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Matakohe,
Northland, New Zealand
The township
of Matakohe is located in the upper reaches of the historic Kaipara
Harbour. It is a couple of hour drive from Auckland.
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Maori
Legend tells us that the North Island of New Zealand is actually
the world’s largest fish. Maui, a Maori hero of ancient times,
hooked the enormous fish during an expedition to prove his
fishing prowess. If you look at a map of the North Island,
you can see that Wellington is the head, Cape Taranaki & East
Cape are the fins, and Northland is the tail of the fish -
Te Hiku o Te Ika.
Kupe -
Kupe and his crew, in his waka Matahourua, voyaged deep into
the Southern Ocean. He discovered Te Ika-a-Maui, and it was
his wife Kuramarotini who called the land ‘Aotearoa’ (land
of the long white cloud). The first landfall of the waka Matahourua
was the shores of the Hokianga Harbour. Many of the tribes-people
of Northland trace their ancestry back to Kupe.
Maori
people lived throughout Northland in kainga (villages). As
today, they felt an intense closeness to their kin. They lived
within the whanau (immediate family)
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and then within
their extended family, called the hapu. The largest group they called
iwi (tribe). They did not think of themselves as one people, they
belonged to their tribes – Ngati Whatua, Nga Puhi, Te Roroa, Ngati
Wai, Ngati Kuri, Te Aupouri, Ngaitakoto, Ngatikahu and Te Rarawa.
Europeans began
living in Northland in the late eighteenth century. They came first
on voyages of scientific exploration, soon to be followed by traders
seeking deep sea whales and seal colonies. Missionaries headed the
next wave of arrivals. On Christmas Day in 1814, on the northern
shores of the Bay of Islands, Samuel Marsden preached the first
Christian sermon in New Zealand. Soon mission stations were established
throughout the region.
In the early
1850s, five ship-loads of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders settled at
Waipu on the east coast to create their own slice of Scotland. On
the west coast, emigrants from Dalmatia (Yugoslavs) lived a down
to earth life digging gum. And throughout the region, colonists
from England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland arrived to mill the forests
and establish farms.
Matakohe and
nearby districts were first settled in 1862 by Albertlanders. The
Albertlanders were an organised group of English emigrants who settled
around Port Albert in the Kaipara Harbour. New settlers to the northern
part of New Zealand arrived in Auckland by sailing ship. To get
to Matakohe they sailed across the Waitemata Harbour to Riverhead,
travelled overland by foot or bullock cart to Helensville, then
sailed across the Kaipara Harbour to eventually reach Matakohe via
Port Albert and Pahi. This first group of settlers included R.C.
Smith, Alexander Rintoul, George Thomson, John Ovens, John Isbister,
J Robertson, C.J. Metcalfe, S Cooksey, A. Jervis and Mr Nuttings
(who did not stay for long).
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Matakohe was the main town many of the land grants from 1866
onwards were in the back district - called Ararua or Omaru,
which contain alot of undulating land. These settlements were
very isolated, and though they were served by tidal rivers,
the settlers generally had to trek miles beyond Matakohe along
surveyor tracks. Early settlers of this back district included
James Jarvie and John Kirk (original Albertlanders), James Smith,
Joseph
Hardie, Samuel McCallum and A.L. Smith. On
arrival at their block of land their first task was to erect
a dwelling. A clearing was made in the dense impenetrable bush
and a simple structure built using light manuka stakes and nikau
palm fronds. These were followed by more substantial homes built
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split palings,
pit sawn timber and later sawn timber from steam driven sawmills.
The first industry was rope making with the native flax fibre. This
was soon surpassed by the kauri timber and kauri gum industries. The
bush was laboriously cleared using axes, saws and fire and over time
farming was established .
Albertland played
a notable role in magnitude of its kauri gum industry. Kauri gum
was used in making varnishes and paints, linoleum, and perfumes,
among other things. The Maoris were the first gatherers, then would-be
farmers who used the gum as a cash crop to improve their farms,
and as a means to supplement the scant incomes in the early days.
Early efforts at farming were quite discouraging - clearing the
land was hard and slow work - and there was no income from farms
until the land was cleared sufficiently to ‘produce’ something.
many of these early settlers.
By this time
the ‘industry’ was established and the ‘gum diggers’ arrived. These
were men from many countries of the world and many different backgrounds,
who were looking for a new way of life. For the first 20 years after
settlement not much digging was required but after that the work
was hard and because of mostly swampy conditions, wet and unpleasant
- but quite lucrative for that time. Maori
Hill on the road between Omaru and Matakohe was one of the main
gumfields, and on the field anything up to 200 diggers were employed
during the height of the industry. Gum diggers searched for gum
deposits in swamps and old forest locations. Using gum rods up to
20 feet long, the diggers would probe the swamp and then either
dig or use gum hooks to bring the gum deposits bag to the surface.
The gum diggers
proving a boon for the local settlment by creating a demand for
their produce. Up until the early 1880s Matakohe exported hundreds
of tons of gum. The price good gum fetched in 1887 was 42 pounds
a ton and fine gum would bring 43 - 44 pounds a ton. By 1890 there
were reputed to be 20,000 gum diggers
The timber industry
took off in the late 1880. European settlers used kauri for building
and exported logs all over the world for ship building. 75% of the
kauri forests were cut down in about 150 years of harvesting.
Hardie Bridge
at Matakohe
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