, whether by rail or car is acquainted. It is in the transport of produce handled by these two concerns that the port and its shipping facilities are chiefly employed. Then again, the town is the administrative centre of a county which extends from the Manawapou River in the north to the Waitotara in the south. Toward the Sunset. Although only fifty years old ns a borough, Patea dates its history back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it is noted among the Maori people as being the place in Aotearna where these people first settled. Tradition has it that the great navigator, Kupe. ivln visited Now Zealand early in the fourteenth centry, spoke enthusiastically on his return to Hawaiki of one place he had visited in the new land; a place “where the. earth smelt sweet and the river flowed toward the setting sun.” His story greatly impressed Turi, another navigator, and the latter left Rangiatea, an island about 125 miles from Tahiti, and set out to visit the land Kupe had discovered.

As far as can bo ascertained, Turi landed an Aotea. Harbour, near Kawhia, and set out with his tribes people to find the river Kupe had mentioned. When Patea was reached he knelt down, smelt the soil and said: “Ka patea tatoru,” which, literally translated, meant that lie was relieved of his burdens—Kupc’s river had been found. Patea thus Ire came the home of the first Maori settlers in New Zealand. A strongly fortified pa was erected cn the headlands where the pilot station now stands and cultivation was begun. With quarrels which split up Turi’s family and finally caused one portion to move its habitation to the north bank of the river Maori legend is rife, but for five hundred years after that details of their life arc scanty. The Present Site. When the white people came to New Zealand there was a small Maori settlement at Turi’s old stronghold on the Patea River, and it was not long before the pioneers were attracted to that portion of the country by tbe fertile soil and good climate. Gradually the hutments of the pakeha appeared on a green fiat near the mouth of the river. General (afterwards Sir Duncan) Cameron encamped there and used the settlement of Patea, so it was called, as a base for military operations during the Maori wars of the ’sixties. Many engagements and skirmishes ensued in the surrounding district, and at one time the town was completely evacuated, as an attack was expected from a large body of hostile natives. Finding the township deserted, the Maoris, under Titokowaru, marched on to Waitotara without doing any damage, and the settlers returned to their holdings. About 1870 the present town was surveyed and the houses at the old site were removed and re-erected in the present locality, the name being changed to Carlyle. Steady progress in the development of the rich land in the surrounding district was made by the settlers, and the town itself grew until, on October 13, 1881, it was proclaimed a borough under its present name, with a population of 863 During the ’eighties, it was the railway terminus, and when the line passed on the population dwindled considerably. Shipping activity was much greater than to-day, there often being as many as ten and twelve coastal vessels in the port, in the early ’nineties the town was caught by the general depression and many people left, things remaining at a standstill for some years.

Like all other New Zealand towns it has suffered its depressions and its booms, but, to anyone conversant with the steady growth of the dairy industry, the extension into the hack country of sheep-rnns, and the increased (|iuinlitics of produce handled by the freezing-works and the grading store, there is no doubt that Patent has established itself as an important seagateway. In many ways it has kept itself abreast of the times.

it lias been singularly fortunate in it a benefactors. From them have come a public library and reading room, a town clock, a children’s ward at the hospital, Plnnket rooms, and a playground at the Domain for children. There arc still living in Patea and other parts of Taranaki a few grand old men and women who played as children on the green flat at the river-head when such settlement as was then in evidence comprised a collection of mud-huts, soldiers’ barracks and temporary iron structures. So, although Patea may ap]>ear to bo an ordinary, old-looking little town to the casual passer-by, its history savours more of romance and action than those of many that arc larger and more important. Its municipal jubilee recalls something of worth in our island story.