Whangapoua: Harbour of the Shellfish

The past is another country (or town)

THERE'S A lot of local history about. Over the past couple of decades New Zealand communities have shown a growing interest in recording and publishing their backstories. Most of our small towns have colourful histories, being entwined with such dramatic events as pioneer farming, bush clearances, gold mining, coal mining, the coming of the automobile and the impact of the world wars.

And there is now an awareness that if these stories are not written down, they could be lost forever. There is also a substantial readership for local histories, probably because our ageing population has a developing curiosity about the places where they grew up or spent family holidays. While they were young they were too preoccupied with the present to bother looking back. Now, they want to.

Local histories are usually initiated from within the community. Sometimes it's the local historical society, sometimes the town librarian, or the ratepayers' association, or a group of well-read citizens, or an interested individual. For example, Janet Riddle of the Mercury Bay Museum in Whitianga wrote and published Salt Spray and Sawdust, the history of her local area, in 1996. Its first print run of 1000 sold out, necessitating a reprint. Print runs for such books are usually short, but they sell steadily. Over on the peninsula's western coast, the Coromandel Town History Research Group collectively wrote and published In Search of the Rainbow The Coromandel Story in 2002, then followed it up with two sub-regional books, True Tales of Northern Coromandel (2002) and More True Tales of Northern Coromandel (2005). As Colleen Carmichael of the Coromandel Library points out: "Such books sell because they're written by local people whose extended families and friends all buy one." Jeanette Grant, project treasurer of The History of Epsom (2006), which had 50 contributors under the overall editorship of historian Graham Bush, reports that their book, too, was reprinted and has to date sold 1700 copies, at $65 each.

Commercial publishers generally shy away from local histories because they don't consider them a viable proposition. Penguin NZ publishing director Geoff Walker says local histories "have a local readership, and nothing wrong with that. But it depends how local and narrowly focused the book is. A history of Canterbury or the West Coast or the Coromandel, for example, would almost certainly have a wider market. And sometimes with a little editorial tinkering a book's readership can be broadened."

Local publishing of such histories places the entire production process in the hands of the people who inaugurate the project. This saves money, because the book is produced largely by a voluntary labour of love. But a crucial question still has to be answered: just who is to write it? That's a decision for the organising committee.
Ad Feedback

My involvement with a local history project began with a phone call, in May 2008. An author was needed, to write the history of Whangapoua, on the eastern Coromandel coast. Local resident Judy Drok, one of the project's management team, showed me over Whangapoua and neighbouring New Chums beach. On the walk there we passed a long homestead, surrounded by native trees and a stone wall.

"That's the house that Alberta McLean built," Judy told me. I didn't know who Alberta was, although I was soon to find out. We walked along a track to New Chums, which I hadn't seen before. Native bush overlooked an arc of white sand. It was even more beautiful than Whangapoua beach. I decided to accept the offer.

The project was instigated by the beachside settlement's ratepayers' association, who had accorded the writing of Whangapoua's history top of a priority list of its long-term aims, the rest being environmental protection concerns. I was not a trained historian, but I have a keen interest in New Zealand history, and as I was already the author of several books of non-fiction as well as historical fiction, I was deemed suitable.

Judy Drok had been accumulating material for some time, from people who had lived or holidayed at Whangapoua, and she handed me over several file boxes of notes.

I started with Whangapoua's Maori history. The district's tangata whenua is the Mangakahia family, their tribe the Ngati Huarere, who had suffered grievously in pre-European times from incursions by Tainui and Ngapuhi war parties. In the early 1960s the family had been obliged, for financial reasons, to subdivide and sell their remaining foreshore land. In the 1990s the Mangakahia family had lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal for compensation for land alienation after a succession of allegedly unjust deals with timber merchants and the Crown during the 19th century.

The published testimonies of Mangakahia family representatives mentioned their charismatic forebear, Hamiora Mangakahia (1838-1918), who had campaigned unsuccessfully for compensation from the Crown in Victorian times. I contacted the family's legal counsel, Charl Hirschfeld. In 2006 the tribunal had found in favour of the Mangakahia claim, Charl told me, but a counter-claim meant that no compensation had yet been paid.

Timber milling played a huge part in Whangapoua's past. All over the district there had been stands of kauri trees. From the 1860s onwards Pakeha timber merchants sought to fell the trees and sell them, but disputes arose over cutting rights. Some Maori sold the rights when they weren't entitled to do so; some payments were manifestly inadequate. In the 1870s the disputes spilled over into what became known as the "Log Wars". In spite of this the forests were annihilated.

As early as 1868 the land in Whangapoua's hinterland had been found to be auriferous, or gold-bearing. But it was quartz gold, meaning that substantial capital was needed to crush the rock and process it, to extract the bullion. A company was formed, the Kauri Freehold Gold Estates, and a share issue floated in 1896. In the Opitonui valley a boom town sprang up, including hotels, stores and a school. But the rock-to-bullion ratio proved uneconomic, a bust followed, and Opitonui became a ghost town, then vanished altogether.

All these events had been fully reported in the newspapers of the day, such as The Daily Southern Cross. The website http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz proved a tremendous help. There were also illuminating photographs in the Auckland Weekly News.

In the Kiwi way, the news that a book on Whangapoua was being written soon spread. People rang to tell me their stories, called in to talk, emailed or sent photos.

Chapter headings for the book now suggested themselves: pre-European tribal life, kauri deforestation and milling, the mining boom and bust, pioneer farming, "rehab" farming, reafforestation, coastal subdivision. Writing a local history, I came to realise, is like working on a very large jigsaw puzzle. Key pieces were missing but had to be found to complete the picture.

Several people had recollections of Whangapoua's most extraordinary resident, Alberta McLean (1886-1964). She was the daughter of an upper-class English couple, Henrietta and Charles Ridley, who had been the controller of the English royal household. Alberta drove an ambulance in World War I, married and divorced twice, and in 1929 emigrated to Whangapoua. There she bought land, built a 13-bedroom homestead, farmed sheep and bred Siamese cats and polo ponies. Childless, she left her estate to various charities, including the SPCA.

A founding family of Whangapoua were the Denizes, whose story runs right through the district's narrative. "Punga" Denize was a pioneer farmer and it was pastoralist Bert Denize who allowed people to camp on his land by the Te Punga stream from the 1950s through to the 1980s.

Bert's son Rob and his wife Wendy, who taught at the local school at Te Rerenga for longer than anyone else, today live in the homestead that Alberta McLean had built. It's virtually the same as it was in the 1930s with its frontage deck, grand dining room and stone wall surround. And in the hall, along with Denize family photos, is a portrait of the formidable Alberta, still looking as if she owns the place.

Whangapoua: Harbour of the Shellfish by Graeme Lay, is published by the Whangapoua History Project Group (256pp, $70) By GRAEME LAY - Sunday Star Times
Last updated 05:00 30/08/2009

Are you local?: When it came to stories, Whangapoua turned out to be a figurative and literal gold mine.
Relevant offers