Plenty 15

It’s all good as we talk politics with James Shaw, get it on like Donkey Kong with Albert Belz, and meet ace Ōhiwa illustrator Katrin Kadelke, while J.P. Pomare puts Maketū on the literary map, Plenty gets to have its cake and eat it, and Jenny Michie talks about the sad demise of the jandal (kind of).

culture :: media :: art :: food ahurea ao pāpāho toi ahurea kai

FR EE M A GA ZIN E

ISSUE 15 plenty.co.nz

F I F ON N -CC O

N TT SS TT EE N

Plenty brings you the very best of the Bay. Plenty bringsngā you tino the very best of the Bay. Kei a Plenty o te rohe.

Kei a Plenty ngā tino o te rohe.

T E E NG G II RR AA RR AA N

O KK O O UU PP O

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A R A T U A 2 0 1 9

B

Rain

Wainui Rd

Black Ice

Thornton Rd

Skidding

06

Is your waka winter ready?

12

AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES SHAW You know the name, you know the face, but there’s lots you don’t know about the Green leader and his Bay connections.

18

I AM VEGAN, HEAR ME RAW Healthy, guilt free, vegan cheesecake? Yessiree Bob and it’s made in the Bay. You heard it here first.

CALL ME JOSH Rotorua-born J.P. Pomare’s debut thriller wowed critics, started a bidding war, and scared the living daylights out of readers.

28

N ASTROMAN - ALBERT BELZ It’s back to the future in 80s Whakatāne video arcades with Albert Belz’s latest stage play Astroman.

39

22

A BRUSH WITH THE BAY Her work has graced many of our pages, so we thought it time we caught up with Katrin Kadelke, formerly of the former East Germany, now of Ōhiwa Harbour.

35

THE GREAT ESCAPE From family holidays to surf road trips and New Year’s revelry, everyone has an Ōhope story.

Here’s ours.

Tyres Windscreen Indicators Rust Lights

THE FULL PUKU PROJECT A Taupō-based group has started out small but are destined to be big as they feed hungry kids, one puku at a time.

46

! e e r F me elco w l l A

JANDAL RAMBLE Jennie Michie goes in search of New Zealand’s last jandal maker.

She doesn’t find it. We suspect she never left the house.

43

THE WOOD FOR THE TREES As the 1080 debate reaches fever pitch and impasse, Katee Shanks meets a Rotorua group trying to find a solution.

Get a T.W.I.R.L. car check for FREE from the experts.

51

BATTLEGROUND BAY OF PLENTY Known to Māori as Pukuhinahina, to Pākehā as Gate Pā, we look back on a battle that was a turning point for both sides.

Make sure your vehicle is winter-ready.

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Opotiki Wednesday, 24 July 10am-midday 01 NEW WORLD CARPARK

TWENTY NINETEEN

The more things change, goes the popular saying,

MAY

the more they stay the same...

Except, clearly, in the wake of what has happened in Christchurch, things can’t stay the same; things do need to change.

And things will never be the same.

15

All we’ve ever been equipped to do was celebrate the Bay, in all its quirky, creative, diverse, multicultural, multilingual, multi-coloured do it yourself, go hard or go home and make it up as we go along, yeah nah, chur cuz, crazy glory. And so that’s what we’re gonna keep on doing. As a merry but dysfunctional band of lunkheads, we feel our part to play in all of this is to keep bringing you all that is great, all that is good, all we should raise up, all we need more of.

Like great theatre that makes you think – Albert Belz on page 28 – and great writing that makes you question – J.P. Pomare on page 18, like awesome illustrators that make you smile – Katrin Kadelke on page 22 – and passionate politicians that make you want to be part of change – like James Shaw on page 06. Now, as never before, we need real stories about real people doing real stuff.

Stories about us. Oh, and cake. Oh hell yes cake. Read about cake on page 12.

We’ve been doing this for nearly four years now and we feel we’ve only just scratched the surface.

But we also feel we’ve reached a turning point, and to mark that we’re doing something a bit different for our next issue – get on over to pages 4-5 to read all about it. And in addition to that, the Plenty family is expanding, changing and evolving; in short we’re getting all Apollo and going into orbit on a number of fronts. So as we prepare to ricochet around the dark side of the moon and head into the print equivalent of radio silence for a month or three, be sure to find us online to keep up with all the good, the bad and the ugly – we’ve got some great giveaways, added extras and exclusive digital content you’ll love. And we’ll be back in ink in spring: bigger, better, badder and, um, one more thing starting with B. See you then, and remember, it may never be the same again. But it can be even better.

It’s all good as we talk politics with James Shaw, get it on like Donkey Kong with Albert Belz, and meet ace Ōhiwa illustrator Katrin Kadelke, while J.P. Pomare puts Maketū on the literary map, Plenty gets to have its cake and eat it, and Jenny Michie talks about the sad demise of the jandal (kind of).

culture :: media :: art :: food ahurea ao pāpāho toi kai

F RE E M AG AZ INE

Off the couch,

Off the pages,

Onto the walls.

Plenty Exhibition Plenty Magazine is exhibiting the Bay’s finest

6 July - 21 August 2019 Te Kōputu a te Whanga a Toi Whakatāne Library

& Exhibition Centre MAGAZINE culture :: media :: art :: food ahurea ao pāpāho toi kai

15

Cheesecake: LUCIENNE CAINES Photography: SARAH LANE Illustrations: KATRIN KADELKE

ISSUE 15 plenty.co.nz

Got something to tell us?

Whakapā mai info@plenty.co.nz plenty.co.nz fb.com/plentyNZ ISSN 2463-7351

Plenty Magazine is published by Plenty Limited. Copyright 2019 by Plenty Limited. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the prior consent of the publisher. Plenty accepts no responsibility for the return or usage of unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Opinions expressed in Plenty Magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of Plenty Limited.

But how will we make change? What will it look like? And where will it take us? We don’t know.

We’re really not the ones to ask. That kind of thing is best left to the movers and shakers out there, the serious people equipped to drive change, not the scribblers and designers and snappers and other sundry children of the revolution that bring you Plenty.

ANDY TAYLOR Editor/Kaiwhakatika Tuhinga SARAH LANE Designer/Kaiwhakatauira RAYMOND HINTON Sales/Advertising

04/05

REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE TO PLENTY MAGAZINE

Easy on the eyes, tough on flies

As we hurtle down the outside lane of the information super highway, it’s good to remember that print ain’t dead.

Sure, the internet is great for cat memes and LOLs, but when that pesky fly just won’t leave you alone, do you reach for your phone? No, freestylers, you do not. You reach for Plenty.

Because it’s not just a great read, it’s public enemy number one to bugs, and there is no better way to protect your family from that menace than by subscribing. You’ll have a crisp, sweet-smelling copy delivered to your door by the postperson every three months, packed with great articles, and when you’re sitting on the couch reading it you won’t be just goofing off, you’ll be armed and dangerous and ready to rumble with the common house fly.

So to find out how to become a subscriber and insect exterminator . . .

plenty.co.nz/subscribe

Illustration by the very talented www.KatrinKadelke.de

Four years.

840 pages. nearly

218,344 words.

A few bruises, a few too many late nights, and way too many kilometres.

Way, way too many kilometres: from Waihi Beach, Whakatāne, and Waimana, to Okere Falls, Ōpōtiki, Ōhope, and Ōhiwa; from Tāneatua, Tauranga, Te Puke, and Taupō, to Murupara, Matatā, Maketū, Manawahe and Mount Maunganui. And from Kawerau, Kutarere and Katikati, to Rotorua, Edgecumbe and Ngongotaha. Yup, from the north, south, east

and west of this land we call Plenty, we’ve brought you stories from all these places, stories of the weird and the wonderful, the bold and the beautiful, the famous and the infamous who make this the best place in the world.

People like artists, writers, painters, and sculptors; musicians, inventors, illustrators, and carvers; film makers, actors, educators and entrepreneurs; visionaries, dreamers, nutters – call them what you will - we’re proud to call them a part of Plenty. You can see some of them and their words right here on these two pages – and for seven weeks at Te Kōputu a te Whanga a Toi you can see a whole lot more of them and the world of Plenty.

We set out nearly four years ago to shine a light on the incredibly creative people that are part of the Bay and to celebrate all their stories – your stories – so for our fourth birthday we’re putting it all under one roof for a few weeks of orchestrated chaos.

Everyone is invited. Come along to see some of our best bits blown-up big, some out-takes and extras, and some floor talks, lectures and things never seen before and never to be seen again. This isn’t something for all the family, but it is definitely something for all our family. Be a part of it – follow us on Facebook for all the gory details – and we’ll see you there.

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Plenty Magazine is exhibiting the Bay’s finest

6 July - 21 August 2019 Te Kōputu a te Whanga a Toi Whakatāne Library

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PLENTY So what’s your connection to the Bay of Plenty?

JS My mother and her two sisters and brother

were born on a farm out east of Ōpōtiki, and they were the fifth generation on that farm. Their father, my grandfather, sold up in the late 60s and moved to Ōhope. My mother and her siblings all went to university and left the Bay to go off and have professional careers. So, they were that generation who moved off the land and into the cities. My grandfather was a music teacher not a farmer, and when they moved to Ōhope he took up teaching full time until they retired in the 70s and moved to Tauranga. So my association with the Bay started in Tauranga. I was raised by my mother and she would bring me up here for all the school breaks and I got to know the area that way.

My Aunt Sally moved up from Wellington in the 90s and was the Chief Executive of Whakatāne Hospital. So even after my grandparents had passed on we kept on coming back to Ōhope to visit my aunt.

WORDS JENNY MICHIE PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY TAYLOR

James Shaw is a regular face on our TV screens and sound bite on the radio, but what most people don’t know is that he has strong Bay connections and a vision of where the Bay and regional New Zealand should be heading. Jenny Michie caught up with him over a beer in Whakatāne to talk politics, the environment and the price of lamb.

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PLENTY Can we talk first about the last

election with its many surprises. National looking like it was a walk-in, Labour essentially tanking and the Greens were doing great and then….the Turei explosion and Andrew Little did that amazing thing and resigned as Labour leader. If you could go back, apart from the facts of it, is there anything you would do differently?

Probably. Toby Manhire wrote a really beautiful piece not long after the election and one of the things he said was Metiria was the pebble that started the landslide. So obviously we were significantly cut down in size, we had fewer MPs, although we did bring in two new MPs, but we were in government. If things had continued without the Metiria fall out and change in Labour leadership we would have perhaps got 20 MPs but we would be in opposition. So, are there interventions I might have made? Yes, but they might have resulted in us not being in government.

JS

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

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PLENTY A classic case of be careful what you wish for.

PLENTY And then there was Winston!

JS We actually get on really well but that wasn’t predictable. During the negotiations to form a government, we never negotiated directly with conference after every election which he then turns NZ First. We talked to Labour and NZ First talked into a book. The 2017 book was called Stardust to Labour and we weren’t allowed to know what and Substance…with that image of Jacinda with was being negotiated with the other party, with the Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt. I went and did poor old Jacinda stuck in a speech which I largely improvised but which “Bay of Plenty is one of the sunniest the middle of two sets of negotiations with parties Stephen was going to parts of the country which is energy. that were very different, turn into a chapter and although in policy terms we This region could be pretty much I thought, well if this is had a lot in common. going in the book I’d JS Stephen Levine from Victoria University does a

better fact check myself

self-sustaining for energy.”

and I went back through my Outlook calendar and realised that even by mid-December, everything in my head, the sequence of events was all up the spout so I had to go and reorganize what I’d said to match the actual facts of what had happened.

The whole thing was so chaotic and traumatic. It really was a white-knuckle ride.

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Guided Tours Wednesdays 10am tauranga.acgedu.com 0800 222 355 6 Keenan Road, Pyes Pa

The difficulty was NZ First had a sort of secrecy agreement so she couldn’t tell us what they were negotiating. It was enormously stressful for us and you can only imagine the pressure Jacinda and her team were under. They had to almost guess what would be a redline for us and a redline for NZ First because they couldn’t disclose to us or them what the other party was negotiating.

PLENTY What a bizarre way to conduct negotiations to form a government.

JS Yes, it would have made more sense for us all to sit together in a room and just thrash it out. But I actually quite like working with Winston because he is very professional; once something is decided that’s it and if it doesn’t go his way he still has that very proper cabinet responsibility that once a decision is made you front it.

PLENTY What’s the Green prescription,

if you will, for places like the Bay of Plenty where we’ve had a huge growth in Tauranga, which used to be a retirement destination, and other areas like Whakatāne where the growth is much less dramatic but where there’s much more money in farming?

JS Yes, there’s more money now in farming and in tourism which has matured significantly in the time that I’ve been coming up here. But having said that tourism is a low margin business.

Our government’s economic strategy consists of significant investment in innovation and research and development, we’ve got a piece around the Future of Work which is largely focused on both the risks and opportunities around automation and artificial intelligence and changes in the nature of the work force, and then the other one is the low carbon economy. The interesting thing is when you tie those things together it creates a really rich picture of what the economy can look like in the future if we invest in taking advantages of the opportunities and minimising the risks as opposed to allowing those three mega-trends to just wash over us.

So Whakatāne and the Eastern Bay, especially in the area of a low carbon economy which is the area that I spend most of my time on, have a tremendous opportunity. If you look at farming, it is more valuable now than it was years ago and it looks different now than it did 30 years ago. Thirty years ago was when we hit ‘peak sheep’ - we had three times as many sheep and half as many cows as we do now. So farming systems have changed hugely in one lifetime.

PLENTY Yes, now we’re paying

$48 for a leg of lamb!

JS

Well some people are going back to

sheep farming but if you project forward the same thing will be true 30 years from now.

Farms will be more valuable than they are today and they will look different than they do today. I cannot say what that will look like but we know we have to produce more food for a growing population and do it in a way that is dramatically lower in emissions than what it is now. That’s where you get the innovation from.

If you talk to farming leaders you’ll find we’re all actually on the same page on this. Where NZ wants to end up is being a high value producer of niche products based on our sustainability story because almost no one else in the world can do that. Also, we don’t have enough land to feed the planet and this is an expensive country to run a farm in compared to some, but if you’ve got a high base cost that forces you to focus on the high value places in the market.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

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Also the environment here in the Bay of Plenty is ideal for permaculture where you have a mixed and well-planned use of the land so that the system is self-sustaining and you’re not having to use supplements and fertilizers because you’ve built the system to do that itself.

As consumer awareness grows there’s more talk of sustainable and regenerative farming and precision agriculture which still uses interventions, but in an incredibly targeted way like on the Canterbury Plains which is essentially a desert but for irrigation and fertiliser. But you use them with remarkable efficiency and without leaching.

So there’s all these opportunities and there’s a lot of innovation going on right now to try and crack the nut of how to do this. I know that a lot of farmers are feeling kind of under siege right now, which is why I keep referring to this as a transition phase. We get that, we understand why they feel like that and we as the government are putting quite a lot on the table to support that transition but the opportunities on the far side of this are extraordinary.

Lastly, the Bay of Plenty is one of the sunniest parts of the country, which is energy. This region could be pretty much self-sustaining for energy.

PLENTY Yet you can drive around here and

barely see a single solar panel. How can central government help local government on these issues and walk them into the future?

JS Provincial towns all over New Zealand struggle with capital versus the scale of the challenges, you’ve got a 30 year infrastructure deficit to catch up on so there’s not a short answer to that question. It’s like Whack A Mole – a problem pops up over there and you deal with that and then another one comes up over here and you deal with that. But it’s something Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Kris Fafoi and I are working on from a resilient communities perspective. We’ve got a big project to look at how we handle free water infrastructure and helping local governments with that. We need to massively upgrade the country’s water systems. And there’s a big piece of work looking at local government’s role in financing these projects.

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“We know we have to produce more food for a growing population and do it in a way that is dramatically lower in emissions than what it is now.

That’s where you get the innovation from.”

PLENTY The Provincial Growth Fund is getting a lot of attention these days.

Is funding going into green projects?

JS Yes, the Provincial Growth Fund put a significant amount of money into the Department of Conservation and Land Information doing LiDAR Surveys (Light Detection and Ranging).

Which is basically laser mapping of the country so it gives you incredibly detailed land information.

Given the tremendous changes in the land sector over the coming years - whether it’s economic value over land use choices or whether it’s

biodiversity or conservation and so on - LiDAR gives us tremendously accurate information. And that was a partnership announced between Green MP Eugenie Sage and NZ First MP Shane Jones together… the original political odd couple!

Well you know they say politics makes strange bedfellows but when we are witnessing the disintegration of political civility in the US with the bitter partisan acrimony between Democrats and Republicans, we can only be thankful for MMP here in New Zealand, even if it does sometimes make for a bit of a crowded bed.

Keep up to date with the work Bay of Plenty Regional Council is doing across the region.

Visit our new website at

www.boprc.govt.nz

   

5 Quay Street, Whakatāne 87 First Avenue, Tauranga 6 Rata Street, Mt Maunganui 1125 Arawa Street, Rotorua

Phone 0800 884 880

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hear

me

raw

WORDS ALEXANDRA PICKLES PHOTOGRAPHY DIEGO MARANGONI & SARAH LANE

Creamy. Just the right amount of sweet. Smooth, not grainy. Beautifully presented. Utterly delicious.

And not incredibly bad for me. It was like a Masterchef moment when I had my first slice of a Love Raw vegan raw organic cheesecake.

Only, there’s no cheese. And there’s no cake! Just healthy, organic, creamy deliciousness. Raw organic cheesecake… it’s an oxymoron, right? Or is it a paradox? I’m not sure, but it’s bloody delicious. I got an opportunity to speak to the chef herself, Lucienne Caines, who filled me in on the Love Raw journey.

Raised on an organic kiwifruit orchard, Lucie lived a healthy life, but not obsessively. She was about 19 when she made the decision to become a vegetarian, and I queried whether this was a health choice or an ethics choice. “Oh, it was totally to do with ethics,” she states. “The more research I did, the more I realised how poor the treatment of animals was. Not long after I became vegetarian, I became vegan for the same reasons.”

Given that Lucie became a vegan before it was so ‘on trend’, you can see that it’s no passing phase. She studied a Bachelor of Science, worked for NIWA for a couple of years and then headed on an OE where she ‘veganed’ around the world. She worked in a vegetarian café in London and absorbed the market scene. She was taken by Costa Rica and lapped up the vegan culture of New York City.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

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We only use produce that has been sourced from local and organic farming

Back in New Zealand, Lucie returned to Mount Maunganui and befriended her would-be business partner Beth at the organic food store they both worked at. The two started Love Raw, specialising in raw vegan organic cheesecake. Why cheesecake? “It’s my absolute favourite dessert and it’s so hard to find a really nice one,” says Lucie. I try to find out what the secrets are, but she’s tight-lipped on the winning formula, and understandably so.

I was still dreaming about the slice I had eaten earlier in the week, and how it could possibly be good for you when the typical ‘cheesecake’ that my dairy-loving self is used to is so calorifically bad for you. I learn that it’s the versatile cashew that enables the creaminess and the right balance of coconut oil is an essential component… but that’s all I’m getting in the way of trade secrets.

Lucie was mastering her art when the first gourmet night markets were about to hit the Tauranga scene circa 2012, and Love Raw was there from day one. “The first couple of years were pretty crazy,” Lucie recalls. “We’d have queues of people waiting for a slice.” I had a scan of the Love Raw Insta account and, well, I shouldn’t have. I’m going to be dreaming about those cheesecakes for a while. Cold brew coffee cheesecake. Blackcurrant and vanilla cheesecake. Decadent chocolate cheesecake. Salted caramel cheesecake.

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Gooey passionfruit cheesecake. *Insert drooling Homer GIF here* Raspberry cheesecake.

Chilli chocolate cheesecake. Pear and ginger cheesecake. I feel like Bubba in Forrest Gump.

There are just so many delicious options.

So what sets Love Raw cheesecakes apart from the rest of the raw desserts that are emerging rapidly? “We only use produce that has been sourced from local and organic farming,” Lucie says. “There are a lot of products out there in the raw dessert arena, but you need to be wary of where and how they’re sourced.”

In fairness, when I was invited to write this article I was worried I might have to pretend to like the product, as my experience with raw desserts has usually been that they’re grainy and have weird flavours that don’t really mask the ‘healthiness’ of them.

IMAGE CREDIT: ZOE THOMPSON-MOORE

when you know it’s been made with care

So where can you get a slice now the summer market season is over? Don’t worry, I asked this question too. Lucie is taking the winter downtime to work on her website where we will be able to

order her cheesecakes within the Bay of Plenty.

Hells yeah! You’ll also find Lucie working at her former Love Raw partner’s organic food store at the Mount. So much goodness and deliciousness on our doorstep. Aren’t we blessed.

IN SPLENDOUR MOOT adornment re-framed Elfi Spiewack

Exhibiting until 26 June

Contemporary art exploring motherhood, mothering and maternal roles Exhibiting until 7 August DEVELOPED WITH FUNDING FROM CREATIVE NZ

Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi – Whakatāne Library & Exhibition Centre

Image credit [cropped] Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a young man (1530), Jewellery, Elfi Spiewack

It tastes so much better

Well, consider me a convert. I would gladly put my hand up for a slice of Lucie’s Love Raw cheesecake any day, over a slice of the traditional hip-widener I’d usually go for. And it tastes so much better when you know it’s been made with care – for your health, for your environment and for your local economy.

whakatanemuseum.org.nz

Hard to believe,

but it has been 25 years since Whakatane local Mark Bruce followed in his father’s footsteps and set up as a cabinet maker.

That was back in 1991, in the innocent, pre-internet days, when Google hadn’t been invented, and that may explain the initial choice of name. Beaver Woodwork first opened its doors in Pohutu Street, Whakatane, and they’ve been, well, beavering away ever since.

A shift in focus came with a name change to Beaver Kitchens in 2005, followed by a move to their current location at 28 McAlister St, Whakatane in 2012. The move meant a bigger show room and a more retail and design focus, but it also saw the business concentrate on what they are best known for today: premium quality, bespoke-designed kitchens that not only look fantastic but are functional places to cook in, proudly designed and built right here in the Bay. The sharp eyed reader may notice that 1991 was in fact 28 years ago, but hey, there were a couple of not so good years during that time (we’re looking at you global financial crisis), so the team are just celebrating the 25 really awesome ones.

So yes they do things a little different at Beaver Kitchens, but as one of New Zealand’s most award-winning kitchen design companies they must be doing something right. The fact that they are the only Eastern Bay kitchen design firm with trained and qualified designers may have something to do with that.

These days Mark splits his time between Whakatane and Cambridge, where he has launched a kitchen design studio Designmarked - located in the retail space of Fox and Co. That leaves the day to day management of Beaver Kitchens to designer Michelle McAnulty and production manager Mark (Tomo) Thompson.

Michelle has introduced specialist 3D designer software to the design process to give clients photo-like images of their new kitchen design.

Unlike other software, it is not restricted to modular based cabinets, so the creative design process is unlimited, something Beaver Kitchens is well known for. Michelle holds a Certificate in Kitchen Design and a Diploma in Art and Creativity, and though she is originally from a legal background the creative pull directed a career change (aka mid-life crisis) and she joined the Beaver team three years ago.

The team Mark Bruce, Michelle McAnulty and Mark (Tomo) Thompson

Tomo meanwhile has been with Beaver Kitchens since the early days. Everyone knows Tomo, his unflappable personality and can-do attitude is a key asset to the company and though he’s often tasked with pushing the boundaries of design he always embraces the challenge.

So if you’re thinking of getting creative in your kitchen, come and see the pros at Beaver Kitchens: they’ve been in the game for 25 – well, 28 – years so nobody does it better!

The phrase ‘literary sensation’ is not one to be used lightly, especially in reference to a first time novelist from Rotorua with a book set in Maketū. But J.P. Pomare is just that. His debut, Call Me Evie, has been a runaway success with seven publishing houses entering into a brisk bidding war for its rights and the public already asking about a sequel. Plenty caught up with him to ask how he did it and what’s the deal with Maketū.

WORDS ANDY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPLIED

“An exciting new voice.”

“One of the most striking debuts in years.”

“The finest of literary thrillers.”

Image credit James Howarth

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“AN EXCITING NEW VOICE.” “One of the most striking debuts in years.” “The finest of literary

thrillers.” Critics have rushed to heap praise on Call Me Evie, but J.P. – Josh – Pomare hasn’t let any of this go to his head. Over the phone from his current base in Melbourne he is self-effacing and unrushed, and after a couple of minutes we’ve done that quintessentially Kiwi thing of figuring out he went to school with the brother of someone I work with. “Tell him I said hi,” he says. “It’s a small, small world.”

It’s a world that got a whole lot bigger for Pomare very quickly, but it wasn’t as easy as the ‘striking debut’ tag makes it sound; before the success of Call Me Evie there were many years of false starts and hard slog, as well as a tantalizing and suitably Hemingway-esque ‘lost manuscript’ in the mix.

“Every interviewer loves that story,” he says with a laugh and the resigned tone of someone who’s heard it before and recognizes why. “At the time it was terrible, but in retrospect, you rewrite a novel so many times and you keep working on a manuscript over and over, so when I think about that one that was lost I see it as a real turning point. Because I’d written this thing that I thought was good enough, but now I know it wasn’t! It was so far away from where it needed to be, but the experience of writing it and learning that craft of how many words I had to be doing a day was important. It was about craft and that was what I needed at that point because - basically the laptop blew up and the manuscript was gone - but I can appreciate now that intellectually and emotionally it was shit! I’m under no illusions of the quality of it - it was never a lost masterpiece. And it did mean I got a new laptop.”

Pomare had another trick up his sleeve to learning his craft, one that in retrospect seems both a stroke of genius but also “I cut my hair with audacious in the extreme: a podcast, called On Writing, that scissors like Kate set out to explore the nuts and bolts of writing by interviewing everyone whose work he valued. “Basically, I was just a lucky little does in the opening shit really,” he says. “I set out to interview people whose books I’d really enjoyed and find out how they did it. All writers get asked scene, just to see what is their inspiration but some of the things I was interested in what that was like.” were other things about them and really specific things at a craft level – like how many times they were rejected and how they write stories. The general audience doesn’t want the illusion to be broken, they want to think that there is this genius and a muse that comes out, they don’t want to know about editing processes and all the hard work. But for me and a lot of other budding writers, that is what we want to hear about.”

The podcast is a great listen for any aspiring writer, and Pomare managed to pick the brains of some seriously big names. Joyce Carol-Oates, John Safran, and E L James among others. “It was surprisingly easy,” he says about getting these literary titans to talk shop, “but, just like writing, you get rejected a lot.”

Pomare has had his fair share of rejection from publishers, which must have made the pub brawl of a bidding war for Call Me Evie sweet revenge.

“Not really,” he says, and there follows a long pause. “It’s a privilege and really rare situation for a writer to have the choice of who is going to publish your novel. Juggling the offers and approaches of seven different publishers was a lot to take in and while it sounds great - and I’m really not ungrateful - I was drained after going through it because you are essentially letting most of those people down, when two months prior you would have done anything to be just talking to them! By the end of it I actually sent cards to the publishers I liked and wanted to work with to just, you know, say thanks.”

Sensation he may be, but enfant terrible he isn’t.

IF POMARE STRUGGLED with choosing a publisher, it has been

“the laptop

intriguing to see how critics have struggled to review his work without giving away the plotline. From the opening lines that set the scene of blew up and a young woman – Kate – in an undefined and yet somehow menacing the manuscript domestic setting, to the helter skelter closing pages, reviewers have vied with each other to avoid having to make a spoiler alert while expressing was gone...“ just how good a book it is. “Read this one with the lights on,” said Kirkus Reviews, and that pretty much sums it up.

Reviewers have also struggled to define just what the novel is for some reason, finally settling on ‘literary thriller’ as the preferred description for a novel that defies description. It’s a moniker that Pomare finds amusing.

“I do think it’s funny that people have noted this, and also that some reviews have fixated on it.

There is a lot of genre fiction that relies on certain aspects of the crime and is written in a way where plausibility and the interior world disappear and it’s all action, and I think when they use ‘literary’ to describe any work I think they are trying to say that the writing that is there is not, well, crap! Which I hope is true. All the work I’ve done before this has been about just becoming a better writer, about word choice and the like, and I hope that literary tag means people can expect some decent writing. If I can say that about my own work.”

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

19

J.P. Pomare at a recent book signing (centre), and a pic (bottom) of his workspace proves you don’t need a garret to be a successful writer.

20

One of the most striking aspects of Call Me Evie is the acute sense of place it contains, and that place is Maketū. Actor Sam Neil coined the phrase ‘cinema of unease’ in describing the New Zealand film industry, but the word unease is equally applicable to other art forms here – from writing to music to photography it’s been no bed of roses – and in may ways it is a reflection of a shared perception of our landscape. Aotearoa’s beaches and bush, mountains and lakes are stunningly beautiful, but there is something else there too, something unsettling in an empty coastline on an afternoon or the singing of cicadas beneath the trees.

Call Me Evie plays on this heavily, and to excellent effect.

“It’s funny because Maketū is beautiful, but many people can’t get a good read on the place, they’re not sure how they feel about it,” he says. “There is something, an undercurrent, there that caught my attention. I think the isolation and the fact that it’s not really on the way to anywhere is part of it, and it made it irresistible for me because I knew it really well because mates had a family bach there and a place in Pukehina, and we used to spend a lot of time there. I always loved the place, adored it, and trips out there were just magic, but there is something of the unknown about it.”

“And this is what fascinates me about suspense – in Call Me Evie I deliberately left out some crucial information and left everything ambiguous so that it can be interpreted one way or the other, positively or negatively. But setting a novel in a place that is not so recognizable to many readers is one of the risks I’m glad I took. Setting something in New York or somewhere that is established means you don’t have to write it so well, because the reader has an established vision or version of that location, whereas basing it in somewhere like Maketū means you have some work to do. And while I worked really hard on coming up with descriptions of the setting that I was happy with, you have to make sure the writing is as tight as possible as well, because people don’t read thrillers for endless prose about a place.”

Historically The setting for the novel men have written wasn’t the only risk Pomare took. Call Me Evie switches in women’s voices between a ‘before’ and an really poorly ‘after’ constantly in a way that demands the reader keep up, but it also sees Pomare occupying the voice of the protagonist Kate, who just happens to be a young woman, and a young woman on the edge. This could have been cringeworthy.

Instead it is invisible.

“There are lots of things about Kate (the novel’s protagonist) that people have said are really about me, and when I was writing I was as much in her head as she was in mine. Historically men have written in women’s voices really poorly, and while there are some things like the male gaze and the social pressure a young woman experiences that I can’t know, by trying to be as empathetic as possible and having as many conversations with women I know about those things, you can get a certain realism.

It takes a huge amount of work though, and it’s always tempting to bend the monologue to suit rather than figure out what would be going on in her head. And in addition to the conversations with friends I also did stuff like cut my hair with scissors like Kate does in the opening scene, just to see what that was like.”

He, um, also shaved his legs according to the New Zealand Listener. “Yeah! I know, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Pomare says in the voice of a Rotorua boy busted big time. “That is another story every interviewer loves. I should maybe have just stopped with the ‘lost manuscript’ one.”

Here’s hoping he doesn’t just stop with the Call Me Evie One.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A R A T U A 2 0 1 9

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h s u r b a y a b e h t h t i w WORDS JENNY MICHIE PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY TAYLOR DESIGN NICOLA DOBSON

22

I am in awe of artists. Whether it’s musicians, dancers, sculptors, writers, actors, painters, composers, photographers and creators and anyone else who answers to a higher calling that they simply cannot resist and who make it their life’s work to become the best they can be. I am in awe of their talent. Yeah , I get that no one makes it without an incredible amount of hard work and a measure of good luck, but you’ve got to start with the talent in the first place. And Ohiwa-based illustrator Katrin Kadelke has talent in spades. Her delightfully cheeky water colours have featured in several editions of Plenty and are growing popularity and notoriety both down here and back in her native Europe.

PLENTY So Katrin Kadelke from the former East Germany. How did you get here?

KK How did I get here? That’s a long story.

PLENTY Well I’m hoping it’s about 1,200 words.

KK I’m from former East Germany, I was born in 1979 and raised in Thuringia (pronounced Turingia – it could almost be a Māori place name). When I was 30 I applied for a working visa to New Zealand and came over with my German partner. That was nine years ago and we are still here, and I’ve got my residency now.

PLENTY Yes, I’ve noticed that. Of course, the one that people are most familiar with is Schadenfreude - pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune very useful word indeed for the mean spirited.

And for the purposes of this article I’ve carefully researched (i.e. spent five seconds on Google) some other words that offer a look inside the German national psyche:

Ohrwurm (Ear worm) Have you ever listened to a song on the radio while driving to work only to find yourself still humming the same tune by lunch time? Congratulations, you’ve had an ear worm. The beautiful German word Ohrwurm describes the fact of having a song

PLENTY Are you an illustrator by profession?

KK I studied architecture in Germany and while I was studying I worked as a freelance illustrator and at some stage it turned more and more into illustration work rather than architecture. I had my first exhibition back in Germany in Weimar. That’s where UNESCO created a World Heritage Site of some of the buildings as that’s where, in the 18th and 19th centuries, some of the most progressive and influential thinking emerged.

From then it kicked off and I met an author who is also an actor and he saw my picture and illustrations and he said hey you’re doing a lot of word games and I do that too within my poems and texts, so let’s do something together. So, we published our first book together in 2011 and currently I’m working on my 4th book with the same guy.

stuck in your head as if it wriggled itself into your brain through your ear.

Fernweh (Distance pain) This gem describes the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. It’s kind of like a reverse homesickness (Heimweh in German), a longing for a place that isn’t where you are right now. Fernweh is also a frequent reason for people in Germany to go on holiday.

Kummerspeck (Grief bacon) When a relationship ends or during other times of sadness, anger, or worry, it’s common to put on a few pounds of Kummerspeck. What it means is the excess weight put on by emotional overeating.

So when you find yourself on the couch watching “Bridget Jones’ Diary” with a tub of ice cream, you are in fact feeding your grief bacon.

Innerer Schweinehund (Inner pig dog) PLENTY And what is a word game book?

KK In the German language you have a lot of multiple words connected together and words that have very specific meanings so it’s a lot of fun – for kids and adults.

Can’t get up in the morning to be on time for work?

Too lazy to go to the gym? Homework remains undone until the last minute? Don’t worry, it’s not your fault.

The blame lies with your inner pig dog. That’s the tiny voice in the back of your head which is trying to convince you to live a life of inertia and which you will have to overcome to rid yourself of Kummerspeck.

Fremdschämen (Exterior shame) For those of you who cringe in phantom pain when others make a fool of themselves, this is your word.

It describes the feeling of shame when seeing someone else in an uncomfortable or embarrassing situation. It’s a real thing for the more empathetic folk and has kept more than one person from watching “the Office.”

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

23

Torschlusspanik (Closing-gate panic) As people get older, some find themselves worrying about roads not taken or milestones they meant to achieve by a certain age but haven’t. Torschlusspanik is the feeling of urgency to accomplish them before some imaginary gate closes and “it’s all too late.” It’s mostly used for those who sense their biological clock is running out and feel the need to settle with a partner or have children immediately.

KK But I’ve just been over in Europe as I had a two month placement in an artist residency

PLENTY What did you end up bouncing to after 30 illustrations in Ljubljana?

KK In Ljubljana people are very communicative, they read a lot of books and they ask questions and you get straight into conversations with them. No one is staring at their mobile phone and they actually talk to each other.

programme in Slovenia, in Ljubljana, where I produced a series of 30 pictures. The idea behind the series is when you go to a new place

PLENTY What a pleasure!

you try and soak up the atmosphere, so I literally

KK Shortly after that I went to Berlin, where people

picked up pieces from the street; feathers, wall

are quite different. Because of the population people

paper fragments and created a collage and it

don’t talk to each other, they are very busy. Berlin is

was called, appropriately, Bits and Pieces. It’s

good for getting a look at people rushing through life.

quite interesting how different places trigger

One afternoon I was watching people, how they eat,

certain reactions and emotions and leads you

how they drag their kids or their dogs behind them,

bouncing to other ideas.

how they are dressed and how they move.

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PLENTY Yes, the fine art of people watching is sadly disappearing with everybody looking down at their phones. How did you come here to Ōhope or more accurately Ōhiwa Harbour?

PLENTY (cutting to the chase) So where do you sell in NZ? How do you make a living here?

KK I’ve lived in Ōhiwa Harbour for four years now.

pieces about birds, made specially for Zealandia of

Our landlord is a very old friend of my partner and

course. So I had the saddlebacks with their funny

he bought a house which we rent and I have a studio

faces, the fantails and the kererū which is the Bird

with the ocean right in front of me. With that view

of the Year. A friend of Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick

I came up with the cover for issue 09 of Plenty by

bought that piece for her Christmas present. I

looking out the window with Moutohorā/Whale Island

thought that was cool.

KK (hollow laugh) I had a solo exhibition down in Wellington at Zealandia where I did 20 or so

and Whakaari/White Island in the background.

PLENTY That’s NZ though, as you must

PLENTY I loved that cover. It was so Kiwi, ‘the girl in the water’.

know by now. Here there’s only one degree of separation.

KK I was fascinated by water. When I came back

KK Because of the success of the exhibition the

from Germany I came up with an idea to do a book

management decided to sell prints of the artwork

about homes on the beach or by the water. My

and that’s been going on for four or five years

collaborating partner wrote poems about homes on

now. But I would say my main income comes from

the northern beaches of Germany and my job was

selling prints and artworks and from royalties from

to illustrate his poems.

my German books.

It would be great to have another project with a New Zealand author.

I did one with a Nelson author about a bear who was trying to build paper planes without any help. The moral was keep trying to get to your goal.

I just met up with a very well-known German cartoonist and he described my pictures as telling many stories within a few lines.

PLENTY And what now, into the future?

KK More books of course, getting more into working with other Kiwis. I’d like to do something big for Te Papa or work in the film industry. I love the humour of Taika Waititi or Flight of the Concords. I think my illustrations fit in with the New Zealand sense of humour. But like everything else, you need

PLENTY Yes! That’s the gift

of being able to draw, to convey a whole world in just a few strokes.

KK The nice thing about water colour is it’s always unpredictable – and I’ve been doing this now for 11 years – it flows, it has so much life. You never know how it will turn

time to let the networks grow and to meet the right people.

But the nice thing is that what I do every day is what I want to do, and when I get commissions people just trust me to do what I do, knowing they’ll like it.

out. But I love how it’s always light when there’s so many things in life that have a heavy weight. I love that people are starting to recognise my style. That’s hard for an artist to achieve, that signature style.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

25

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I’m passionate about continuing Joseph and our whanau's legacy sharing our way of life, our culture and our connection to nature, using manaakitanga to transform people, from strangers into friends and even whanau.

I have been tramping, hunting and staying in the bush with my parents, from a very young age. My father believed we should walk in our ancestors’ footsteps, using memories gained from men and women who have long passed on. I share these experiences and knowledge with our manuhiri (guests/visitors) to bring the forest and our culture alive. Mauri ora....

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WORDS ANDY TAYLOR IMAGES SUPPLIED

28

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A R A T U A 2 0 1 9

Image supplied by Auckland Theatre Company and Te RÄ“hia Theatre Company, photographed by Fraser Clements

For nearly 20 years Albert Belz has created some of this country’s most challenging and yet accessible theatre in a catalogue that has covered everything from fading timber towns and Māori showbands to the Springbok Tour and Jack the Ripper. His work has been recognized with national awards and he’s been a writer in residence in Le Quesnoy, France, but his latest production sees him return to his roots in the video arcades of 1980s Whakatāne. Clearly, it’s on like Donkey Kong, so we sent Andy Taylor, our resident man with the high score, to get the skinny.

It was called the decade that style forgot, on how ‘filmic’ my plays are. And I was always but Albert Belz’s Astroman proves that there a show off, so though acting wasn’t really an was a lot more to the 80s than dodgy hair option in those days either, that was ultimately and shoulder pads. Keenly written, lovingly where I got started. Which is something I’m styled and with a killer soundtrack courtesy of sure my mum and dad were terrified of – and Laughton Kora, the play is much more than I’m trying to beat acting out of my kids as nostalgia. Like all good theatre it has a tale to we speak! But in my 20s, I was quite serious tell, but also a point to make, and it does so about acting. In between the acting gigs, I was in a beguiling way, so much so that it debuted writing, which I’d always loved, but I’d never simultaneously on both sides of the Tasman considered it to be a way to make a living.” in March this year. That’s quite a feat, but before we talk Astroman and use up all “In times like this, theatre is a our 80s references let’s back up the bus perfect reminder of the joys of life on the career of Albert Belz.

Belz grew up in Whakatāne immersed and the good in everyone” in comic books and dreaming of Dungeons and Dragons instead of writing plays. In 1980s Whakatāne very few people did dream A stint on Shortland Street helped to change of writing plays. “I spent the first seven years of that. “There is an art to soaps,” Belz says. “But my life there before we moved down the road it wasn’t really my cup of tea until I realized I to Minginui, and for me in those days writing could use writing to make sure I was speaking wasn’t even on the radar. I was a geek, totally in my voice and not somebody else’s voice. wrapped up in comics and graphic novels, and That’s when I took it more seriously. And the maybe that’s why so many people comment first example of that was Te Maunga.”

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

29

First performed in 2001, Te Maunga follows two brothers trying to reconcile their differences at their father’s funeral. It received critical success, and in many ways set a course for what was to follow.

“I think I just wanted to hear a more Māori voice – and to be speaking to Māori. And for that you need theatre. Television to this day is not really interested in the Māori world. And with theatre the integrity of the voice tends to remain much more so than on TV, where there are so may fingers in the pie and so many people telling you how to write. God knows what makes a producer think they know anything about narrative – but you have to listen to the beancounters when they’re holding the purse-strings.”

With a Pākehā father and a Māori mother Belz has been called a uniquely Māori voice in theatre, but it’s not a title he entirely agrees with. Labels are, after all, just lazy shorthand, often for, um, journalists. “I consider myself incredibly lucky to have experienced both those worlds in wonderful measures,” he says of growing up in a multicultural

family. “I think what’s different about my voice is that I bring a pop culture twist to a Māori voice. Anything geek – I’m totally into it, but I also love history and I find writing about things that genuinely happened keeps my interest in what I’m working on.”

“I think what’s different about my voice is that I bring a pop culture twist to a Ma-ori voice.”

Which brings us neatly to his second play Awhi Tapu. Rich in pop culture references, but set in a stumbling forestry town it explores loss and belonging, but is mostly a tale of friendship set against the bleak economic shifts of Rogernomics: in one scene, the local volunteer fire brigade – that erstwhile symbol of Kiwi can-do – closes down because of a lack of volunteers.

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“My family moved to Minginui in 1980-81, and it was starting to be gutted. By the time we left in 1985, it was almost all over. I remember going back in 2001 or 2002 and the fire station was literally falling down. Rogernomics and environmentalism had brought it to its knees – I knew this was a place to start a story.”

Awhi Tapu was followed by Yours Truly, a take on the Jack the Ripper legend that smashed together various theories on the killings and took home a gong for best new New Zealand play, and then Te Karakia, a tale of forgiveness set amongst the tumult of the 1981 Springbok tour.

“I have blurred kind of memories of that,” Belz laughs, “based on my eight years of existence at the time! So a lot of that play was based on research.

I had the story in my mind already, so it was just a matter of figuring out how the historical moments fall into place around that. And the play was received relatively well considering how much contention there is around the tour even today.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

31

It’s still a touchy area. I remember when we were rehearsing it I got into a taxi from the airport and the driver asked me what I did, and when I told him what I was working on he spent the entire trip just talking about the tour. And people are still

“I’d seen quite a few works that were quite depressing, so I just wanted to stop and do something that was high energy, high positivity, real upbeat”

wanting to talk about it. Plenty of pus has been drained from that wound, but there’s still a bit left in there.”

For something completely different, Belz’s

They toured Vietnam, and that element

next work Raising the Titanics took a light-

dropped into the play. And we had actually

hearted look at the show band era in New

been commissioned to make a television

Zealand, the scene that gave the likes of Billy

series around it, except that The Sapphires

T James and Prince Tui Teka a break into the

(the 2012 comedy about four indigenous

mainstream. “There was a book that my auntie

Australian women who tour Vietnam to

owned – it was written by Mahora Peters from

entertain the troops) got released! I was

The Māori Volcanics – so when a good friend

bloody furious, thinking, “Who stole my

of mine, and partner in crime, Tainui Tukiwaho

idea?!” and then discovered that it had been

suggested doing something on the showbands

a play even before Tainui and I had come

of the 50s and 60s, I immediately knew the

up with the idea. Bizarrely I have since been

world he was talking about and thought it was

working with the guy who wrote it – Tony

great! We both liked that our mums would come

Briggs – who was the co-director on the

to see something like this! It’s difficult getting

Australian version of Astroman.”

people through the door for Māori theatre – it’s

Ah yes, back to Astroman. Belz has

hard enough getting Māori to come! – but we

described it as a love letter to the 80s, and

thought if we made something that our mums

critics have certainly felt the aroha with The

would come and see we’d be onto a winner. And

New Zealand Herald saying Astroman never

if they came out singing the tunes and buzzing

ceases to be a delight: “In times like this,

then we’d have done what we set out to do.

theatre is a perfect reminder of the joys of life

I was actually lucky enough to meet Mahora

32

“The Volcanics were a phenomenon.

and the good in everyone, and Albert Belz’s

Peters and we spent an entire day talking

Astroman wears those themes endearingly

about her experiences.”

on its fluro-coloured sleeve.”

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A R A T U A 2 0 1 9

“It’s just a big giant, fluro, whopping everything,” says Belz. “We threw everything against the wall and a lot of it stuck. The story was inspired by The Karate Kid, mixed with my own adventures in Whakatāne, and

that’s pretty much it. It started back in 2012 when I’d seen quite a few works that were quite depressing, so I just wanted to stop and do something that was high energy,

and I moved to Australia and I converted the original storyline set in Whakatāne to be set in Geelong where we were living.

So, the Māori elements became indigenous Australian elements and it seemed to work.

It won a competition that allowed me to get a workshop off the ground with indigenous actors so that their voice really came into it in a big way.”

Ultimately both versions of the play took to the stage – remarkably, on the same day - with the Christchurch premier pipping the Melbourne show by just two hours, and it has just completed a run in Auckland. There is talk of a film version in the air too, but Belz is more excited about the possibility of the show heading back to where it came from.

high positivity, real upbeat and with the ‘Let’s just put on a show’ vein similar to the Titanics. But there are strong themes in there – the casual racism and the bullying – and halfway through writing it my partner

“There has been some interest in putting it on in Whakatāne and that would be awesome,” he says. “It’s still me and my family’s favourite place to be, so what a great excuse to head back home!”

With a Pa-keha- father and a Ma-ori mother Belz has been called a uniquely Ma-ori voice in theatre

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ŌHOPE - 37.9673° S, 177.0456° E

The Great Escape WORDS BOB SACAMANO PHOTOGRAPHY ART VANDELAY

W

HEN TRIPADVISOR released its list of the ten best beaches in New Zealand, we guessed that one or two Bay picks would be amongst the chosen few.

In fact three of our local strips of sand made the cut – Pāpāmoa, The Mount, and Ōhope – so we thought it was a great excuse to wipe an oily rag over the Valiant and hit the road to check out what all the hoopla is about.

First up in this issue is everybody’s favourite getaway – Ōhope.

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ŌHOPE - 37.9673° S, 177.0456° E Ōhope Beach photographed from the escarpment in the early 50s.

Ah Ōhope. Is there anywhere in the Bay that comes close to matching that heady mix of endless beach and trip-back-in-time vibe together with great eats and accommodation.

And here’s the best part; out of season, like right now, it’s all yours.

No queuing for an ice cream, no waiting for your morning latte. And no one else on the beach – just you and the sky and the sea. Beaches are the great Kiwi summer hangout, but there really is no better place for a mid-winter getaway than a seaside town like Ōhope.

And those in the know have been getting away to it for, well, yonks. Māori tradition says that nearby Ōhiwa has been inhabited since the time of Hape, and later on Tairongo, which was well before the main migration (which really is yonks), and Ōhiwa was regularly fought over by local iwi.

No queuing for an ice cream, no waiting for your morning latte.

And no one else on the beach – just you and the sky and the sea.

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Many of the pā sites faded into the landscape long ago, but Tauwhare pā, which was the scene of the last major confrontation between Ngāti Awa and Whakatōhea, still offers great views out over the harbour. It’s quite possibly one of the oldest pā sites in the country and is just out of town on the way to Ōpōtiki. Ōhope – which translates as ‘Of the Hips’ – refers to the rather gruesome fate of two members of a war party that found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Ōhope dunes. Some sources put this event in the 1880s, but it is more likely to have occurred well before that date.

The Ōhope dunes remained pretty much untouched up until the 1950s. There were rough tracks down to the beach and though people often camped there, there were few permanent residents. Then in 1957 the Port Ōhope wharf was built and residential sections were opened up to help pay for it.

Slowly, houses began to appear, then motor camps and a shop, and – lo and behold – to the joy of many and consternation of others, a pub (sadly long gone now).

By the late 60s Ōhope was a popular destination for campers and caravaners keen to get away from the crowds, and many of those visitors have been coming back ever since. Some have been returning for so many summers they are just about locals.

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It is a bit steep in parts, but the payoff is a real hidden gem: rock pools, white sand, pōhutukawa, and pounding surf

Looking along the foreshore behind the current location of the Ōhope shops.

W

HAT IS IT ABOUT ŌHOPE that keeps them coming back?

Well for a start there’s that beach.

All 11kms of it, with the sun rising at one end and dipping behind the headland late in the afternoon telling you it’s time to head back. On a clear day Whakaari/White Island puffs away on the horizon, but even on a bad day the beach is inspiring; the roar of the waves and the coast stretching into the mist is more than enough to take your mind off work.

For even more distraction, Ōtarawairere is a 20 min walk over the point at West End. Be warned, it is a bit steep in parts, but the payoff is a real hidden gem: rock pools, white sand, pōhutukawa, and pounding surf all in perfect isolation. Take a picnic and don’t be surprised if you don’t see another soul; Ōtarawairere really has that otherworldly, place-that-timeforgot thing going on.

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ŌHOPE - 37.9673° S, 177.0456° E

And that is perhaps part of the charm of Ōhope itself. There are excellent cafes and restaurants – from great Mexican on the deck at locals’ favourite Cadera to family dining at C’Vue restaurant at the Chartered Club – so you don’t have to settle for fish and chips every night, but there are none of the cheesy tourist joints that are quickly taking over other beach spots. And, lets be really parochial about this, you don’t have to park in a different time zone to where you are going to dinner (eat your heart out Mount Maunganui). And it’s the same for somewhere to lay your head – only in Ōhope is there beach front accommodation like Driftsand where you literally wake up to the beach at your front door, without a hundred people parked up between you and the view.

So it’s that kinda thing that makes Ōhope special. A great beach, great walks, good food. Even the real kiwis love it: with the largest population of North Island brown kiwi in the hills behind Ōhope, this little piece of paradise really is the kiwi capital of the world. Ōhope; it’s where the world wants to be, but fortunately the world hasn’t found it yet.

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There are lots of great organisations out there doing serious mahi to help those in need in our communities. Bigger is often better when it gives you buying power, but it’s worth remembering that some of the real unsung hero’s are those that have seen a need and just gone out to address it all on their own. It’s a Kiwi DIY thing, and while you can debate how it shouldn’t be needed and who is to blame till the cows come home, instead Matt Mortimer tracked down someone who was just doing it.

“We’re all about vulnerable children getting food and the nutrition they need” There’s nothing like a mean good feed. And when you sit down to talk to Nick and Susan - ‘Suz’ Wallace of Taupō, this takes on a whole new meaning: giving kai to those in need.

Nick is of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngai Tahu descent, and Suz is Ngapuhi. “Growing up in Levin,” he says, “I remember seeing friends, nieces and nephews, lots of family members miss out. And we had a rough time a while back ourselves. We were working, but it was just hard to make ends meet, so we know what it’s like to have very little food in the house.”

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

39

A simple game plan: take sandwiches, fruit, and kai to local parks and reserves and hand it out for free, no questions asked.

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‘Small changes for Big differences’

Sometimes we get ourselves into the headspace that we’re all okay for food, that we live in good old Godzone and there’s enough to go around – “that’s not a problem here”. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, and Nick and Suz decided that making a donation or supporting someone else wasn’t the way they wanted to go. Why rely on someone else when you can get out there yourself?

So instead of shaking their heads at the state of the world, Nick and Suz encouraged friends to spend up large when specials were on and slowly a kind of momentum began, that in June 2018 turned into The Full Puku Project.

One year later it has distributed nearly 5,000 feeds to kids around the Taupō area and is hoping to branch out into other areas, all with a super simple game plan: take sandwiches, fruit, and kai to local parks and reserves and hand it out for free, no questions asked.

“We have a ‘no judgment’ policy when kids come to collect a meal” “We’re all about vulnerable children getting food and the nutrition they need,” Nick says, and it seems its struck a chord with others.

Volunteers are coming forward to help from all over Taupō, all lending a hand to put meals together and hand them out. Parks are chosen as regular distribution points and word gets out – kids have been known to be waiting for them when they arrive, from all walks of life.

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One year later it has distributed nearly 5,000 feeds to kids around the Taupo- area They have a motto of ‘Every child deserves a meal’, which is in line with how they decided that they’ll feed whoever is there or whoever decides to come for something to eat.

“We have a ‘no judgment’ policy when kids come to collect a meal,” Nic says.

“We don’t judge them in any way; we all come from different backgrounds, with different struggles.”

The volunteers working alongside them include Vanessa Healey, who has been instrumental in putting things together.

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Add chef Amber Murray (on top of the obvious benefits, Amber is a fantastic help in prep and food safety guidelines) and Benoir MidwoodMurray who looks after publicity, and you have a recipe for success.

Local businesses in Taupō have also come to the fore, donating food and helping where they can: Catch 22 Takeaways, Meat 21 for kai for barbeques, and donations from others such as Mitre 10 Mega, Kefi, Lava Glass, Countdown and Bailey Quinns Styling.

“We haven’t had to chase any businesses, word has got out,“ says Nick, and now it is a real family affair with Nick, Suz and their kids all helping out and handing out the meals each weekend.

“Some of the kids are really shy, we have to literally call them over. Our kids are there with us, wanting to help and I think some of the younger ones respond to them on a level we can’t. Some kids just relate to their own age better, I guess.”

Sometimes we get ourselves into the headspace that we’re all okay for food, that we live in good old Godzone and there’s enough to go around.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

It’s generally a Saturday in different locations across the Taupō region, including Wairakei. Plans are in place for kai stations in other places, such as Waitahanui.

In a world where this kind of generosity goes unnoticed, Nick and Suz are a couple who need to be acknowledged. They, and their fantastic supporters and wider whānau, have pulled together to address a need in their community, a need that is out there across our country.

“When you give something, give it freely,” Nic says. “There should be no conditions.”

And with a big dose of the good old kiwi roll up your sleeves and do it yourself attitude, The Full Puku team are setting about putting things right. One puku at a time.

The Wood for the Trees WORDS KATEE SHANKS PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY TAYLOR

Few topics are as contentious as the use of 1080 in pest control.

Since it was first trialled in New Zealand in 1954, it’s usage has become so widespread that we now use around 80% of the worldwide supply; at the same time, the long and complex debate between the pro and anti camps has reached a fever pitch of threats in which the cases of either side are largely lost on the public. In the midst of all this, Katee Shanks meets a small Rotorua-based group who are trying to find a way out of the deadlock.

What do you do when screams fall on deaf ears?

When protests become stages, and the protestors merely actors. And when the poison keeps killing.

If you’re a tight-knit group of pro-activists you give yourself a name – something like the Outcast Bush Slayers (OCBS) – get off your arse – and work collaboratively with your enemies to find a solution.

P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // M A Y 2 0 1 9

43

Tanya Watson, Zenn Reid, Judge Dredge, Josh Speck and Erin Quirk.

This Rotorua anti-1080 group is confident they can provide the Department of Conservation (DOC) with an alternative pest eradication method without the use of 1080. It’s a big call to be sure, but these guys (and gals) are supremely confident they have the nous, the fortitude and the numbers to show it can be done.

Especially now an opportunity to put their theory to the test has been provided

by DOC, Ngāti Whakaue, the Mokaihaha Kōkako Trust and Progress Mamaku.

Judge Dredge, OCBS spokesman, says you can only protest for so long. “We just got sick of people screaming and driving round with F**k 1080 on their trucks and cars,” Dredge says. “While we get what they were saying, that’s all they were doing. Not a lot is going to happen if that’s all you’re prepared to do.”

Dredge, life-long trapper and mate to a healthy percentage of trappers throughout the country, says it was simply a matter of taking the Department of Conservation up on their offer.

“DOC had been saying to protestors to show the department an alternative, so we set about trying to do just that.” And eight months ago, and without fuss or fanfare, the OCBS started their journey.

44

“We initially approached Ngāti Whakaue and asked for their support. We had to have iwi on board to provide the land and some of the manpower.

They were keen to back us but wanted DOC at the table as well.”

With a lot of work done behind the scenes in the interim, the OCBs have recently been told they would be “given” an 800h block on a five-year contract to prove trapping can be as successful as poison in pest eradication. Dredge said he was “gobsmacked” when given the goahead. “I really didn’t think it would happen, even though we did everything that was asked of us, I was sure we were going to be told no.

“What made it even better is the DOC ranger we have been working with said if the trial was successful, they would look at rolling it out in other places.”

The 800h block is adjacent to a second 800h piece of land baited with feratox (cyanide) and pindone, which will be used as a comparison.

“We’ve got five years to make this work,” Dredge says, admitting that trapping as an alternative has been attempted before, but that the iwi involved had “run out of manpower”.

“I am 100 percent sure we will make this work.

“We just got sick of people screaming and driving round with F**k 1080 on their trucks and cars” Both Josh [another of the OCBS] and I have been trapping all our lives and we are both connected to every trapping body there is in this country. Also, 800h is not a big block, we do 7000ha blocks on our own. If we have to change our whole lives to get this done we will, it’s that important to us and to New Zealand.”

As part of the agreement, Dredge and his fellow trappers will be teaching iwi members to trap the block as well as going into kura to teach youngsters about protecting the whenua without poison.

DOC Partnership Manager Margaret Metcalf said it was great to be talking constructively and collaboratively with the OCBs and iwi.

“We are looking forward to working together and devising a plan,” Metcalf said. “We really do want this to succeed.”

She said, as DOC had always maintained, if there was an alternative to the use of 1080, it would be used. “We have to know firstly, that what is being suggested will work and secondly, it is sustainable.

But everyone is willing to do what it takes to help ensure the work is successful.”

Joe Edwards from Ngāti Te Ngākau and Ngāti Tura said the OCBs had approached himself and John Newton seven months ago and they had been welcomed in. “We are mana whenua for the land from Ngongotaha to Mamaku, but have a close relationship with Ngāti Whakaue,” Edwards said.

“We opened the doors for the korero and things have blossomed.

“It’s almost like we’ve been able to broker a peace deal between DOC and the anti-1080 group.”

Edwards said the iwi were about solutions as opposed to listening to moans and groans. “These people came in and told us what they wanted to do and, if our own people can be taught to trap, especially in the Mokaihaha block, then that’s awesome.

“For years we’ve been hearing trapping is not as successful, now it’s time to find out whether that’s the truth or not.”

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REGULAR READERS WILL RECALL that in our last issue we sent far eastern correspondent Jenny Michie and wonder dog Remus in search of the Bay’s best fish and chips; they returned with a wander down memory lane and the bizarre spectacle of a hopping child that singularly failed to in any way address that brief. Undeterred (well, under staffed) we chose to just pretend that this never happened and set the duo a new challenge.

And it turned out to be one of national importance.

Jandal Ramble

If, like us, you read of the imminent closure of the last New Zealandbased jandal factory in Katikati and, like us, it chilled you to the bone, then you’ve been waiting for some hardhitting journalism about why this Kiwi icon will no longer be made on our shores. Well, we’ve got bad news – your wait isn’t over. But there is good news too – we didn’t give them any travel or lunch money, so, y’know, winning!

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P L E N T Y . C O . N Z // H A R A T U A 2 0 1 9

As usual when I’m with my therapist (we’re not paying for that either – Editor), I was experiencing a range of conflicting emotions. She had asked me to do a Rorschach test, that’s the one where you look at a series of inkblots and say the first thing that comes into your mind.

I’d whizzed through the first few; killer vampire, battling monks, two guys at a bowling alley, road kill wombat. Standard responses I’m sure, but then she showed me one that triggered a deep and disturbing memory. A pair of jandals.

Yes I know jandals are a Kiwi icon, a sign of summer fun and carefree days at the beach but for me I went into a spiral of word association.

Jandals to candles to scandals to Tony Randall to roman sandals. And that was the trigger.

R o m a n sandals took me back to my first experience of New Zealand school uniforms. And it was a trauma.

It was 1972 and we were fresh off the boat - the P&O ocean liner SS Canberra - from Canada. I was a spoilt North American tween and what we wore to school was a big deal. Back in Canada my friends June Wilson, Jill Green and I used to call each other up every morning to discuss in detail what we were wearing that day. It wasn’t unusual for me to try on and discard a dozen outfits before settling on that day’s ensemble.

“Killer vampire, battling monks, two guys at a bowling alley, road kill wombat.

Standard responses I’m sure...”

Then my parents made the (inexplicable to us kids) decision to upsticks and move the family 12,500 km across the globe to New Zealand. We arrived at a run-down motor camp on the shore of Lake Rotoiti and started the process of settling into a brand new life in a brand new land. I was enrolled at school in Rotorua and everyday was a puzzle.

Even though they spoke English and I spoke English, I had to no idea what most people were saying to me most of the time. I had to learn a new vocabulary; chuddy, ratbag, chur, fella, going to town on the car, packing a sad, chunder, taking a sickie, gutted, eh, togs, pash, being a dag, ta, going to the dairy and most puzzling of all to a not yet pubescent 12 year old being on the rag.

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Then there was the school bus. As the only foreign and only pa-keha- kid on the bus I received a fair bit of attention. The other kids used to try and get me to say unpronounceable words like Whangamarino and Rerewhakaaitu. I was never successful but I did develop a respectable amount of sass that has stood me in good stead ever since.

For me though, the real trauma was having to wear a school uniform, a shapeless, itchy sack with a sash belt and roman sandals that flapped on my feet as my mother, in a fit of parsimony, insisted on purchasing them so they would fit me until I left high school.

Little did I know worse was coming. After six months I was finally allowed to attend high school along with my brothers.

Voluminous teal knickers with a huge elastic waist and legs.

My mother was given a list of the kit I required which included instructions to make me a PE uniform and where to buy the regulation fabric and pattern.

How was it that stretch fabrics weren’t available in New Zealand in 1972? The fabric was a teal gabardine and the pattern included a baggy tunic in the shape of a box that was meant to come to the top of our thighs but of course my mother made me an outfit that was three sizes too big so it came down to just above my knees. But the real horror was what we were meant to wear underneath: bloomers. Bloomers! I was almost hysterical when my mother showed me the horrible things she had made. Voluminous teal knickers with a huge elastic waist and legs.

I’m not saying I’m a natural athlete or anything, but back in Canada I was an OK runner, I could sprint a bit and I was a swimmer and a skater and we skied, but from my very first PE lesson at Rotorua Lakes High School

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I became a Class A piker. Anything to get out of PE and putting on that terrible kit. I may have this wrong but I do believe I was the only girl ever in New Zealand to not play netball (a fact that caused me serious injury some 30 years later when our gentle little Rotomateam played a social game against the formidable women of Rotoiti – half their team smoked ciggies on the netball court and I ended up limping off with a bloody nose and a black eye.) But back at school; I scoured the medical encyclopaedias and developed an arresting array of migraines and rashes, mysterious illnesses, colds and flu and stomach aches and it goes without saying that for every PE lesson for the next four years… I was on the rag.

Even though they spoke English and I spoke English, I had to no idea what most people were saying to me But now with the passing of many years I concede that school uniforms are generally a good idea in creating a more egalitarian world and in hindsight I wonder if that wasn’t the real reason my parents immigrated to New Zealand. It must have been exhausting for my poor mother, raising a nitwit child who changed her clothes 20 times every morning. And in the interest of benign benevolence (Not to mention trying to make this in some way relevant to the brief that the publishers’ gave you – Editor) I also concede that jandals are pretty neat too. The flip flop sound of jandals slapping hot pavement is as much the sound of summer as cicadas and Mr Whippy.

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Battleground

Bay of Plenty WORDS ANDY TAYLOR IMAGES SUPPLIED

One hundred and fifty-five years ago the British army suffered a painful defeat at the hands of a vastly outnumbered Māori force in what is arguably the most important engagement of the New Zealand Wars. To Māori it was Pukehinahina, Pākehā knew it by a different name, but for both sides it was a bloody brawl of a battle and a turning point. Plenty looks back on the remarkable battle of Gate Pā and why its outcome is debated to this day.

1864 Illustration of Gate Pā. Source: MHQ, The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 1994, Vol. 7, No. 1

A thin strand of winter was already spreading through the Bay of Plenty in April 1864, but tensions were running hot. In Pukehinahina Pā, also known as Gate Pā because the defences incorporated the ditch that marked the boundary of the mission lands and a gate

had been placed at that point to allow livestock and carts to enter, a force of 230 Māori were entrenched and awaiting attack. Among them was one woman, Hēni Te Kiri Karamū, who refused to leave her brother when all others had been sent away in readiness for battle.

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The Pukehinahina garrison had gathered weeks earlier in response to British troops being sent to Tauranga by General Duncan Cameron to blockade the flow of reinforcements and supplies to the Kingitanga forces, who were locked in a bitter struggle over their land in the Waikato. Some of the garrison had returned from the Waikato fighting to join in the defence of their homes. Governor George Grey had assured local Māori that if they were genuinely neutral they would not be attacked, but Ngāti Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui and other Tauranga Māori were unconvinced; they saw the arrival of the British soldiers as an occupation and the precursor to a full scale invasion.

And as Buddy Mikaere (below), co-author of the recently published Victory at Gate Pā? notes, given the events in the Waikato, who could blame them. “The Waikato invasion was a direct result of a refusal to sell

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With fast running greens and lush, forgiving fairways, the course offers golfers of all levels a challenging but rewarding 18 holes.

Relax afterwards at our lounge bar and restaurant/ cafe with tasty home-made snacks and meals.

Par 70, 6009m course just 10 minutes from town near the airport.

WHAKATANE GOLF CLUB 181 Golf Links Rd, Paroa 07 308 8117 whakatanegolfclub@gmail.com www.whakatanegolf.com

more Māori land to satisfy settler demand,” Mikaere says, “and while the Tauranga invasion had a military aspect, in the end it too was about the acquisition of Māori land.”

As the British forces grew, Tauranga iwi and their leaders decided to take the initiative and build fortifications at Te Waoku, near Oropi, in the hope of hastening the inevitable and bringing the British to battle. Ngāi Te Rangi chief Rāwiri Puhirake had resisted requests to take part in the Waikato war, not wishing to bring the fighting to Tauranga; but now he felt he must act. He sent a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel H H Greer, the British commander, inviting him to bring his soldiers and fight. When Greer refused to accept the challenge, Puhirake facetiously offered to build him a road to make it easier for Greer’s soldiers to come to battle.

The Māori leaders, and the Catholic chiefs in particular, then gathered at Pōterīwhi (Port Relief) on the lower Wairoa River and set down a code of conduct for the coming conflict, including the stipulation that ‘unarmed Pākehās, women and children’ would be spared and that anyone surrendering would be treated fairly. A copy was sent to Greer on 28 March together with a further challenge to attack, but still he would not be goaded into a fight preferring to await further reinforcements.

On 2 April, as the Waikato war was reaching a bloody conclusion just over the Kaimais at Orakau, the Tauranga Māori force shifted their base to Pukehinahina and began construction of a new fortification. Rawiri Puhirake offered to come to Camp Te Papa, the military base built largely on the high ground near the mission station at the Elms, for breakfast.

But the British were biding their time and refusing to take the bait. Ultimately their methodical preparations may have played against them because while the Te Waoku pā was relatively simple, the defences at Pukehinahina were designed and built under the direction of Pene Taka Tuaia, who had learnt military engineering during the Northern War of 1845-46. He had learnt his trade well. The pā comprised one large and one small redoubt, heavily bunkered and with numerous firing posts, the whole cleverly designed to protect the defenders and decimate any attacker. If only the attackers would come.

A contemporary illustration of the battle.

Source: Illustrated Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Vol 1

As April 1864 drew to a close, tensions were rising elsewhere in the Bay. Word spread that Ngāti Porou and other iwi were offering support to the Waikato and Tauranga defenders but their route to the Waikato via Rotorua was blocked by the loyal factions of Te Arawa. Tauranga offered a sensible alternate route. To counter this fresh threat, a small intercepting force of British troops was despatched to Maketū to aid a larger group of Arawa loyalists already there. The combined force was backed up by several naval ships who supplied off-shore firepower. On 28 April the two groups clashed at Maketū and then engaged in a running battle through the sand dunes along the coast to Matatā. Nearly a thousand men were involved, and ultimately Arawa routed Ngāti Porou, Whakatōhea and Whānau ā Apanui opposition in what became

known as the battle of Kaokaoroa, or The Long Rib. It was an encounter that would have been much more widely remembered today if not for the events that overtook it within 24 hours.

Reinforcements had arrived on 21 April to bolster the British troops and it was decided that with the largest artillery battery ever assembled in the country and a combined force of 1700 men backed up by a 600-man 1st Waikato Militia, an attack could now be made. But while ammunition was massed for the heavy artillery and a battle order was drawn up, there was little sense or urgency. On the 28 April General Cameron staged a feint attack and moved his troops and artillery into position.

Pukehinahina – Gate Pā was now effectively surrounded. In keeping with the view that the coming fight would be a very one sided affair, that

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evening nine British officers were welcomed to the mission home of Archdeacon Brown and his wife for dinner. It was a pleasant evening, with the officer’s taking communion and singing the hymn Abide with Me. But of the nine officers in attendance, only one would live through the next day.

29 April 1864 dawned damp and misty in Tauranga. A contemporary report called the early morning ‘unpleasant’, and things would only get worse. Two British assault forces of 300 men each were formed up, but the battle began with a tremendous barrage that lasted eight long hours. Artillery and howitzers pounded the pā, concentrating on the right-hand corner, and though the British gunners had experience of the resilience of Māori fortifications it was of general agreement that they had the firepower to ‘blow the pā to hell.’ One of the guns employed that day was an Armstrong 120-pounder, a sizeable weapon for its day. Eyewitnesses later claimed that some of this fire power was ineffective, going over the pā and into the men of the 68th stationed on the other

side, but the corner of the fortification was finally breached and when the guns fell silent at 4pm there was not a sign of life in Pukehinahina. A steady rain was falling, as a rocket was fired to launch the attack.

The two British assault units – usually known as The Forlorn Hope – were commanded by LieutenantColonel H.G. Booth, who led the 43rd Regiment, and Commander Hay who led the naval brigade. With the pā apparently a broken ruin they decided to launch their attacks simultaneously and trust in élan to see them through.

With his sword above his head Booth lead off and the breach in the pā’s outer defence line was soon crossed, but there was already accurate fire from the defenders, who seemed to have suddenly rematerialized. Some of the firing ports from the bunkers were deeply dug in, so many of the 43rd suffered the unnerving experience of being shot at from below, and within minutes the battle had turned into bloody hand to hand combat.

By the time Hay’s second wave entered the pā all was chaos and the light was failing. There were reports of some of the defenders attempting a retreat but were turned back by the troops stationed to the rear of the pa. The returning defenders were mistaken for a reserve force and the fearful cry went up, “there’s hundreds of them.” The loss of most of the officers only made things worse. There were feats of great valour on both sides, but soon the assault faltered, then broke and the attackers fled back towards their own lines.

What had seemed a sure thing had become a fiasco; 35 British troops were dead and 75 wounded, twice the number of Māori, and there was no time to launch another attack.

The Battle of Gate Pā was over.

When night fell Puhirake ordered that the wounded be gathered in preparation for an attempt to slip through the lines of the 68th to the rear of the pā. As this was underway, it is said that Hēni Te Kiri Karamū, who had stayed to be with her brother, heard the cries of LieutenantColonel Booth and other wounded British soldiers. Despite the brutality of the battle that had just unfolded, she fetched water and carried it to them, cupping her hands so that they could drink.

Source: The New Zealand Wars vol. I, by James Cowan. 1922.

Many medals were won by the attackers of Gate Pā, but the ultimate award must surely go to this defender.

“The actions of Hēni and the fact that the wounded were not killed or mutilated, which would have been the case in traditional fighting, is the point of difference that sets this battle apart from other Land Wars fighting,” says Buddy Mikaere. “The humane actions were in accordance with the code of conduct formulated earlier and which had as its guiding principle the biblical verse Romans 12:20 – If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst give him drink.”

For the British, all that remained was to apportion the blame. It was clear that it had been a major

disaster, with the press reporting how troops ‘ran away howling’ and left dead and dying where they fell, but there was little clear understanding of what had happened. Some blamed inaccurate artillery fire and the loss of officers. Sending in the reserves too soon was also condemned by armchair strategists, but the reality was almost certainly that the assault was badly organised, ill-led and failed to appreciate the well-constructed defensive positions which protected the defenders while enabling them to engage with lethal effect. The British reliance on heavy artillery to overcome such defences was to return to haunt them in 1914.

“While the Battle of Gate Pā is portrayed as an amazing feat of arms – and indeed it was – Māori were not so deluded as to think of it as being a

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Gate Pā, soon after the attack, showing the palisade. Photographer: Richardson, James D. Source: Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 4-1080.

victory,” says Mikaere. “Despite the defeat of the British side – the worst inflicted by a “native” force on Imperial forces - it was they who next morning had possession of the battlefield.”

And battle would return to haunt the Bay within months. Puhirake’s force did indeed slip through the lines on the night of the 29th and was reinforced by allies to swell his ranks to 500. He settled on building a new pā at Te Ranga, but this time the British had no intention of allowing him to establish defences and Cameron sent Greer and the 43rd and 68th with supporting artillery to avenge Gate Pā. This they did on 23 June, leaving more than a hundred of Puhirake’s troops dead in the incomplete trench network of Te Ranga and clearing the way for the land grab iwi had feared.

“After Te Ranga,” says Mikaere, “the provisions of the Native Settlements Act of 1863 were put into effect. Based on legislation that had been used in Ireland, the Act had the confiscation of land deemed as punishment for rebellion,

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and it is those confiscations that are the basis for many of the Treaty claims currently being settled by Tauranga iwi. Of the 250,000-odd acres confiscated, only some 50,000 acres were eventually retained. But those lands are those of the Te Papa peninsula and on which the city of Tauranga of today is built. The real legacy of the confiscations was grinding poverty – a booming Māori economy in the 1850s was turned into subsistence living that persisted for generations.”

Understanding the story of Gate Pā and, more importantly, its consequences, is the first step in moving towards a proper reconciliation. “When we all know the story, we create a common starting point to knowing our history and our shared heritage,” Mikaere says. “The cultural intersection that we drove through in 1864 is no less an important marker than it is in 2019, 155 years later. But this time we are all on the same vehicle, and knowing each other’s stories means we will become a stronger community as a result.”

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