Hokianga
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Hokianga.jpg
The Hokianga Harbour, also known as The Hokianga River or more frequently simply as The Hokianga is a long estuarial drowned valley and its surrounding area on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand.
The original name, still used by local Maori is Te Kohanga o Te Tai Tokerau ("The nest of the northern people") or Te Puna o Te Ao Marama ("the wellspring of moonlight"). As if all those names were not enough, the full name of the Harbour is Te Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe - "The place of Kupe's great return".
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Geography
The Hokianga is located in the Far North District, which is part of the Northland Region, and is 85 kilometres northwest of Whangarei and 25 kilometres west of Kaikohe. The estuary extends inland for 30 kilometres from the Tasman Sea. It is navigable for small craft for much of its length, although there is a bar across the mouth.
Twelve thousand years ago Hokianga was a river valley flanked by steep bush-clad hills. As the last ice age regressed, the dramatic rise in sea level slowly flooded the valley turning it into a tidal, saltwater, harbour with abundant sheltered deep water anchorages. This was the harbour that farewelled Kupe and in 1822 would welcome the first European timber entrepreneurs.
The area around the harbour is naturally divided in three by the estuary. To the south are the settlements of Waimamaku, Omapere, Opononi, Pakanae, Koutu, Whirinaki, Rawene, Waima, and Taheke; to the north are Broadwood, Pawarenga, Panguru, Mitimiti, Rangi Point, and Kohukohu; and at the top of the harbour are Horeke and Mangamuka.
History
In the 14th century, the great chief Puhi landed just south of the Bay of Islands. The tribe of Puhi, Ngapuhi, slowly extended westwards to reach the west coast and colonise both sides of Hokianga. Hokianga is considered to be one of the oldest settlements for the Maori, and is still a heartland for the people. Rahiri, the 17th century founder of the Ngapuhi iwi was born at Whiria pa to the south of the harbour, where a monument now stands to his memory.
In this process of expansion the Ngapuhi created and maintained over centuries a complex network of walking tracks—many of which evolved into today's roads.
Wesleyan and later Anglican missionaries were guided along these ancient routes to make their own discovery of Hokianga and its accessible time resources. Their reports soon reached merchant captains in the Bay of Islands.
Captain Herd of the Providence was the first to respond, and with disgraced missionary Thomas Kendall as guide and translator, crossed the bar and entered the harbour in 1822 (the first European ship to do so) and sailed away with the first Hokianga timber shipment. His success inspired a strong following—the deforestation of Hokianga had begun and would be completed by the turn of the century.
The only disincentive to Hokianga's exploitation was the harbour bar. Of the hundreds of ships that successfully negotiated it, the records show that sixteen were lost. Most came to grief when leaving fully laden and became caught in the wind shadow cast by South Head where the deep water lay. A temporary lull or change in wind direction could cause a sailing-ship to lose steerage way and be swept onto the rocky shore. The last recorded shipwreck was the schooner Isabella de Fraine which was lost with all eight crew in 1928.
In 1837 a French aristocrat with delusions of grandeur, Baron Charles de Thierry, sailed with sixty settlers into this hive of export activity to claim an immense tract of land that he believed he had purchased for thirty-six axes, fifteen years earlier. He was eventually granted about 1,000 acres (4 km²) at Rangiahua where he set up his colony declaring himself 'Sovereign Chief of New Zealand'—a title which failed to endear him to Ngapuhi. His project collapsed and he left behind him a few ancient fruit trees and a lot of gouty DNA. His visit at least inspired the Colonial Service to get on with a treaty in the face of this implied Gallic threat.
The year after de Thierry arrived another French connection, Bishop Pompallier, sailed in to establish a Catholic mission. He found the southern shores firmly in the hands of Methodist and Anglican missionaries, but the northern side was ripe for conversion. His remains, recently claimed by Ngapuhi, lie buried where the mission began. Today the harbour, like the Reformation, stands between Protestant and Catholic.
The communities of Horeke and Rawene are the second and third oldest European settlements in New Zealand. Rawene is still the most important of the coastal settlements in the Hokianga.
Within six days of the Waitangi signing, Governor Hobson, keen to secure full Ngapuhi support, trekked across to the Mangungu Mission House near Horeke where 3000 were waiting. This was the second signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 12 February, 1840. With the appropriate signatures (and a few inappropriate entries) he could immediately claim support from the biggest tribe in the country.
While the fate of the nation was being signed into history, the axemen of Hokianga scarcely missed a beat. At any one time, as many as twenty ships could be loading Hokianga timber. Whole hillsides, suddenly bared of vegetation, began to slip into the harbour choking its tributaties with mud.
The relationship between Maori and Pakeha (European) settlers was frequently tense, never more so than during the Dog Tax War of the 1890s, which was largely centred around Hokianga.
By 1900, the bulk of the forest had sailed over the bar and the little topsoil that remained was turned to dairy farming for butter production.
Most of the cream delivered to the Mokukaraka Dairy Factory was carried there by a fleet of about fifty locally built launches that criss-crossed the harbour daily, creating in the process a service for both passengers and freight. For half a century, the communities on both sides of the harbour were linked internally by sea transport, before improved roads in the 1950's finally displaced this energetic flotilla and the harbour once again divided the community.
By 1914, a rustic telephone system linked some of the Hokianga communities with each other and the outside world. A government-subsidised, weekly coastal shipping service ran between Onehunga and Hokianga bringing in freight and taking away butter.
Industry
The first major industry of the region was based around the kauri trees, both logging and the gum, the strong thick resin which came from the trees. After the forests started to thin, dairying and cheese production took over as the mainstay of the economy, but they too have fallen away. For a while during the 1970s and 1980s, there was little economic base for the area, and it became a haven for alternative lifestylers.
In recent years, however, tourism has become of significance to the region. Attractions such as the kauri of the Waipoua Forest (including the country's tallest tree, Tane Mahuta, beaches, historic buildings, nature walks, horse trekking, boat trips, and fishing.
Hokianga celebrities
Two iconic and very different figures in New Zealand history have been closely associated with the Hokianga.
Mother of the nation
Dame Whina Cooper was born at Te Karaka, Hokianga on 9 December, 1895, the daughter of a Maori leader of the Te Rarawa iwi.
From an early age she showed an interest in local community affairs and politics, and her flair and abilities led to her becoming the undisputed Maori leader of the northern Hokianga by her mid-30s.
In 1949 she moved to Auckland, and by 1951 she was elected first president of the new Maori Women’s Welfare League. The leage’s success was largely due to Whina’s efforts, and she became well-known throughout the country. In 1957 she stepped down as president and the annual conference rewarded her with the title Te Whaea o te Motu ("Mother of the Nation").
Whina Cooper continued to work for the community throughout the 1960s, but it was her 1975 leadership of a hikoi - a symbolic march - to protest against the loss of Maori land for which she is best remembered. The march, from the northern tip of the North Island to Parliament in Wellington at the other end of the island made her nationally recognised, with her determined figure, no longer strong in body but strong in mana and will, walking at the head of the march from Te Hapua to Wellington.
She was made a DBE in 1981 and a member of the Order of New Zealand in 1991. Whina Cooper had returned to Panguru in the Hokianga in 1983. She died there on 26 March, 1994 at the age of 98.
Opo the dolphin
Opononi became famous throughout New Zealand during 1955 and 1956 due to the exploits of a bottlenose dolphin (nicknamed "Opo"). Opo was a wild dolphin who started following fishing boats around Opononi in early 1955 after her mother had been killed, and would swim daily in the bay close to town. She was originally named "Opononi Jack", based on Pelorus Jack, since she was presumed to be male. Unlike the majority of dolphins, she had no qualms about human company, and would perform stunts for locals, play with objects like beach balls and beer bottles, and allow children to swim alongside her and make contact.
The dolphin became a local celebrity but news of her soon spread, and visitors from throughout the country would come to watch her. On 8 March 1956 official protection for Opo, requested by locals, was made law, but on 9 March she was found dead in a rock crevice at Koutu Point. It is suspected that she was killed accidentally by fishermen fishing with gelignite. Her death was reported nationwide, and she was buried with full Maori honours in a special plot next to the town hall.
References
- Parkes, Bill, A Northland Legend: Dr G.M. Smith of Rawene 1883 – 1958, published by The Auckland Medical History Society, August 2004.
External links
- Hokianga (http://www.hokianga.co.nz/) from the NZ Community Development Trust
- Hokianga Tourism Association (http://www.hokiangatourism.org.nz/)
- Hokianga History (http://communities.co.nz/Hokianga/Feature.cfm?WPID=208)
- Dictionary of New Zealand Biography essay on Dame Whina Cooper (http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=5C32)