The Chief's Story

Te Ao Hou, July 1956, Page 33

The Chief's Story The Ngati Porou settlers, Ben Ngapo told us, at first grew maize and wheat. Cropping in those days was co-operative: the whole community worked first one man's land, then another's, until the work was done. In the late sixties when the goldminers and millers came, this was dropped and Maoris began to work as loggers and gum-diggers. Everybody earned a living, but nobody grew rich. Te Urupa (Ben) Ngapo, Kennedys Bay elder.

This drawing is made by Mr E. Mervyn Taylor from an old photograph in the possession of Mr Fred Anderson of Kennedys Bay. It is the only relic of the old milling town and sheep graze today where houses and workshops stood. Gradually the bush area receded. A tramway was laid to bring the trees to the jetty. On the mountains, a town with 700–800 people developed digging for gold but they disappeared as they had come, and left no trace except some treacherous holes hidden by the manuka. When Ben Ngapo grew up, the Kennedys Bay timber mill was already deserted; only a few kauris were left standing in inaccessible places. The Maoris cut these down and shipped them to Auckland. Around the time of the Boer war, these trees too gave out. Mr Ngapo went to Northland to work as a logger, leaving his wife and children behind. Many did this. Others started cutting the flax and selling that on the Auckland market. But the flax too was quickly exhausted and today not much of it is seen around Kennedys Bay. The carved meeting house collapsed and was never rebuilt. A few years later a butter factory opened up in Coromandel. This was a great event for the whole population of the northern tip of the peninsula. Mr Ngapo returned home and bought some cows. Where did you get the money from?—I booked it, Ben Ngapo replied. The first year Ben Ngapo carried the cream over the mountain on a packhorse, for years after it was a buggy. The herd and the yield of the pasture remained small until the Maori Land Development scheme started. Then he saw his kinsman Sir Apirana Ngata, who made finance available.