From Heritage New Zealand, Spring 2008

by Michael Hooper

Fitting tributes to pioneers of the Hokianga are erected at Rawene

Hokianga Harbour
guarded by sand bars, solid rock, shifting dunes
home and haven to taniwha, turning point for Kupe
surge of waves and waka, on sand and shingle beds, the hulls drawn up
clans gathered after journeys, haka for the home sweet home

With these, his own poetic words, Lindsay Charman, property supervisor of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust’s Clendon House, scooped up the attentive, winter draped community clustered into the Rawene Community Hall and carried them back in time.

in time the towns and more tall ships
foresters and millers
laws and legislation
civilisation

Distanced even today from most of the far north’s civilisation, Rawene is not a place that leaps trippingly off the map, nor indeed from the paucity of signs beside the ribbon road. It is at the tip of a finger poking into the Hokianga Harbour, joined by a vein to Highway 12, snaking off State Highway 1, some 25 kilometres north of Kawakawa. If you miss the Rawene turnoff, you are soon flicked off the wild west coast and up into the Waipoua Forest to meet Tane Mahuta on your way south to Dargaville.

The drive is longer than one imagines, deep drains and large culverts along the route offering a clue to the rainfall reasons behind the blue-green lushness of the undulating forest landscape. The further one ventures, the less grip the sporadic ramshackle houses seem to have on their paint, weathered by winter’s waterblast and blow-torched by summer’s near-tropical sun. Just add salt, and you have the surprisingly well-coated community of Rawene, where pride in historic buildings positively shines.

It is Sunday morning and the unexpected sounds of a rock band leak from a church hall into the otherwise quiet and quite colonial Parnell Street.

After Pakeha, the loaves and fishes
a white church huddled in the hearth
looking out across the sweep of sea
where the wind plucked at sails
seafarers came from far and wide
Maori for the rhythm of the hymns

Kaumatua Horotai Tito launches into his third service of the day – and it’s only 10am. As they rise, his prayers must navigate the Masonic symbols in the pressed metal ceilings of the Town Hall, which was relocated from Onehunga and restored in 1988. Although the 1838 Catholic Church up the road represents a denomination that was one of the first to establish itself in this ferry, freight and fishing town, it is clearly Clendon House, down on the western pebbles of the peninsula, that holds the beat of this historic heart of Hokianga.

Earlier, at dawn on this 29th day of June, the tangata whenua of Hokianga had mingled with locals and visitors at the foot of the Clendon House pathway for a blessing. It is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul but the two figures faced by the crowd and blessed by the rising sun are revered not like Sunday saints, but as kaitiaki. Their poupou are not fully Maori. The woman is in front, eyes atypically open, even though she has passed to the next world. This is Jane Takotowi Clendon, daughter of Dennis Browne Cochrane and Takotowi Te Whata of Mangamuka, who was connected by whakapapa to some of the most notable whanau in the Hokianga.

It’s low tide on Clendon Esplanade, and her figure looks across the harbour of Hokianga nui a Kupe, the returning place of Kupe, as she did from the upstairs windows of Clendon House when her husband’s trading enterprises sailed below.

The second poupou, with a top hat, has of New Zealand’s earliest traders and shipowners. He was a witness to New Zealand’s Declaration of Independence, the first United States Consul in New Zealand, and a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi. He was also chairman of New Zealand’s first bank, a member of the first Legislative Council, the country’s first Police Magistrate, and later Resident Magistrate at Hokianga. There’s a moko on his arm.

“I don’t usually put ta moko on tau iwi [immigrants],” says local carver Nopera Pikari, “but the moko is to show his status in this country.” From the gleaming jacket, at the rear of the poupou, hangs not a coattail but a lizard’s tail. “When I was first commissioned I was asked to carve a tuatara, but it just didn’t go well for me. So, I thought the best way to do it was like a top hat and tail.

“The carvings, to me,” continues Nopera, “are dedicated to those two people, but more around her, because she was the kaitiaki of the house. When he died she was left the legacy of looking after this place, with £5000 [$600,000 in today’s dollars] of debt. She went to Auckland, leaving behind her eight children, and ultimately cleared the debt over about forty years. There’s a pattern on the carving that represents her eight children and many mokopuna.”

Jane Clendon’s story, with its humanity and heroism, somehow outshines the stature of her husband, and that’s clearly how it has affected Lindsay Charman, and many others gathered in the Town Hall this day. Charman, a showman and raconteur, holds his audience with a story many might know, but few have heard presented with such flourish. After some 20 minutes of oratory, he brings us back to the present, and the relevance of the poupou.

“Jane’s legacy is that she is the first generation that we might refer to as a bicultural New Zealander. She was immensely proud of her Pakeha husband. Her son grew up to became a Justice of the Peace, surveyor, carpenter – many things Pakeha. But amongst local Maori he was regarded as rangatira.”

The morning’s speeches have all been in a very Tai Tokerau setting; the six children on the stage singing waiata for each speaker – except Kelvin Davis, who talks about Treaty chief Whatoi Pomare, his ancestor “four great grandfathers away”, then, with his experience as a college principal, beats the choir to the cut, launching strongly into his own waiata. There’s a sneeze on stage during the next waiata that brings on a fit of giggles, and soon two of the chorus slip away, before being rounded up and restored to the ranks by whanau.

The back room team have clearly been cutting and cooking for hours, and the doors are opened to several hundred, revealing a feast for 5000.

Artists and artisans from the Hokianga mingle and munch. The remnants of kai would fill more than a few kete. Jeff, Bruce and David Clendon, and three generations of their family are well represented.

“It’s a very large family,” admits David, pointing out some of the whanau and their links. The genealogy is something of a game of snakes and ladders, but the message is strong – they still cherish the family home, their turangawaewae, and the occasional working bee puts hands to heart. The Pakeha element has dominated the house for much of its existence, and some in the family are quick to credit Lindsay Charman with addressing this imbalance by actively welcoming tangata whenua; many of the day’s speeches are fully in te reo Maori. Oscar, the youngest Clendon there, abandons texting to pay attention.

Lindsay met his wife on the back steps of Clendon House, and they married on the front steps this last Waitangi Day. Today, however, the back steps are the territory of the Clendons’ great-grand-daughter Ann Flood. She grew up in the house and, despite an absence of several years now, she is at home welcoming visitors who straggle over from the Town Hall. The sun filters through windows onto washboards and wooden benches while she tells her own stories, holding a picture of her grandmother, (Frances) Louisa Clendon, one of the eight children.

“I was born up the hill at the hospital,” says Ann Flood, “and we left here when I was 18 months old – in the middle of the Depression. There were foreclosures right, left and centre; so it was back to the big smoke.”

She reflects on the changes since her birth here in 1931, and applauds the work of the NZHPT and the community. “The house looks great – it really does. The whole township looks good. There have been times when it’s been down-at-heel, and everything needed painting – even the population! And it’s been wonderful the way the whole township turned out today.”

Nopera Pikari has claimed modestly at the hui, “I am not a speaker, because my hands speak for me.” But as I head back on the now-more-familiar road to “civilisation” it is one of his comments that settles in my mind: “There are a lot of things that drive us apart – but these things bind us together.” He is talking about more than Clendon House, he is talking about our living history. Lindsay Charman, for all his colourful storytelling, has also been apposite in his summation: “It’s a magnificent day, a heart-stirring day.”

In the main street, attention turns toward the $16 Sunday lunch in the hotel Sports Bar – something else you don’t find in the city. The magnificent Hokianga hills and echoes of hills for most of the morning have shrugged off the clawing mists, but in my rear-view mirror the tide has turned. And Rawene is once again blessed with rain.

Evermore
the tide still turns
a boat still plies for trade
mangroves thrive in silt and mud
and people come and go
te hokinga mai

Michael Hooper is winner of the Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards Best Magazine Story 2007, 2000.