Island Time - Musings from Matiu

As summer finally arrives in Wellington for our Provincial Anniversary Weekend, I decided to share some musings from a stint on Matiu - the island sanctuary in the middle of Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington Harbour) in winter 2023. It was a blissful four days, even though I was ‘working’ as a volunteer ranger for the Department of Conservation (DoC) at the time. The opportunity arose through my 21 years’ service as a volunteer for Eastbourne Forest Rangers - a role which is sadly coming to an end as DoC does away with in-person bio-security checks on the island.

I catch the 10.20 Eastbourne bus to get there. As we head round the bays, misty rain ahead of us, I see a rainbow reaching down to the water: it could be touching Matiu, which is hidden by the rain curtain.

From Days Bay wharf, I will hop onto the Ika Rere, the large, sleek new electric ferry, but bump into one of the DoC rangers at the Pavilion beforehand. She has just got married, and when not on the island, lives with her husband near Ohakea!

On the wharf, a plumber waits with a new stove and oven for the campsite kitchen on the island.

As we’re about to board, the Iwi DoC Ranger also joins us. Her job is to help foster iwi reconnection with the island, which owned by Taranaki Whānui, governed by the Harbour Islands Kaitiaki Board and managed on a day-to-day basis by DoC.

So, for the journey over on this grey wintry day, there’s me, two rangers and the plumber. On the way over, the stove falls onto its side in the turbulent waves, right above my head.

There is a rainbow over the harbour again, reaching the island in the mist as we draw close.

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After biosecurity checks for us all - self-checking the bags, it’s into the golf-cart: a mini electric vehicle, with the two rangers. I am delivered right to the door.

I offload my gear into my unit, then report for duty at the Field Centre, where the DoC office is. There, I manage to find, among a haphazard concoction of clothing, some winter, fleecy trackpants and a shirt that fits. Then it’s back down to the wharf and the whare manuhiri by 12.25 to welcome a mana whenua group associated with Taranaki Whānui.

As we converse, I find out one of the young leaders lives in my street back in Moera! She is here with a cohort of young people who have dropped out of school - her words. They are staying at Education House, one of the 2-3 houses available for people to book overnight accommodation.

After I’ve done biosecurity with them, I come outside and there is a bright clear rainbow. It gradually moves up the coast northwards from Eastbourne splashing all the houses along the way in glorious rainbow colours. It is awesome, it is incredible, and rainbows stay around the harbour for the rest of the afternoon, it seems. I am reminded of a time, long before, when I looked out from Wellington City to the island, and saw a rainbow touch the island. It seemed like a sign, a blessing, a promise.

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Island time here is set and kept by the rhythm of the ferries: over the next four days, I am required to welcome, or be available to welcome, any visitors who arrive on ferries at 10.25, 11.05, 12.25 and 1.15. That is all, that is the minimum. The only thing that came ashore on the 1.15 was a large piece of white plastic pipe that the plumber left behind! While waiting for the ferry, I meet up with Jill and David, whom I last encountered doing a Karobusters weekend last year. Karobusters scour the island, off the beaten track, to remove pest species - including of course ‘karo’ - native to New Zealand, but not to this area.

Turns out it was the one and only Karobusters weekend any of us have done! They found it hard. I said I hadn’t had the time to go back to it, yet.

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At 2.30pm, after lunch, I am sitting on the seat outside the middle ‘motel unit’ where I am staying. These three 1-bedroom units were built round 1970 for vets and other technical staff visiting the animal quarantine station that ran on the island til 1995.

The sun is shining, it it calm, it is quiet. I hear the breeze in the trees. I hear birds chirping in different locations, high small birds. I do not know if they are native or introduced.

I hear the sound of the Eastbourne fire siren, and wonder: emergency? or false alarm? The wind stirs the trees more noisily. My pen writes silently - erratically, but stubbornly in the hand of the one who holds it - across the page.

The sun shines through a small grove of pohutukawa and macrocarpa.

A very light, misty film of rain drifts across, just beyond and above the shelter of the porch. I am facing northwest, but if I twist my body and head slightly to the left, I see Wellington, with a big black container ship and smaller white ferry sitting out in front of the city.

On the hills is thick, misty cloud. It reminds me of the cover of the book Big Weather - Poems of Wellington, which has such a scene on the cover, only more foreboding.

A light misty rain falls again. There must be a name for this type of rain - the type that is almost not there - but I do not know it. It’s a type you can hardly feel, but you can see the tiny delicate drops fall slowly to the ground, or blown sideways by the wind, as the sunlight catches the drops.

As I walk around the island about 4pm, after cleaning out the whare, the rainbow continues along the Eastbourne coast. At one point, the two ends, from the Seaview wharf to Burdan’s Gate south of Eastbourne, are completely joined at the top. It is complete. 

 

  

Breaking in the New Year - a climb up Te Aroha

My New Year's treat to myself (my wife would hardly call it that) was to climb up Mt Te Aroha, the highest peak (952 metres) in the Kaimai Range which dominates the Hauraki Plains, topped further by a 125 metre TV transmitter tower. For me it was a return 'home' overlooking the Plains which shaped my psyche in my first five years - and later two years in Paeroa.

Some photos of the walk, the view and surrounding Te Aroha township are below, but once again, just scratching a little under the surface of dominant (European Pākehā) history, we find ‘the truth’ is not always what’s displayed publicly.

At the base of the mountain, in the township of Te Aroha, lies the thermal springs and spa, a depleted geyser, and beautiful looking Edwardian-style gardens and buildings.

Despite public plaques and the Te Aroha Museum saying the springs on the slopes of the mountain were ‘generously gifted’ by Rangatira Te Mokena Hou, a summary of findings by the Waitangi Tribunal in the Hauraki report notes the following (page xl of the Executive Summary):

Despite some oral traditions to the contrary, the Ngati Rahiri Tumutumu rangatira Te Mokena Hou and his whanau did not, in legal terms, ‘give’ to the Crown the hot springs reserve in section 16 of the Te Aroha purchase (while retaining sections 15 and 17 where the township was built). Rather, Crown control of the springs was asserted through the Te Aroha purchase, the proclamation of the Te Aroha goldfield in 1880, and the Public Domains Act 1881, under which the reserve was gazetted. We accept therefore that another Ngati Rahiri Tumutumu oral tradition that the springs were ‘taken’ by the Crown has some validity. In general, we find that the Crown has failed to protect the traditional values and kaitiakitanga of the tribe in Te Aroha mountain and hot springs. [further details in the report]

Regarding the naming of the mountain, in Te Arawa tradition, their ancestor Kahumatamomoe after traveling to Te Tai Tokerau and back again (naming many places along the way), “Before returning to Rotorua, he climbed the highest point on the Kaimai Range, naming it Te Muri-aroha-o-Kahu, te aroha-tai, te aroha-uta (the love of Kahu for those on the coasts and those on the land) for his relatives living inland at Rotorua and Taupō, and those near the sea in the far north and the Coromandel.” (see (‘Te Arawa Stories’)

However, the Te Ara – Encyclopaedia of New Zealand website notes that in the tradition of another iwi (Tainui), it was named Te Aroha-o-Kahu by the Tainui ancestress Kahupekapeka, who climbed the mountain after the death of her husband.

There are more and deeper stories to be told about ‘Te Aroha’, and it’s meaning and significance to Māori, on both sides of the Kaimai divide.

 

 

And the town clock still chimes the hours and every quarter hour. Listen in the video below.