Pakehas Come to Stay

Te Ao Hou, September 1962, Page 44

Pakehas Come to Stay that is seen and heard for many miles.” Six years after this, Te Taou, through fear of Ngapuhi, joined the exodus from Kaipara to Waikato. Te Taou did not see their sandhills for a decade and when they returned there, the whole pattern of Maori life had changed. Tribal warfare had been ended by the missionaries with a series of peace-making meetings and more and more Pakehas were coming to New Zealand to stay. Te Taou lived on in their villages near the sand until about 1870. The principal settlements were those of old, Oneonenui, Ongarahu, Kopironui and Pahunuhunu, near Ohirangi. At Ongarahu in 1865, Te Kawau gave shelter to the crew of the cutter ‘Petrel’ which had been wrecked on the Muriwai coast, and a mission base at Pahunuhunu, the home of Aoihai te Wharepouri. Here Bishop Selwyn planted two Norfolk pines which are still standing today, and visiting ministers held services in the chapel near the sand. As the Pakeha cry for land became greater the old chiefs of Te Taou, Apihai Te Kawau, Hikiera. Paora Tuhaere, Uruamo, Otene, Wharepouri and their sons sold much of their ancestral territory, keeping small reserves for themselves and their people. They sold the sandy acres as well as the arable, and gave white men the possession of the land right to the Tasman Coast. And it happened that after almost a century and a half, the sandhills of Te Taou became significant to them only for the wahi tapu among them, and as a pathway to the coast of the toheroa and sea fish. The nature of the sand, like life itself, had changed for Te Taou. It was their enemy now, spreading over many of the old pa sites and threatening, in its march from the sea, to engulf those people who stayed in its path. By 1870 the sand, like some greedy taniwha, had swallowed much of that portion of the Ongarahu pa in which Te Taou lived, so that a new pa had to be found. This second Ongarahu, a mile to the east, is above the west side of the Reweti railway station and is the present marae of Te Taou, complete with church, cemetery and ‘Whiti te Ra’ meeting house. The sandhills kept rolling forward as the years went on. The Pakeha settlers who lived in their shadow were worried about the relentless drift of the dunes, but they seemed as powerless to stop

the flow as were the people of Te Taou. The first white man to attempt to halt the sand was Mr Richard Monk, who took up land at Woodhill in 1870. Mr Monk employed Renata Poata Uruamo and others of Te Taou in planting poplars, marram and experimental grasses from Australia on the sand at the back of his farm. The marram flourished and the poplars can still be seen from the main road to Helensville. Later, another Pakeha who attempted single-handed to check the sand was Mr Richard Hoe of Reweti. This man was a friend of all Te Taou and had greatly admired their tohunga chief, Otene Kikokiko. In the 1920s Mr Hoe planted marram, lupin and pines, but though these grew well his efforts were of as little use as trying to empty a lake with a canoe baler. Still the sand came on, creeping over hills and spilling into valleys until the dunes just south of Woodhill were only half a mile away from the main road. The 1930s were hungry years in New Zealand. Not only was the sand hungry for the land but men were often hungry for food. To give men work and a little money, the Government established relief camps, placing the men in Public Works. And in 1932 men were brought to begin planting the sandhills with lupin and marram. So that this could be done, the Pakeha owners of the sandhills sold their useless acres to the Ministry of Works for a nominal sum. At first few of Te Taou found work on these sandhills in which they had once lived. But they were interested in the planting, and were pleased that the burial grounds of their people were respected by the Ministry of Works. The first camp was a little north of Woodhill, and others were built near the sand at Reweti and Muriwai. The men who lived in them slept in canvas tents and worked on foot in all weathers, doggedly continuing their battle over the years. Then in 1936 some pinus radiata were planted amongst the marram and lupin, and at last the sandhills closest to peoples' farms and homes were stopped in their advance.