Plenty
Plenty corners the market in paper planes while Sulata Ghosh goes in search of the Bay’s best eats, we read the tea leaves with Noble and Savage and brew up with Mata Beer, Jenny Michie phones home, and there is a night to remember at Tarawera.
culture :: media :: art :: food
Fr e e M a ga z in e
Issue 05 plenty.co.nz
November
two thousand and sixteen
Plenty CONTENTS
06 12 17 20 26 30 34 38 43 46
The Noble Savage Iti & Son
Wearing it well TWO wheels good Electric Dreams CafĂŠ Hop
THe power of Pounamu Above the fold Brewing up
Tarawera - A night to remember
An d y Ta y lor info@plenty.co.nz Sarah Travers design@plenty.co.nz
plenty.co.nz fb.com/plentyNZ ISSN 2463-7351
plenty {plen-tē}
noun
1. a full or abundant supply or amount; 2. the state or quality of being plentiful; 3. your best source for all that is awesome in the Bay
A n d y Ta y lor info@plenty.co.nz
November two thousand and sixteen
Sarah Travers design@plenty.co.nz plenty.co.nz fb.com/plentyNZ
So, here we are in our big fat summer edition. Who would have thought way back in March 2016 when we launched 01, that Plenty 05 would be bigger, better and being read Bay-wide in so short a time. We’ve added a few pages to 05 and we’ve run off a few extra copies to share around, so sit back, relax, and enjoy some summer reading. We’d like to thank all our advertisers for being a part of this bumper issue; without them supporting our labour of love you wouldn’t be holding it in your hot little hands right now, so go on, give them some love. They share our vision and deserve your support. We’d also like to thank everyone who appears in this issue for bearing with our somewhat self-styled approach to Publishing 101. Yes, thanks for putting up with those late night calls to make sure we’ve spelt your name right, the last minute requests to come and stand on a jetty to have you photo taken, and the funny look the designer gave you when you offered that advice about changing the heading on your bit to orange. And of course we couldn’t do it without our contributors, so we’d like to thank them for, well, contributing, and for also putting up with those late night calls to make sure we’ve spelt their names right. It’s a pleasure to work with you, and you can now find how just how ridiculously cool they are over on our website’s contributors page. But mostly we’d to thank you – yes, you! – our readers. Thanks for all the fantastic feedback, for taking Plenty to heart, and for helping to spread the word by passing it on to friends. We’ve had such a huge response that we are now offering a subscription system for Plenty, and you can now also get back issues, so if you live outside the Bay or want to collect the whole set then get on over to plenty.co.nz and read all about it.
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05
Sav The Noble Savage
Interview Andy Taylor
Noble & Savage have gone from a great idea hatched over the tea cups in an Auckland café to leading the tea revolution in New Zealand, and all the while they have proven that you can be successful and ethical at the same time. Plenty caught up with one of the founders, Alan Hughes, and Anna Meredith, the company’s Operations Manager, on Ōhope Beach to talk tea, heritage, and making connections.
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age
Plenty Noble & Savage? Aspirational, or are those your middle names?
ANNA The name comes in two parts. We were inspired by the definition of the “Noble Savage”, a 300-year-old concept of not being “corrupted” by civilisation and symbolising humanity’s innate goodness, and we think New Zealand still remains largely uncorrupted and pure with our lush, green, and beautiful countryside and positive culture. The second part is that ultimately we aimed to create a brand which would unify the noble art of tea making with the desire to savage it upon serving. Basically, we service both wholesale and retail. We have two bases in NZ, one being in Christchurch and the other in Whakatāne, and so far we have supplied the world with 704,789 cups of tea – give or take. We are focused on the NZ market, but we have had offers from distributors to take our product to the US, Australia, Malaysia, London and Russia. We want to keep it simple though, and grow as sustainably and steadily as we can, so that we can provide secure jobs for locals.
Plenty How did it all come about?
Alan Noble & Savage was founded by Rupert Curry and me, Alan Hughes. We met through riding motorcycles, and the company started when we caught up for a bit of a chinwag only to be served tea in dainty floral teacups. With my skills as a designer I wanted to do my bit for the planet as best as I could, but I didn’t want to have a product that someone would have to pinch their nose as they chewed, because while it was good for you, it tastes like dirt. It was at this point I was explaining where I was at in my head to Rupert and wondering what there was that could be done better and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what we could do better - this cup of tea.” And from that, it all started to fit. Tea was such an intrinsic part of the Kiwi culture, and it was also a ‘better for you’ product that we could really stand behind. I do the design and branding, and Rupert is involved with the construction industry, so he knows how to strategically manage massive jobs. The biggest issue that we had to confront was that tea is generally associated with grandparents and stuffy old people. So we had to start by touching the core of NZ as tea drinkers, but to also create a brand that inspires a youthful pioneering spirit with a product for customers to interact with on both an analogue (packaging) and emotional level (the feeling you get after drinking the tea). We aimed to give a nod to the pioneers of tea while being unique, modern and simple. P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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Plenty Where is all your product sourced, and why did you choose that location?
Alan Our product is sourced from all over the world. South Africa for our Rooibos (red bush), China for one of our green teas and one of our single sourced black teas, Japan for our other green tea, as well as Assam and Ceylon. Our herbals are sourced from some of the same mountains the Greeks enjoyed back in the day, so it’s really a global product. We hunted out the best estates that believed in fair-trade and ethical practices, as it was really important that if we were to bring their product to market we could stand behind it. As for the blends, funnily enough, this is the fairly simple part. If we enjoy it, it “wows” us, and we can drink it all day, we know it will be a winner. In saying that though, we have noticed an interesting difference between wholesale volumes versus direct to the customer. While the cafés tend to be on the safe side and choose teas that are familiar, the directto-customer sales tend to be more exploratory, with exciting flavours like White Chilli Truffle or Maple Walnut. In our blends, we are introducing our customers to the higher end of tea coming from some of the most established tea estates, and we’re aiming for them to be overwhelmed by the taste and variety. And we are careful not to exclude anyone by using terminology that most folk don’t understand.
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Plenty What do you think is special or sets Noble & Savage apart?
ANNA We birthed the idea for a new brand of premium tea - sophisticated and yet masculine enough that men would not only feel comfortable with it, but would actually want to be seen drinking it! We were acutely aware of the need to introduce an entirely new aesthetic sensibility in premium tea. This was in order to generate enough intrigue to break through the inertia and commodification of tea, and stimulate consumer demand. We wanted to replicate a trend we had witnessed with the rise of coffee brands, but which had yet to occur for premium tea. This took us deep into the pioneering past of New Zealand, to the early settlers, who upon enormous sailing ships brought with them both their savage rodents and their noble tea drinking traditions. There is a strong tea culture in New Zealand, due to us being a country of farmers and hard workers; Kiwis like to enjoy the small breaks they have in the day with a good cuppa. Moving people away from the tea bag to loose leaf tea with a little more flavour is worth the little bit of extra time.
Plenty Kiwis do seem to fancy themselves as coffee aficionados but are relatively unmoved by tea – are you going to change that?
Alan My grandfather grew up drinking only tea, and the same with my father. It’s only been since the introduction of specialty coffee into New Zealand in the late 1980s that tea was no longer the Kiwi goto beverage. So tea drinking has a long - and noble - history in New Zealand: in the huts of whalers, sealers, in the rations of the early settlers. And the stats confirm it. Up until the 1960s, traditional black tea was the beverage of choice, with the average Kiwi consuming more than 3 kg each year - more than their British counterparts! With the uptake in specialty coffee and the boom in café culture, it is likely that if you go into a café looking for a coffee you can choose everything from the origin of the beans, the intensity of the roast, the amount of milk, and have a trained barista serve it to you. Thanks to this, people are also starting to expect the same of tea, and once they discover some of the amazing tastes and realise that the industry is quite like wine with the variation, quality, estates the tea comes from, the altitude, etc, then people are really going to get into it. I do believe whenever Kiwis want to do well in something they do so, be it rugby, sailing or coffee; we are able to take our skills to the world and punch above our weight. This great nation is the inventor of the flat white, with thousands of cafés dotted around the country serving fresh coffee every day. I personally see the pairing as mutually beneficial; by no means are we going to scoot coffee out of its place, and that is not our intention. I will start my day with a peppermint or a black single estate tea, then have a coffee from the French café or stand up espresso, have a chat with some good folk, then run out the rest of the day with tea. Nothing worse than going to business meetings four coffees down and feeling wiggy! P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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Plenty What was the most difficult part about creating the business? And what is on the horizon for the good ship Noble & Savage?
Alan The hardest thing isn’t really the product but more the connections you need to make something work. I believe if a product is good it will sell itself, but with that being said you still need to get it in front of the right people. This is where Rupert and I are great to bounce off each other, as we connect to people in different ways. The grand plan was - and remains - to develop and distribute a range of premium accessible, loose-leaf tea products that New Zealanders buy and love. One that all Kiwis could be proud to drink anywhere, anytime. Along the way, we’ve made sure guiding principles such as ‘making human connections’ and ‘giving back’ were woven into the fabric of Noble & Savage’s not-very-corporate culture! We have a few very exciting developments on the way, from collaborating with some rad NZ people to some awesome new product extensions and offerings. Can’t give too much away just yet though, so watch this space. Photography: jamesstanbridge.com
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Plenty finds the face of Tūhoe activism clean-shaven, sitting in
an antique barber’s chair, and wearing his signature hat. Beside him is the younger male child of his first marriage, the patriarchal bloodline obvious, but the fine cheekbones of his Australian mother are evident, too. This is Iti and Son: two hustlers raising the spirit of Tāneatua, fuelled by the belief that the past is where their future lies. ‘Hustlers’, I hasten to add, is a self-described nod to Tāme and Toi Iti’s ability to make things happen. “Hustle can have a bad name,” says Toi, “but to get things done, you have to have a bit of hustle. Dad’s got it. I’ve got it. You don’t sit back and wait for people to give you things.”
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Well used to pitching ideas in his career as an onscreen producer and presenter, and looking to diversify out of television, it didn’t take Toi long to start looking for opportunities when he was drawn home. The Māori Women’s Welfare League was running an Op Shop out of the town’s former butcher’s shop and had their sewing room next door. “Dad’s sister was involved. The sewing room was all boarded up with no natural light, and the display space for the clothes didn’t really work,” Toi explains. The penny dropped, and he could see a win/win. A business plan and a bit of wheeling and dealing later, and the Tāneatua Hair Saloon opened its doors, beside a much better working environment and bright, fresh, corner retail space for the aunties. Re-purposing the buildings started with removing the roller doors, a feature of many shops on the main street and a hangover from the time when drunken fights would spill from the (long-gone) pub across the road. “The landlord wasn’t too sure when the barricades came down, but we saw it as an act of confidence in our community, that the growing sense of pride means that people will respect the space.” The Hair Saloon is totally charming, keeping some original fixtures and amping the vibe with macrocarpa slab benches, recycled timber framing, an old church pew, and framed photographs of the town’s early years. The fit-out harks back to a frontier town – hence Hair Saloon rather than salon. The enterprise is a clever, multi-layered amalgam of past and present, blending mythology with razor sharp marketing. “Tūhoe like to think of themselves
The Tāneatua Gallery
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as cowboys,” Toi says. “We still ride horses; you’ll still see kids riding their horses up the street. That is their history. This is the same street that Rua Kēnana used to come out of Te Urewera to get into Whakatāne.” Even the incorporation of the word ‘Tāneatua’ is nuanced, referring not just to the place, but also to the ancestor Tāneatua, after whom the town is named. “Our tipuna, Tāneatua was half-brother of Toroa, captain of the Mātaatua waka. Tāneatua explored all around this area, famously accompanied by his dogs. Having his name inside our brand narrative allows us to honour him and retell his story, bringing him back to life for our young people,” Toi says. Some would say Tāneatua was a bit of a dude; reputedly strong, handsome and a hit with the ladies, you can imagine he might have swung by the Saloon for a skux trim. Toi recognises that he might be in for a bit of flak from those who don’t quite understand the concept. “You’ll always get a bit of that, but the intention is tika (true); to reconnect to our ancestor, to our history, especially for our young people. We’re facing a present and future where the information comes from online, in small, consumable bites, delivered rapidly. Look at the way young people connect with sports stars – Sonny Bill gets a new haircut and everyone wants it; the All Blacks use a certain deodorant and that’s meant to make you invincible. Well, we have our own mythology of a progressive, adventurous explorer, and that’s a really authentic brand.” Signature cuts and a product range of hair and beard products made by Tūhoe from the mānuka and kawakawa of Te Urewera are also in the plan.
The Tāneatua Hair Saloon is just metres
up the road from the Tāneatua Gallery, which now consumes a lot of Iti senior’s creative energy. Both endeavours are thriving in a very exciting Tūhoe time.
The fit-out harks back to a frontier town – hence Hair Saloon rather than salon.
“Post {Treaty} settlement, Tūhoe have acknowledged that we are part of a wider community; that’s New Zealand and the globe. There are no barriers any more. We are looking at healing, and thriving and our tipuna would like that. Our ancestors were very adaptive; we always saw opportunity, we saw ways to shift and change and unique ways to express ourselves,” Tāme says.
Tame and Toi outside the new Saloon.
He sees the gallery as both a vehicle for artist’s expression and a place to bring people together. “It’s bringing a lot of people to Tāneatua who wouldn’t normally come here, other than to maybe stop in at the garage. You don’t have to be Tūhoe to exhibit here. Tūhoe have a history of learning from others and others learning from Tūhoe – it’s a two-way conversation.” Tāme’s role at the gallery is essentially as consultant curator, lending his networks and experience to the gallery founders, Lawrence Hughes and Bernie Marr, although he does exhibit there too. As an aside, not too many people are aware of Tāme’s philanthropy; while his eldest son Wairere acts as his art dealer, Tāme is likely to be giving away a painting to a kōhanga reo, and Tāneatua Fire Brigade currently has an Iti work to sell to raise funds. Since it opened, The Tāneatua Gallery has hosted exhibitions from local, national and international artists, quickly building a reputation as a place to be shown and to be seen. Don’t be surprised to see work by Billy Apple and Shane Cotton in the future. This is Tāme’s third involvement in the gallery game and in many ways has taken him full circle. The concept of the Tāneatua Gallery has been in the back of his mind since the mid-90s, when he set up the Tūhoe Embassy, a collaboration of artists who created an outlet to sell their work to finance their aims for Tūhoe self-determination. But this isn’t a story about the activities and activism — some judged illegal — that took place between then and now. As Toi has already said, you can find information quickly online if you want to go there. Instead, we’ll leave the last words to Tāme.
“We’re facing a present and future where the information comes from online, in small, consumable bites, delivered rapidly. Look at the way young people connect with sports stars – Sonny Bill gets a new haircut and everyone wants it”
“Over time, I had to get smart about how to exercise my political consciousness, and I discovered that art is probably the safest way I’m able to do that.”
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Te Tira Hōu (New Generation) is the latest collaboration
between Tāme Iti and Kawerau-born, internationally recognised muralist, Owen Dippie.
Watching over the corner of Whakatāne’s The Strand and Richardson Street, it blends the artists’ signature styles: Dippie’s large-scale portraiture with Iti’s drifts of people – ancestors standing in support. Te Tira Hōu follows on from the striking Tāneatua mural featuring the ‘face of Tūhoe women’, and the exhibition Ko koe Ko Au (You and I) held earlier in 2016 at the OD Gallery in Auckland’s Karangahape Road. “I had the idea of pulling out the faces of the real people; this second one is the face of the future,” Iti explains. That face happens to be Te Hawiki Reiner Rangihika-Hawea, surrounded by his Ngāti Awa, Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko, and Dutch forebears. Commissioned by the Whakatāne Rotary Sunrise Club, with funding from the Southern Trust, the artwork is guaranteed to be in place for five years, under an agreement with the building owners. In front of the large scale portraiture of his likeness stands Te Hawiki and Tāme. The Strand, Whakatāne.
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Wearing it Well words Andy Taylor
Fashion designers have drawn their inspiration from many a muse – lovers, strangers, music, colours – but only Natura Aura found it through a scanning electron microscope. To be fair, the microscope in question was merely the means to an end, and it might instead be better to credit the creations of the Rotorua design duo to art and craftsmanship, but it was nevertheless the melding of technology and tradition that saw this young company invited to the catwalks of Paris. Formed just three years ago by Anastasia Rickard and her grandmother Leilani, Natura Aura picked up the Established Designer Award in the Miromoda Fashion Competition in Wellington and came to the attention of model and fashion show creator Jessica Minh Anh, who travels the world seeking out innovative and creative fashion brands. This led to an invitation to take their work to the 2015 autumn collection showcase in Paris.
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Fashion should be about fun. You can’t take it too seriously!
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Photography supplied
“It was a huge honour and a privilege,” says Leilani, but she admits that the tight turnaround time between accepting the invitation and the show date called for a massive collaborative effort by the designers, their graphic design team and their garment manufacturers. “We usually work day and night with our team and manufacturers to prepare collections and fashion showcases, but Paris was on a completely different level, more of a global scale, which at that time was really daunting.” Collaboration is, however, what Natura Aura is all about, and it’s what bought the company into being. Despite coming from a creative background – her mother is an artist, her grandfather a carver at Te Puia – Anastasia chose science as a career path and soon found herself at SCION, the Crown Research Institute based in Rotorua. She was amazed by the scanning electron microscope images of native plants, including harakeke (New Zealand flax), kiekie, pīngao and tī kōuka (cabbage tree). “I was taught how to weave by my grandmother, and to be able to see on a microscopic level the fibre layout and the arrangement of the inside of these traditional weaving plants was an enlightening experience. It also cemented my love for science and experimentation.” A friend shared the images with her grandmother, a weaver with 40 years of experience in working with flax and fibre, and Anastasia and Leilani immediately hit upon the idea of using the intricate patterns and textures from the images in fashion design.
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We are coming at it from the same perspective, but just from different generations, and it is when we blend that together that a whole new kind of cohesion comes through.
“My grandmother grows her own harakeke to use in weaving,” Anastasia says, “so she had a real connection to it, but had never seen it at the microscopic level before – well, no one really had. We really felt we should do something special with this, but we wanted it to be a genuinely modern take on tradition, rather than just putting some imagery onto products and calling it design.” Together they set about incorporating traditional colours, lines and shapes into contemporary fashions, with Leilani taking ideas from her years of experience in traditional weaving and Anastasia calling on her science background. “There is definitely a dynamic at work,” Anastasia says. “She’s the ideas and concepts person – and I’m the one who has to figure out how to make it work! But basically we are coming at it from the same perspective, but just from different generations, and it is when we blend that together that a whole new kind of cohesion comes through.”
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The result of that cohesion is a range of rainwear, including a collaboration with Blunt Umbrellas, and their Iwi Creations hosiery line that updates the traditional with a modern twist, based on tattoo designs. Both lines have been a huge hit with the fashion world and the consumer, and the fledgling company now has stores stocking their products everywhere from Whangarei to Kawakawa and the South Island, and they are looking for more. “I think what people appreciate in our work,” says Anastasia, “is that we do think about our customers – we want them to be comfortable as well as looking great. It’s also really important to us that all our garments and fashion accessories are made in New Zealand, and we’ve worked really hard to make sure of that. But we also think fashion should be about fun. You can’t take it too seriously!”
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Jeff Anderson builds bikes — bloody good bikes. He’s also a bloody nice guy, and these two things are probably related. We know he builds good bikes because in 1990 Karen Holliday rode one to victory in the Track Cycling World Championships, the first Kiwi to ever win such a title; her winning ride is on display inside a glass case in the Dunedin Sports Hall of Fame. Lachie Stevens-McNab also rode a Jeffson to gold, becoming the world’s best six-yearold BMX rider at the world champs in 2011, but we’re not sure where his bike currently is. If you’ve ever been around a six year old you’ll know why.
Two wheels good
We know Jeff is a bloody nice guy, because he agrees to meet Plenty on a cold, blustery morning in Rotoiti and stand on a jetty politely while our photographer fiddles with his camera and tries to act like he knows what he’s doing. Jeff is that kind of guy; he likes to make things words Charlotte Jones happen, and he understands that good things come from a Photography Andy Taylor process. Sometimes those processes take hours, even days of work; sometimes they take years. And Jeff would know, because he has been building bikes, welding frames, restoring old school cruisers and selling shiny new ones for quite a few years in a career that has seen him go from fresh out of the box newbie to master craftsman. His bikes don’t After hitting just occupy glass cases in Dunedin, they occupy a special place in a car head on, people’s hearts, offering a he died in hospital tactile, tangible reminder but was – thankfully – of how important true craftsmanship and revived, finally waking up passion remain from a coma two months later. in our mass produced world. Jeff’s career started in 1982 when he landed a job in a bike shop after leaving school. “This will do for a while,” he thought, little knowing that it was something that would become his life and that his work would play a major role in changing the lives of others. He next applied for a job building frames in Whanganui, and without any knowledge of it he did a two-week course in welding and then simply picked it up as he went along. Learning from his mistakes and learning to think for himself is what gave him the passion for the skill, and he reckons that if he had been helped too much it would’ve just become any other job. The Whanganui gig lasted a couple of years, until it was interrupted rather suddenly in the form of a bad motorcycle accident. After hitting a car head on he died in hospital but was – thankfully – revived, finally waking up from a coma two months later. “It was incredible,” he says. “It makes you feel like, ‘Shit, I love living!’ ” He also realised he wanted to spend his life doing what he loved, rather than doing things he thought he had to do, or what people thought he should do. Following his release from hospital, his passion for bike building — along with Jeff himself — took on a whole new lease of life.
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“Steel is Real” as any diehard will tell you, but it is also way more earth friendly, as a good steel frame lasts forever, long after the flash carbon or alloy jobs have cracked or warped.
Jeffson as a brand started 27 years ago, but at the time Jeff says he was simply meeting a market, and it’s only been during the last couple of years that it has really come into its own. He closed his bike shop three years ago and started to work out of his workshop, so he now works on his own without the pressures of managing staff. The biggest difference this made in his business was that he stopped trying so hard, stopped looking out for the money, and just did it because he enjoyed doing it. Now, he says, he gets up and loves going into the workshop and building bikes. And that is probably why people love to ride Jeffsons.
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rest | relax | rewind Welcome to DriftsanD ohope’s premier accommoDation All Jeffsons have steel frames and are handcrafted the same way as bikes were made 100 years ago. Though it had been on the decline following the arrival of alloy frames in the 80s, and more recently carbon fibre, steel has since made a huge comeback. “Steel is Real” as any diehard will tell you, but it is also way more earth friendly, as a good steel frame lasts forever, long after the flash carbon or alloy jobs have cracked or warped. Steel allows for the different lengths and thicknesses required for each individual customer to be easily fabricated, so it is the perfect material for a custom build. Jeff never stopped working with steel, even at the height of the alloy boom, first out of stubbornness, then because steel frames were his passion. In the last two years, people have started coming into his workshop to help build their bikes. Some days, he says, “I’m not really Jeff or the frame builder, I’m just that person in between helping people create their dreams.” One of these people was Lachie Stevens-McNab’s dad, with his world championship bike being made in just seven days. Jeffson bikes have craftsmanship and passion welded into their frames, and that’s something you can’t just grab off the shelf. While he and his bikes have enjoyed huge success, all Jeff is really about is what he describes as being the elevator for people, taking them to the place where they get on to a bike that changes their lives. And if that means standing on a jetty at Rotoiti, well, so be it.
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We don’t just think Whakatāne is a great place to live, we also think it is a great place to do business. To prove it we are highlighting three new or growing businesess that have shunned the congestion and high costs of the main centres to call Whakatāne home. Almost ten years after its founding, Te Urewera Treks is helping even more visitors to the Eastern Bay get off the beaten track. The company was originally set up by husband and wife team Joe and Joanna Doherty, but since the passing of Joe, his niece Hinewai McManus has stepped in as manager to carry on his vision. “We provide a range of eco-cultural wilderness experiences,” she says, “from 1-4 day walks through Whirinaki Te Puaa-Tāne and Te Urewera as well as Lake Waikaremoana. Traditionally, we have seen around 90% of our visitors come from Germany or the Netherlands, but in the last eight months there has been an increase in interest from domestic travellers, primarily from Auckland.”
Te Uruwera Treks
Te Urewera Treks is committed to employing people with a connection to the land and training them with the view of adding capability to the local community. Manaakitanga, the concept of caring for people as you would your own family, is an intrinsic part of the culture of Te Urewera Treks to both visitors and their staff. “We want to put Te Urewera, Murupara and Ruatāhuna on the map,” Hinewai says. “We are committed to working with other tourism operators, tourist bodies, and our local iwi to see our community thrive. The Bay of Plenty is unique in New Zealand - pristine rain forests, beautiful mountains and the ocean so accessible. It may be a cliché, but the work/life balance here is perfect.” Visit www.teuruweratreks.co.nz.
Minginui Native Nursery
Ngāti Whare of Minginui have opened a state-of-the-art nursery, supported by Scion (New Zealand’s Crown Research Institute), for propagating native trees and plants. The iwi’s $1 million investment includes irrigation booms and tray filling equipment from Italy, the latest technology from New Zealand’s nursery sector, locally engineered plant tables, and a poly house to protect and nourish the young trees that can be remotely controlled via the internet. Ngāti Whare had its traditional Kaitiakitanga, or guardianship, of the Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Forest recognised in its Treaty of Waitangi settlement, and part of that settlement covers the iwi planting thousands of native trees once existing plantation pine trees have been harvested. Mere George, Ngāti Whare Holdings Ltd Manager, says that Ngāti Whare chose to build its own nursery to produce the necessary plants rather than source them from elsewhere. “By building this nursery, we can not only speed up the native reforestation program but ensure our whānau can be trained and receive employment at the nursery. The nursery will become a live laboratory for our local children, and they will not only learn about growing plants and the high-level skills Scion is adept at, they will also learn about regenerating the forests around them. It will also provide trees to assist with the native regeneration of 640ha handed back to Ngāti Whare through settlements, so it is a real win-win outcome. We are very pleased to have been able to invest not only in the future of our whānau but in our District too.” Email admin@ngatiwhare.iwi.nz for more information.
Kaiārahi Fly Fishing Tours Strong ties to the land and a desire to share its beauty with others meant it was not difficult for the team at Kaiārahi Fly Fishing Tours to choose a name. Kaiārahi means guardian or guide, and that is just what this new company do through its fishing tours to the beautiful head waters of the Rangitāiki, Flaxy Creek, the ancient podocarp forest of Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne and Kaiārahi guide Himiona Nuku, fishing at the Rangitaiki River the rugged mountain terrain of Taurawharonga and Maungapōhatu. Their packages include travel, accommodation, gear and locally-produced foods for 3-5 day trips, and they are looking to work closely with local iwi and other tourism operators to provide a totally authentic experience.
“What we love about the Whakatāne District is its diverse landscapes, from the plains to the mountains, ancient forests to the sea.” Atamira Nuku, Project Coordinator at Tūhoe Manawaru Ruatāhuna, says the company is focused on being able to utilise the land in a sustainable way while providing culturally unique fly fishing experiences for clients. “What we love about the Whakatāne District is its diverse landscapes, from the plains to the mountains, ancient forests to the sea. It’s a great place to live, raise a family and invest – there are so many opportunities – and we are honoured to be guardians of our lands and rivers. It’s great to be able to contribute towards our social, economic, natural and cultural heritage through our fly fishing business.”
Atamira Nuku, Manager
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Roslyn.Mortimer@whakatane.govt.nz or call 07 306 0585 or 027 702 4205 whakatane.com whakatane.govt.nz
In 2014, three graduates of Whakatāne High School set out to give New Zealanders cheaper electricity; two years later,
they have achieved just that, and along the way they helped to change the landscape of how Kiwis buy power.
We’ve all seen the ads on TV – the bright yellow Kiwi lightning bolt hopping about the screen – and their social media presence is equally allencompassing, offering up everything from power saving tips to, er, 1980s Pixie Caramel TV ads. Electric Kiwi are a force to be reckoned with, having gone from an upstart start-up to one of the fastest growing power companies in New Zealand, with new services just launched in Taupō, Rotorua, Hawke’s Bay, Kapiti Coast and Whangarei in addition to the major centres that they already cover. Their business model, focused on smart meters and a streamlined corporate structure that eschews expensive offices and corporate limos, has seen their market share grow exponentially in just two years and their Hour of Power embraced by a host of happy Kiwis.
Words Andy Taylor
dreams
In a market dominated by five companies - Genesis, Contact, Mercury, Meridian and Trustpower hold around 95% of the current market share – Electric Kiwi brought a fresh, customer-focused approach that saw it become the fastest growing electricity retailer in the country as of July 2016. The creators of this remarkable success story were not, however, the usual corporate suits, but Julian Kardos, Phillip Anderson and Huia Burt, three friends from the Eastern Bay. “We all knew each other at Whakatāne High School in the 1990s,” says Kardos, who admits to being Employee No.1 at Electric Kiwi. “We went down different university paths; Phill and I both specialised and gained PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Computer Systems respectively, while Huia’s career role placed her within the corporate office at Mighty River Power. Basically, one day we all got together as friends and started talking about how power prices were too high, so we conducted a little research that showed others felt the same, and in certain instances ripped off. With our backgrounds, we knew something could be done about it.”
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What they did was invest in smart technology that would allow them to buy power smarter and cheaper and then pass on the savings. While around one million households in New Zealand were equipped with smart meters, none of the major suppliers were taking advantage of the technology inherent in the meters to make savings for anyone, but themselves. As the advocacy group Consumer NZ noted, “When we last wrote about smart meters in 2008, we predicted they’d be great for the electricity industry, but were sceptical about the benefits for consumers. Unfortunately, we were right – they’ve saved power companies money, but most of us are yet to enjoy lower costs or increased control over our electricity use.”
We started talking about how power prices were too high, so we conducted a little research that showed others felt the same, and in certain instances ripped off.
From top, Julian Kardos, Huia Burt, and Phillip Anderson.
With our backgrounds, we knew something could be done about it.
Electric Kiwi decided to change that, harnessing the smart meters to benefit the consumer rather than just the suppliers. Using the information from smart meters allows for more accurate purchasing of electricity from wholesalers, and targeting tech-savvy consumers meant the company could help customers to help themselves by taking more control of their power billing. P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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“We also considered what people actually want from a power company,” says Kardos, “and it’s cheaper rates and a fair deal without having to pay for the big corporate office and call centre queues!” To leverage that, the company set out from the beginning to be a lean, not so mean, cost saving machine. Their customer interface relies on a variety of communication technologies, including web chat, social media, email, a call-back service and an online web self-service system. And most surprising of all, the company doesn’t require customers to enter into a contract, relying on quality of service and low price for customer retention.
“We’re not a traditional power company,” Kardos says. “Being independent and all-online means our focus can be on innovation and using technology to lower power bills. Energy tech companies like Electric Kiwi are keeping the big power boys on their toes – and that’s a good thing, whether you’re a customer of ours or not.”
“Electric Kiwi are keeping the big power boys on their toes – and that’s a good thing, whether you’re a customer of ours or not.”
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And does he have any advice for someone who is at Whakatāne High School - or any Bay of Plenty High School right now who wants to get into business? “Think positively and progress towards your dream each day. It’s an evolution not a revolution, but eventually all those little steps will build momentum towards your business goals.” And what, given their reputation for innovation does the future hold for Electric Kiwi? “I love diving at Whale Island,” Kardos says. “So that’s all I’m planning for the future for now!”
一䔀圀 䠀伀䰀䐀䔀一 䌀伀䰀伀刀䄀䐀伀 䠀䄀匀 䄀刀刀䤀嘀䔀䐀
眀眀眀⸀渀椀挀挀愀爀猀⸀挀漀⸀渀稀 圀䠀䄀䬀䄀吀䄀一䔀 㜀 ㌀ 㠀 㘀㌀㌀㐀
P . O . B g i b e Th
ĂŠ f Ca p o H Summer
2016
Words Sulata GHosh Photography Andy Taylor
Here at Plenty Headquarters we are a bit obsessed with food. We think about it all the time, and we talk about it just as often; bread is the staff of life after all, and talking about the perfect sushi and where to go for lunch is also a great way to avoid working on the magazine. So we decided to search the length and breadth of the Bay to find the best food and coolest and funkiest joints this side of the Mississippi — erm, Waikato. Sulata Ghosh, chief enchilada at Taste Chronicles, foolishly agreed to help, and together we came up with five of the best that the Bay has to offer. In no particular order...
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Rotorua
Okere Falls Store An old renovated petrol station that still retains some of its retro character sets the stage for an eclectic combination of store, café and beer garden. A melting pot of local artists, musicians, craftsmen and travellers, Ōkere Falls Store is all about their community and treading lightly on the planet. They sell sustainable, NZ-made products, a lot of them made by local artisans. In their own words they like to “support the small businesses, because this is where the real passion for good things comes from.”
On the menu
The Store stocks boutique craft beers, as well as imported beer from Kaufbeuren, Germany, the hometown of owner Sarah Uhl’s husband. Karma Cola recently replaced Coca Cola in an effort to take Big Sugar out of their menu, and in keeping with their philosophy of fair trade, healthy and organic food. The crepes are to die for: tasty, light and covered in fresh fruit and cream.
Two Fish Café
OpOtiki
Ōpōtiki’s Two Fish Café is something of an institution. Since it opened its doors on Church St, it has grown to be a focal point for the community, with its muffins alone worth a visit if you are in the Eastern Bay, and its seafood chowder quite possibly worth the trip if you are in the Southern Hemisphere. Mike and Liane have been the proprietors for ten years now and have a simple recipe for success: great food made with great ingredients and served in a great old-school café setting, with battered oak or formica tables, natural light, muted colours, and neither skinny jeans nor hipster beards to be seen. “For me,” Liane says, “the most important ingredient in all that we bake, make or create is love.” And it shows.
On the menu
Fantastic sweet and savoury muffins but, also a great crosssection of hearty fillers and taste sensations, all with a healthy dose of homegrown goodness. Did we mention the chowder?
P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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TAneatua
Mou Mou Kai Café Located in Te Kura Whare – The Living Building – Mou Mou Kai café does not offer your usual lackluster café fare. Mou Mou Kai gives hearty and authentic kai a modern twist, all complimented by the stunning design of the building it occupies. With ingredients sourced from producers in Te Urewera, you can be sure you’re getting quality food sourced locally and sustainably. Soul food minus the guilt? Sign us up please!
Waihi Beach
On the menu
A seasonally changing menu features dishes that embrace the heart of Tūhoe food and culture. Aromatic boil–up and Kaimoana hot pot stand out of the crowd, but seemingly mundane dishes such as omelettes and eggs bennie are made extraordinary by the accompanying rewena or Waimana sausages.
Flatwhite Café Flatwhite Café at Waihī Beach is all about location, location, location. With its incredible proximity to the sea and stunning vistas, you could be fooled into believing you’ve died and gone to heaven. Owner Andy Kennedy bought the premises in 2005 after being taken in by the view of the water, and over time he has turned it into his vision. “When you go away to any beach for a weekend,” Andy says, “you find cafés that are either terrible with deep fried everything on the menu, or once in while you find a gem that serves surprisingly good food. That’s what I wanted my café to be – a great location with great food.”
On the menu Confit of duck, chargrilled salmon, lamb pie – so much to choose from – but there are also plenty of pizza and burger options (you’re at the beach after all). We also heartily applaud their decision to begin the restoration of the classic prawn cocktail entree; you read it here first folks.
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Photos supplied
Tauranga Mr Miyagi When it seems like Japanese restaurants are popping up around the corner every week, Mr Miyagi stands out by offering a modern and chic take on Japanese Cuisine. For first time visitors, finding Mr Miyagi could prove to be a challenge. Off Maunganui Road, you could completely miss the tiny unassuming sign inviting you to walk down a dodgy alleyway behind the ASB bank. When you do find it though, you’re in for a treat. Cool quirky vibes, relaxed atmosphere and fresh delicious food take centre stage at Mr Miyagi and it just gets better from there.
On the menu
Real Japanese cuisine is all about bringing out the flavours of fresh seasonal ingredients, and Mr Miyagi does this with precision and flare – and makes it all look so simple. From steamed edamame to deep-fried vegetable dumplings, it’s one taste sensation after another.
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The power oF
Pounamu Words JENNY MICHIE PHOTOGRAPHY Andy Taylor
Thirteen graduates have just completed a gruelling 12 to 18 month course which is an alternative to prison.
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T
he West Auckland hall
was packed with people and brimming with love. The support and aroha for the thirteen people up on stage was palpable. Nearly everyone was crying and smiling as we listened and sang, clapped and cheered. As for the thirteen, sitting on their hard plastic chairs, they looked half as though they would rather be anywhere else in the world than the objects of so much attention, and half like this was the most important day of their lives. Which, of course, it was. There were powerful haka and, inevitably, speeches from politicians and other worthies. There were also speeches from two people who had been in the first group of people to have sat on that stage and received their precious pounamu in recognition for graduating from this extraordinary programme – the Drug Court. Or the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court, Te Whare Whakapiki Wairua (The House That Uplifts The Spirits) to give it its full name. The thirteen graduates have just completed a gruelling 12 to 18 month course which is an alternative to prison. All had drug and/or alcohol addictions and were caught up in a vicious revolving door cycle within the criminal justice system. Led by Judge Lisa Tremewan in West Auckland and Judge Ema Aitken in Central, the Drug Court offers participants not only treatment for alcohol and drug issues, but also for anger management, driver safety programmes and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which helps defendants make changes to their criminal thinking. Many spend time at the acclaimed Higher Ground Rehabilitation Centre, where this graduation is being held. In short, never have these people been offered so much help and for so long in order to turn their lives around. These people. Who am I kidding? There are precious few of us on the ‘outside’ who get the chance to have this much organisational and individual support so we can sort out our own shit.
Te Kaha and daughter in his workshop.
However, not everyone makes, it and it ain’t easy. One young woman who is still in the programme and therefore can’t be named told me about her four months at Higher Ground. “I hated that place. But I loved what it did for me. I hated it because it was so hard to do so much work on myself. It was so emotionally and mentally draining. “You walk away the same person, but everything’s completely changed.” P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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I was invited by Judge Lisa Tremewan to attend the graduation ceremony because of my work with the NZ Howard League for Penal Reform. My boss, Mike Williams, secured funding from Corrections for a driver licence programme for people within the criminal justice system in West Auckland, and he asked me to run it. In laymen terms (as if there’s a complicated way of saying this!) I help ex-cons get their driving licences. We don’t do this just because we’re good people - we are. But there is a theory, which we are out to prove, that if all the criminals in New Zealand had legal licences we would halve the prison population because so many of them go in and out due to disqualifications and fines. A pilot programme was already running successfully in Hawkes Bay, so it seemed like a no-brainer to give it a go here.
Jenny Michie
Back to the graduation; I’m sitting in the hall with a couple of my guys - I don’t like to call them offenders, and ‘clients’ seems a little grand for what I do. One of them is about four times the size of me and has been in and out of prison all his life. When I took him to the mall to get his learner’s licence, he said the only time in his past life that he would have been at a mall in daylight would be to rob the shoppers. People gave us a wide berth. On the other side of me in the hall is a well-dressed woman. I ask her what her connection with the evening is, and she says she’s a Judge and a big fan of the Drug Court. We agree the country needs way more of this.
He said the only time in his past life that he would have been at a mall in daylight would be to rob the shoppers. People gave us a wide berth.
Mike Williams Photographer: Alison Winks
Before the graduates leave the stage, there is the final ceremony; the gifting of the pounamu. The man who is handing out the taonga — and who carved them — is introduced as being from Tāneatua. At any reference to the Bay of Plenty my ears prick up, so I seek him out after the ceremony, quickly introduce myself, and ask if I can catch up with him when I’m back in the Bay. A few weeks later, we meet up at Pee Jays in Whakatāne. His name is Te Kaha. He shows me his driver’s licence. It seems the New Zealand Transport Agency can’t deal with a citizen who only has one name – they would surely struggle to process Cher or Bono – so his first name is listed as Te and his last as Kaha. More importantly, and certainly more germane to this article, his last drink was 25 years ago, hence his connection to the Drug Court. Te Kaha has carved and presented the pounamu at every graduation ceremony in the three years the programme has been running. An old friend of his, Rawiri Pene, invited Te Kaha to meet the Judges. Rawiri works at Higher Ground and is the Cultural Advisor for the Drug Court, an absolutely crucial role given the high percentage of Māori within the criminal justice system. At Te Kaha’s initial interview on Takapuna Beach with Judges Lisa and Ema, he told them he had a police record. “Then it dawned on me. Of course they already knew. But they also understood the work I had done on myself over many years, and they invited me to join the Drug Court Whānau.”
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He wishes there had been a Drug Court back in his day. “It would have been so much easier for me and so much cheaper for the taxpayer,” he says. It costs about $2,000 a week to keep someone in prison.
“When you leave this pounamu to your children or your moko, it will hold all of your work, your energy and your joy.”
the language of pounamu. So if you need a title for me then my title is: He Maangai Pounamu.” Te Kaha says Drug Court graduates receive the most treasured item Māori had – pounamu was valued above all else for its strength and durability – and every part of it benefits the graduates as both the shape (toki) and the stone itself have mauri. “They’ve already stopped using. And those 18 months (in the Drug Court) were really hard work, I know that. The energy in the pounamu can help them stay stopped.”
Te Kaha gives me a short lesson in pounamu and its role at the Drug Court. Firstly, and this almost goes without saying, he only ever uses New Zealand pounamu despite 90% of the greenstone sold in this country being Canadian and Chinese imports.
He says it’s like the American Indian analogy of the two wolves, where the wise old grandfather explains to his grandson that the boy has two wolves inside of him – a good wolf and an evil one – fighting for dominance. When the boy asks which will win, the grandfather replies “Whichever one you feed.”
He says two questions will determine if you’re buying NZ stone: 1) What is name of the river the greenstone came from? 2) What is the name of the person who carved it?
Te Kaha says the pounamu acknowledges the pain and suffering the graduates have been through, and its energy will help them in the future and even beyond their own lives.
We then have a somewhat circular discussion over what I should call him for the purposes of this article. “I am not a carver. I am not a craftsman, and I am not an artist. I speak
“I say to them, in time to come when you leave this pounamu to your children or your moko, it will hold all of your work, your energy and your joy.”
䘀爀攀渀挀栀 挀甀椀猀椀渀攀
眀眀眀⸀氀攀瀀椀挀攀爀椀攀⸀挀漀⸀渀稀
一䔀圀℀
㈀㠀 挀漀洀洀攀爀挀攀 猀琀爀攀攀琀 眀栀愀欀愀琀愀渀攀 ⠀ 㜀⤀㌀ 㜀㐀㔀㤀
㜀㌀ 吀栀攀 匀琀爀愀渀搀 圀栀愀欀愀琀愀渀攀 ⠀ 㜀⤀㌀ 㠀㔀㤀㠀
Above The Fold Like all great duos – Lennon and McCartney, Holmes and Watson, Starsky and Hutch – there is a certain Yin and Yang symmetry to the team at Paper Plane.
Krista Plews is of totally acceptable height and originally hails from Vancouver; she retains a hint of the accent and that classic Canadian openness. "I’m a doodler from way back," she says, "but had decided from an obscenely young age that I would be a medical rehabilitation therapist of some sort. Part way through my first year of university, I realised my odd childhood dream had changed - and so I followed my heart into a degree in architectural design." Tim Plews, the other half of Paper Plane, is unacceptably tall, equally open, but with a clearly very focussed mind. He hails from Whakatane, where he remembers laying in bed at night at the age of six trying to work out how to make a fishing lure out of a spoon. Tim’s interest in design popped up now and then over the years, but it wasn’t until he met Krista while cycling through Canada in 2007 that he started to think about designing professionally. The rest is, as they say, history, or more accurately their story, because from their store on the Mount’s Maunganui Road, Paper Plane are quietly building a business and reputation that is going global.
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Words A J Taylor Photography Krista Plews + Wayne Tait Photography
P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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HOW TO MAKE A PAPER PLANE:
Not bad for a pair who came from, well, shall we say ‘unlikely’ backgrounds for designers. "Funnily enough, we both grew up in commercial fishing families. Which is quite random," says Tim, with commendable understatement. "My parents and grandparents were involved in commercial fishing in Whakatane, and Krista’s family was involved in salmon fishing in quite a big way in Vancouver. I’d never really met anyone with a similar background, so we hit it off immediately." So much so that less than a year later they had moved back to Tim’s hometown, where Krista started working in IT and Tim as a builder. It wasn’t long before they had their sights set on a different horizon, however. "My background is in architectural design," Krista says, "and Tim was a builder by trade, and he was literally bringing home bits of wood from building sites and making furniture. We shared a love for all things design so started developing a furniture range." And here is where Yin meets Yang in the double act. "Tim was the mastermind behind the creations," Krista says, "and I was the killjoy who asked all the hard questions about function, proportions and marketability."
"Tim was the mastermind behind the creations," Krista says, "and I was the killjoy who asked all the hard questions about function, proportions and marketability."
The Mastermind and Killjoy approach worked a treat. After promoting their first furniture range themselves via media releases to Europe, they were invited to exhibit in Milan, Italy, and this led to several commissions as well as interest from Russia and France. "Those were more art-based pieces," Tim notes, "and the global financial crisis kind of put an end to that trend in design. When the market is buoyant, people are willing to take risks on design, but when things are tighter they want functionality. So more recently we have focused on our Sidekick range; we have just sent 180 of our Sidekick stools up to the new QT Hotel in Melbourne, and we have also been working with Google and American Express in Hong Kong." Closer to home they have also supplied the Marriot Hotel in Fiji and the Museum Art Hotel in Wellington. Not content to rest on their laurels, the pair also had designs on retail. "Back in 2012, our furniture range was going really well, but as any local product designer knows, manufacturing in New Zealand is pricey, which was starting to make it impossible to wholesale our range to NZ retailers. This is what really kicked off the conversation about opening our own retail store where we could design for and work directly with our customer base, along with offering a platform for other clever creatives." Paper Plane was born, with the pair designing and building their own fit out so that just six weeks after picking up the keys, the store was open for business.
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And the name? "We initially had a different store name in place," Krista says, "but three weeks before opening we got a call from a trademark lawyer, on behalf of an American magazine with the same name, who insisted we choose a new name. We decided it was an unmemorable name anyway!" After an evening contemplating other ideas, Tim was flipping through a magazine when Paper Plane popped out at him: "We thought it was a perfect representation of our venture, as the steps to make a paper plane require a simple material, some imagination and handson construction, which results in a simple, functional and beautiful object. That’s us."
"In a world that is now so fast paced, technology-oriented and plastic, perhaps we are craving an element of simplicity"
And it seems they got it right. Their Mount store has taken off as a popular emporium of funky goodness, with contemporary ceramics rubbing shoulders with stuffed rabbits and homeware. When Plenty pays a visit before they even open on a rainy Wednesday morning, customers are already trying to slip in through the door left open by our photographer. The key to their success is really no secret; Paper Plane are genuinely passionate about design, and their passion is infectious. "Domestically, we love (Auckland-based furniture designer) Jamie McLellan’s work," says Krista. "He has an incredible design sensibility, and his work is always beautifully resolved. Our current international obsession is Spanish-born designer Patricia Urquiola. She has explored a vast range of unique design concepts and worked with countless innovative brands. Critics have deemed her the ‘Designer of the Decade’, and we tend to agree!" Perhaps unsurprisingly, the work of Paper Plane shares a similar focus on sensibility and resolve, with perfect lines and exquisite, but understated finishes. At the same time, there is a modern, versatile yet very grounded thread to their work, perhaps a reflection of the fact that all of it is made locally in Tauranga by a family owned and operated business. "That’s something we talk about a lot," says Krista. "In a world that is now so fast paced, technology-oriented and plastic, perhaps we are craving an element of simplicity, the grounding effect of our heritage and products that are hand made with natural materials. At Paper Plane, we are really passionate about this movement and strive to support independent creatives like Houston Design Co., who make hand-crafted ceramics from New Zealand black sand, or Fix & Fogg, who make the most incredible small batch peanut butters. P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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"As with any industry, there are trends that come and go, and they do so very quickly. Luckily, at the moment there is a large demand for beautiful, functional objects with an emphasis on quality pieces being hand made and even better, locally made."
Which begs the final question: Who at Paper Plane hand makes the best paper planes? "We need to put this to the test," says Krista. "My guess would be Abby, one of our staff, as she is really detail and precision-oriented and would have the patience to follow the steps for making a beautiful plane. Tim would likely build the most functional plane; with the ability to visualise in 3D, he’d have it all worked out before making the first fold. But either way, since both hail from Whakatane, it’s fair to say that the Eastern Bay is nurturing first class paper plane makers!"
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She’s lost count of the awards her clever daughter has won, but when the family business first started out ten years ago, it wasn’t obvious that craft beer was going to be viable, let alone take off like it has. Gloria Viitakangas recalls doing supermarket tastings for the fledgling Aotearoa Breweries MATA beer, searching up and down the beer aisle for craft beer and finding next to nothing. Worse, people would compare it to home brew, which as we all remember (with all the love in the world) could be a bit rough.
Brewing
up
Words Jenny Michie photography Andy Taylor
“I used to take offence,” she says, still sounding a bit offended even now. “We were producing 1000 litres. Is that home brew?” Fortunately, things have moved on considerably from the days when they couldn’t get a look in with bars and pubs controlled by Lion and DB, with craft beer now considered the hippest of the hip by the hipsters.
Craft beer, now considered the hippest of the hip by the hipsters 43
If brewing beer isn’t beneficial to society, then I don’t know what is.
The prodigal daughter we’re talking about, Tammy, started her career with a Bioprocessing science degree from Massey. No, I didn’t know what that was either so I had to look it up on Google and this is one of the results: Bioprocessing is a broad term encompassing the research, development, manufacturing, and commercialisation of products prepared from or used by biological systems, including food, feed, fuels, biopharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. In other words, bioprocessing is the alteration or application of biologically derived materials for use as products or feed stocks to formulate products beneficial to society. What stood out most was “to formulate products beneficial to society.” And then Tammy’s career path made perfect sense. If brewing beer isn’t beneficial to society, then I don’t know what is. After graduating, Tammy went off on her OE. In Belgium, she was much influenced by their local craft breweries, and thus the seeds of an idea were sown. She arrived back in Aotearoa right about the time her father Jouni was taking redundancy from his job as paper maker at the mill in Kawerau; Norske Skog as it was then and is now, but best known as Uncle Tasman for those of us who grew up in the seventies and eighties. Tammy’s idea was a family business brewing craft beer, so everyone got on board, with Mum Gloria, Dad Jouni and Uncle Esko full time and Uncle TImo stepping back in to lend a hand when needed. Photo supplied
Photo supplied
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After exploring a number of possible sites for the venture, including Tauranga and further afield, they decided on Kawerau for two excellent reasons: it was close to home and close to some of the best water in the country. Water for MATA beer is sourced from an ancient aquifer which provides pure filtered water from over 300 metres underground. After several months restoring equipment and setting up the tanks, MATA produced its first brew in September 2005 and even though, as Gloria says “we didn’t know what we were doing” it actually sold out quickly, but not - as we have established - to the local bars and pubs. Tammy, who creates all the brews, entered the NZ International Beer Awards just for the feedback mind, and she picked up a bronze medal for her German style Kolsch Beer, which last year was renamed BOP Lager to better reflect its roots.
SCENIC FLIGHTS Cheap Thrill $20pp (A quick flight out to the beach and around the Whakatane Airport) Whakatane $60pp (A flight over Whaktane township & the Heads)
0800 804 354 www.frontierhelicopters.co.nz
Whale Wonder $80pp (Fly out over the ocean and around Whale Island) Port Pleasure $80pp (A flight along the coastline to Port Ohope, taking in Ohiwa Harbour) * all flights depart from the Whakatane Airport We can also fly into The WhiteHouse cafe, Julians Berry farm & Blueberry corner, contact us for more information.
The following year brought more awards, and Tammy continued, and continues still, to create new brews, including seasonal varieties. MATA Beer now has around 15 core beers, but lucky for us the craft beer drinker is a demanding one and always hungry (or thirsty) for the next new thing.
beer market increasingly a very crowded one, Gloria says the product has to jump off the shelves. Gloria shows me the tombstone label for their new brew Get Berryed, a wheat beer with black currants, boysenberries and raspberries. You can see they have fun with these.
As well as producing the actual beer, an important part of the business is the marketing and labelling. With the craft
The company has recently started exporting to Hong Kong. It’s their second attempt to enter this huge market and Gloria says they’ve learnt a lot since their first go. They are about to start exporting to Taiwan as well, so it’s hardly surprising to learn that they are expanding and looking for new premises.
Gloria Viitakangas Right: Jouni Viitakangas Photos supplied
All of which is pretty cool for a little family business from Kawerau whose primary goal at the end of the day is to make a beer people enjoy. They certainly do that. P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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1886
A Night to Remember Tarawera Just after midnight on 10 June 1886, the Bay of Plenty changed forever. Hamish Pettengell of the Whakatāne Museum and Research Centre looks back on the Tarawera eruption, and asks what really became of one of the natural wonders of the world.
T
he Pink Terraces Otukapuarangi -
(Fountain of the Clouded Sky) - and the White Terraces - Te Tarata (The Tattooed Rock) - on the shores of Lake Rotomahana were, despite their distant location, internationally renowned. The grandeur of the White Terraces covered nearly three hectares, tumbling down from a height of 30m fanning to a width of around 240m at the lake edge, and they had first captured the imagination of European tourists in 1839. Soon they were being called the Eighth Natural Wonder of the World, and hardy visitors would endure a long journey to Tauranga before taking the bridle track to the Māori village
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of Ōhinemutu on the shores of Lake Rotorua. From there they took a coach to Te Wairoa, followed by a two-hour journey across Lake Tarawera, and then finally proceeded by foot over the hill to the shores of Lake Rotomahana and the Terraces. The list of notables to view the Terraces included Sir George Grey in 1849, Alfred Duke of Edinburgh in 1869, and the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope in 1874. Trollope noted the softness of the walls - caused by incomplete crystallisation of the silica - of the Pink Terrace’s pools, which were used for swimming. “I can imagine nothing more delicious to the bather,” he wrote. “When you strike your chest against it, it is soft to the touch. You press yourself against it, and it is smooth. You lie upon it,
and though it is firm, it gives to you. You plunge against the sides, driving the water over your body, but you do not bruise yourself. I have never heard of other bathing like this in the world.” Artists were also captivated by the sublime beauty of the Terraces amongst them John Kinder, Alfred Burton, Charles Spencer, Charles Blomfield and Josiah Martin. In 1885 George Valentine, a Scottish photographer who emigrated to New Zealand for health reasons, made an extensive photographic study of them. His images were a tour de force of what was still a fledgling art form, and they remain the most complete record of the Terraces to this day.
George Valentine (1852–1890), Cold Water Basins, White Terraces, 1885, WhakatÄ ne Museum Research Collection, 2012.15.19
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I
n May 1886, one year
after Valentine’s photographic survey, a small boat was being rowed across the calm but, misty Lake Tarawera. In it were the noted guide Sophia Hinerangia, several boatmen, and tourists who had been to view the famed Terraces. The day had gone well, and the visitors had been suitably impressed, but as the little charter boat neared the shore that day, several of the occupants were startled to see a very large waka emerge from the rolling mist and glide serenely across the water. It was of a size and type not seen on the lake for generations, and it appeared to be fully manned. Before it could be hailed it had vanished back into the mist, leaving barely a ripple in its wake and with its crew seemingly oblivious to the world around them. One of the passengers on the tourist boat, a Mrs Sise of Dunedin, wrote to her son that night of the sighting, and reports appeared in newspapers in the following days. Mrs Sise later recalled the waka as “looking glorious in the mist and the sunlight,” but while its appearance struck awe into the Pākehā aboard, it sent shivers through the Māori guides. It appeared so clearly that several of them noted those aboard the waka had their hair plumed with huia feathers, which they felt a bad omen; to them it was a waka wairua, a spirit canoe, and a portent of disaster. Eleven days later, on 10 June 1886, it would become clear just how prescient that omen had been. It was a cold and clear night in Te Wairoa, close to Lake Tarawera, and Ina Hobbs had been woken by “severe, prolonged and frequent earthquakes.” She had hurriedly dressed her children before joining her father, Charles Haszard, on the verandah overlooking the lake.
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Postcard, The Phantom Canoe seen on Lake Tarawera, c. 1890, Whakatāne Museum Research Collection, 5894 “Should we live a hundred years, we shall never see a sight like this again,” he said as they watched a strange glow spread across the sky and an extraordinary electrical display begin to build.
At the same time, Mrs Emily Way in Maketū, also woken by the quakes, sent her husband out to secure the water tanks. When he returned covered in ash, she asked him the reason for the flashes in the sky. “If it is White Island,” he replied, “there is sure to be a tidal wave, and we must make for the redoubt.”
A guest staying with Haszard, William Bird, described the awe-inspiring scene clearly: “Lake Tarawera was a Mr Way was right in assuming it was copper mirror, reflecting the mount an eruption, but it was Tarawera, not from base to summit in a lurid glare. Whakaari, that had rumbled into life. Dominating all, hung the great cloud The mountain had been created curtain, gloomy and dark above, some 18,000 years saffron and orange on its previously by volcanic under surface. From eruptions, and now the cloud, great They felt a bad omen; a new, massive balls of flaming and unforeseen rock dropped to Māori it was a blast had torn a from time to 17km long rift time descending waka wairua, a spirit across the top of with a splash into canoe, and a portent Mount Tarawera, the waters of the through Lake lake.” Their awe of disaster. Rotomahana and into soon turned to horror the Waimangu Valley. as rocks soon began to Three separate craters had rain down around them. exploded, with ash and smoke rising To Mr F W Henderson in Ōpōtiki it 10km into the air and the sound of the began as the sound of distant thunder. cataclysm being heard in Auckland He was woken by it well after midnight to the north and in Blenheim in the on the 10th and later recalled lying in south. For the people of the Bay of bed and hearing “what appeared to Plenty, this was indeed to be a night be gentle rain . . . falling on the trees to remember. near the window. The usual sound of rain running off through the spouting “Should we live a hundred was conspicuous by its absence,” however, “and created surprise in my years, we shall never see a mind.” It was not rain falling outside Mr Henderson’s window, but ash. sight like this again,”
Charles Blomfield’s lithograph of the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera based on eyewitness accounts. Online public domain.
T
he eruption
proper would last five hours and see an estimated two billion cubic metres of mud, ash and rock hurled into the air. Fork and ball lightning crashed upwards into the sky as the ash-filled air took on an immense electrical charge, and gale force winds battered buildings and livestock as the superheated gas flows sucked air up into the atmosphere. In Te Wairoa, which bore the brunt of the eruption, a rock weighing more than 20 kilos crashed into Ina Hobbs’ drawing room, and by 3am the walls were bending in from the weight of mud that was building up outside; soon it was six feet deep, and when the house came crashing down it killed most of her family, four of them aged under ten. Her father Charles Haszard never did see a sight like it again, for he too died in the collapsed house. In Maketū the next day, Emily Way would hear simply that Te Wairoa “was a thing of the past”. Whole settlements were consumed – Te Tapahoro, Moura, Te Ariki, Totarariki, Waingongongo, as well
as Te Wairoa, were destroyed or buried – and the Te Arawa iwi of Rotorua was scattered far and wide. Around 150 people died that night in what would go down in history as New Zealand’s worst natural disaster, and it is surprising that this number was not higher. The day that followed was also like nothing anyone who lived through it had seen before. Smoke and ash meant that the frantic evacuation and rescue efforts were played out in an eerie half-light, with the landscape so distorted by layers of fallen mud and sand that many people became hopelessly lost. It was metres thick around Tarawera itself, and even in Ōpōtiki Mr Henderson reported it to be nearly five centimetres deep and that there was “not much more than twilight all day.” Rescue parties were hastily formed in Rotorua and bravely set out to offer help, not knowing whether the eruption was over or merely pausing to catch its breath. En route to Te Wairoa they met the first straggling survivors fleeing the devastation, and while the women and children in these groups travelled on to Rotorua, the men joined the rescuers and headed back from where they had come to help dig for survivors.
Some of the stouter whares and buildings had remained intact, and their inhabitants were dug out battered and bruised but alive. Others had been less fortunate, for the devastation had been enormous. Ash was scattered over an area of more than 15,000 square kilometres, and the Tikitapu bush was reduced to a blackened, skeletal wasteland. Other areas of forest lay flattened as if a giant scythe had cut them down, and the Pink and White Terraces, the Eighth Wonder of the Natural World, had vanished. In the weeks and months that followed the eruption, a curious form of disaster tourism developed as people came to see this devastation first hand, and George Valentine also returned to photograph the area again and create a definitive record of the disaster. His new works showed an altogether different beauty in the strange new landscapes, and they would also prove invaluable to future generations who tried to piece together just what had happened that night. P l e n t y. c o . n z // N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6
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M
any theories
have been offered to explain the sighting of what came to be known as the Phantom Canoe: a trick of the light, a group hallucination, or even an actual, ancient burial waka somehow dislodged from a watery grave by the earthquakes and rising and falling water levels that were also witnessed just prior to the eruption. For many years it was considered a fanciful myth invented after the fact, but in recent times it has been more widely accepted that those on the water genuinely saw something, it is equally clear that just what that was will never be known, the answer having vanished into the mist over the lake that day in 1886. Initially, it was also believed that the Pink and White Terraces had also vanished, blasted apart by the eruption and gone forever, but more recent research points to a different story, yet one just as murky and contrary as that of the Phantom Canoe.
Te Wairoa THE BURIED VILLAGE
O
nly a short drive from Rotorua, Te Wairoa The Buried Village showcases the famous volcanic ruins of Te Wairoa with great museum exhibits, a fun treasure hunt for kids and stunning bush walk to the Wairere Falls. Enjoy a Devonshire tea in the rebuilt Te Wairoa tearooms and soak in the history. Rewiri, a Te Arawa survivor, resting next to his whare.
Burton Brothers (1866–1914), The remains of the Te Mu mission church at Te Wairoa after the eruption of Mt Tarawera, 1886, Whakatāne Museum, 6166
George Valentine (1852–1890), Te Wairoa, McRae’s Hotel, Sophia’s whare and Terrace Hotel, 1886, Whakatāne Museum, 6174 Since 2011 the Terraces have been ‘rediscovered’ at least four times, by a variety of means - including underwater photography, sonar and seismic surveys – and by a variety of specialists, ranging from New Zealand and international institutes to ambitious amateurs and passionate authors. All share the same premise, supported by different evidence and interpretations, that the Terraces survived the eruption. Some believe they are under the reformed Lake Rotomahana, some that they are on dry land but buried beneath mud and ash that has now become bush, and others that the answer is a combination of both, with parts of the Terraces having broken away and slipped into the lake while the majority lies buried under volcanic mud. All theorists clearly showing great restraint – conclude with the faint possibility of the Terraces being one day unearthed and resurrected, dug from the mud of one hundred and thirty years and fashioned into a tourist attraction to once again wow the world. And remarkably, Te Wairoa – considered “a thing of the past” after the eruption – has become just that. Painstakingly excavated and now fittingly known as the Buried Village, it is a moving snapshot of life before the eruption, and it remains to this day an eye-opening monument to a night to remember.
TELEPHONE: 07 362 8287 HOURS: 9.00AM - 5.00PM 1180 TARAWERA ROAD ROTORUA NEW ZEALAND Buried Village WWW.BURIEDVILLAGE.CO.NZ
Bay of Plenty Regional Council Toi Moana
Bussing around the Bay with Gordon “The new Bayhopper accessible buses have been a gamechanger for drivers and customers”
Gordon McIntosh’s earliest memories of catching a bus were as a child growing up in Whakatāne, “Mr Cave had a bus service. You’d catch it at the local corner and for a threepence you could get into town,” Gordon reminisces. “I think going into town and coming home on the bus was better than staying in town itself. It was marvellous!” Fast-forward fifty years and you’ll now find Gordon behind the wheel of a Bayhopper bus travelling between Ōhope and Whakatāne and Whakatāne to Tauranga. He’s lived in Whakatāne all his life and knows 90 per cent of his customers. “They never push the buzzer; I know where they live. Sometimes when it’s raining I’ll stop at their house,” Gordon says. Gordon believes the new Bayhopper accessible buses have been a gamechanger for drivers and customers. “Prior to that we had the Rosa buses which had three steps and you actually had to help some of the older people so it could be pretty tough for passengers,” Gordon says. Outside of his bus driving duties Gordon has a passion for travel. Last year he and wife Patricia spent two months touring Ireland in a motorhome. For more information contact: 0800 422 928 www.baybus.co.nz