Kauri-tough Te Kanawa: Porirua sports pioneer

Tu Tangata, Issue 25, 1 August 1985, Page 18

Kauri-tough Te Kanawa: Porirua sports pioneer

By Michael Romanos

Te Kanawa Wi Neera is one of the precious few sportsmen in New Zealand’s history to have reached a level of proficiency at three branches of team sport.

The Porirua Rugby Football Club who celebrated their 75th jubilee last March, lauded Te Kanawa Wi Neera as their most famous son.

Wi Neera played international rugby league, senior first division and representative soccer and senior rugby. He played rugby union at forward at the turn of the century, was in Porirua club teams following affiliation to the Wellington Union in 1910 and was a representative in inter-tribal district rugby a forerunner to the annual Prince of Wales Cup match.

Wi Neera was in the history-making New Zealand Maori Rugby League team which toured Australia in 1909 and created an enormous impression with league-hungry Australians.

Wi Neera was in a party of 20 which included an interpreter named Barclay and was managed by John Hetet. The side played five matches, winning three including the defeat of New South Wales and the full Australian representative team. The 20-16 victory over Australia was played at Sydney in front of a huge crowd of 45,000. It was the first defeat a team from New Zealand had inflicted on Australia.

Wi Neera played in the first game of league ever staged in New Zealand. On Saturday, June 13, 1908 at Athletic Park in front of 8000 spectators, a local Wellington scratch side played the Austra-lian-based All Golds who had just arrived from touring England and Australia.

A New Zealand national team was not formed until 1910, so like rugby union whose first representative tour outside Australia was the New Zealand Native team in 1888 to Britain etc, Maoris provided the impetus to league in this country.

For several winters at least, Wi Neera certainly had his weekends full, playing organised team sport.

The British immigrants working at the Porirua Psychiatric Hospital were the instigators of introducing soccer to the locals.

Wi Neera was a soccer goal keep of excellent quality and was a hero to the original Porirua United club. He played in an era which did not promote national teams, but he did manage to win selection for the Wellington representatives.

The first New Zealand soccer teams played in 1904 and 1905 and it wasn't until 1922 another New Zealand side took the field. But soccer thrived in Porirua with three clubs sprouting up in 1906 Hospital, Southern Cross and Toa.

Wi Neera played for Toa in 1906, a club which had a high Maori content and already organised ruby and hockey teams. Toa and Southern Cross combined to form the Porirua United Soccer Club in 1909 and it is recorded that Wi Neera helped United win both the Wellington senior first division title and the Charity Cup knockout competition in 1918.

It is interesting that Maoris have a dramatic presence in rugby league but in soccer few have made it to the top grades. The New Zealand Football Association do not keep official records of people of Maori parentage having played for New Zealand or at national

league level, but it seems certain only one player with a Maori name, John

Enoka of Nelson, has been as far as a New Zealand team squad. Enoka was in the All Whites World Cup squad a few years ago. However, there are other players with some known Maori parentage including Aucklander, Arthur Masters who repped for New Zealand in 1948 (and was a senior first rugby league player). Wynton and Shane Rufer of Wellington played for New Zealand in recent years. Wynton, as a brilliant striker. Current New Zealand team members are Richard Mulligan (Gisborne) and John Leijh.

Just what kind of man was this sporting marvel, Te Kanawa Wi Neera?

Known as Kan Wineera to the pakeha, Wi Neera was of the Ngati Toa and Ngai Tahu (South Island] tribes. He lived most of his life just a few steps from the Toa Rangatira Marae in Porirua. His father was Wiremu Te Kanai Wi Neera and mother, Haana Cootes. Kan was one of five brothers. The Wi Neera family, descendants of Te Rauparaha, were a predominant family alongside Te Hiko in the Porirua region.

Kan was born 11 April, 1886 in Porirua, married Gertrude Victoria Kemp in 1919 and died aged 65 in 1951. He had six children and one “adopted” but more of that later.

Two of his sons, Madson and Mahu still live in the house their father built some 70 years ago. Son, Mahu said his father was a disciplinarian who didn’t waste words and could be very uncompromising at times.

“He was well respected by all who knew him because he was straight and honest,” said Mahu.

“Dad said work came before anything including sport. Things had to be done and he knew his priorities.

“He treated his children well enough. He left us all with a legacy of hard, honest working endeavour.”

Mahu recalls his father as an excellent ploughman, shearer and horseman.

“He sheared for the prominent Riddiford family in the Wairarapa on the Tora, Te Awaiti and Orongorongo stations for many years and was regarded well by the Riddifords who were able to pick and choose their shearers.”

The Riddifords owned vast tracts of land in the Wairarapa and Wellington. The family also founded the Evening Post daily newspaper in Wellington and eventually the INL printing group which took over the Dominion, Truth, Sunday News and New Zealand Times.

Mahu said his father was among the first shearers to introduce the mechanical hand piece shear to New Zealand.

“He went to Australia with the rugby league team and saw the mechanical shear in action and decided to bring one back with him. Dad held a shearing record tally on the Riddifords’ arm.”

Kan had a way with horses considered second to none. Whether breaking them in, grooming, training or riding, Kan was a “natural”.

“He could virtually teach a horse to talk,” said Mahu.

“He loved horses and owned several. He never possessed a car. Right up to the time of his death he rode his horses.”

For 25 years until he was 60 years old, Kan was known to many Wellingtonians as “The Diver”.

When he gave shearing away, he worked as head diver for the Wellington Harbour Board, spending his working days under the sea in a diving bell, screwed down by nuts and bolts and surviving by the language of the rope.

He helped install the Floating Dock at Aotea Quay. On one grizzly occasion, Kan was sent to Picton to retrieve a body which had been chopped up and dumped in the sea in a suitcase. Kan “The Diver” found it.

His most dangerous experience was with the erection of the Steeple Rock Lighthouse, working 40 feet down in silt stirred by the ebb-tide into a kind of dust storm.

Another was using cutting equipment to get through to the ill-fated KA locomotive which was embedded in three feet of mud in the Manawatu Gorge. The “Soames Island Job” was tricky yards off-shore and down to 68 feet to bend and concrete-pack piping for the new artesian water supply.

“The Diver" said people diving are less liable to catch a chill in the winter because during the summer months their bodies are warmer and a greater contrast with the cold water.

Kan was right into collecting crayfish

from Barretts Reef like one picks potatoes. Those were the days. Try finding one or two today at that infamous reef which signifies the entrance to Wellington harbour.

Kan gave away some of the destructive and unnecessary things in life like alcohol and cigarettes and embraced the Mormon religion. He rose to hold the high position of Branch President (Mormon elder] at Porirua.

The story of how he married his wife, Gertrude is an amazing and unconventional saga.

Of dignified parentage, London-born Gertrude Kemp met one of Kan’s brothers, “Jack” in England. The couple married in England and had a son named Stan. Poor Jack was killed in action during the first world war.

On the insistence of her in-laws who wanted to see their grandson, Gertrude travelled to New Zealand. The pair were “kidnapped” by Wiremu and Haana Wi Neera and Gertrude was prompted into marrying Kan.

A gentle and kind woman, Gertrude was the first pakeha to live in the pa at Porirua. She died in 1972 at the age of 83.

Kan joined the fledging Porirua Rugby Football Club with its motto, “Tatou Tatou”. But Kan’s best sporting efforts would have been as a soccer goal keep.

His resilient, tough attitude to life was transposed onto the field of play. He was tall at 6ft lin and athletically built. His shearing gave him powerful arms and shoulders.

Neither Madson (now aged 64] nor Mahu saw their father play any sport. Indeed, Kan never spoke of his sporting career and exploits to his children.

“He was only interested in teaching us to work hard and love the land,” said Mahu.

Madson and Mahu both played first rugby union for the Athletic Club Wellington and represented Wellington Maoris as loose forwards. Like Kan was, Mahu is an elder of the Mormon church.

Kan’s whangai, Stan made a huge impact on the entertainment world in New Zealand during the war time years of 1940 to 1945. With his flashing eyes, Stan was a brilliant stand-up commedian and musician. He was one of the stars associated with the famous Kiwi Concert Party. Stan died a few years ago.

Kan’s brother, “Dodi” Wi Neera was a Maori All Black and toured England and France with the New Zealand Maori team in 1926-27. He was noted as a clever player in the backline.

Academically, grandchildren of Te Kanawa and Gertrude who have succeeded are John Wi Neera who is a biology professor at Polytech, Vernice Wi Neera-Pere who is a poet and short story writer living in the United States, Jennifer White who is a qualified lawyer and Hyrum Parata who is studying law.

But perhaps the spirit of Te Kanawa Wineera lies more fervently in his grandson, Rawiri Wi Neera. Rawiri who lives in Hamilton has inherited a remarkable rapport with horses.