A few of this year’s local histories
Two hundred or so
contemporary tales of past and present, a selection of Tommy ‘Kapai’ Wilson’s
newspaper columns written for the Bay of Plenty Times since 2004, and put into
a handsome volume entitled Paperboy Writer, starts this review of the
efforts of local writers to evoke the history of Tauranga Moana and its surrounds.
Paperboy Writer was published in
November 2024, but this review stretches a couple of points, in time and space,
in order to make a larger one: the
astonishing variety of history books concerning the Bay of Plenty – east and
west - that came out in 2025. All of
those described here are in the Tauranga Library: ask at the Reference Room if
you can’t find a borrowing copy.
‘Variety’, in this
discussion, takes a number of forms. There
is not only a breadth of approach and tone, ranging from Tommy Wilson’s (mostly)
cheerful nostalgia to the balanced formality of Trevor Bentley’s prose in Te
Kaewa, The Wanderers [1] and the almost lyrical intertwining of te reo and
English in Tame Iti’s compelling autobiography.
We are also offered some very fresh approaches to the way history can be
written – Sarah Ell’s excursions into imagined thoughts of The Elms’
inhabitants, for instance; or the very practical, informative, and carefully
ordered and illustrated lists that form the backbone of Hatu Hone – 120
years of St John’s in Tauranga.
There are hidden gems
to be found as well. Robert Craig
Scott’s prodigious efforts to track and trace the changes in neighbourhoods
that have now become Tauranga’s suburbs are hugely useful to those researching
past lives in close and often unexpected detail. Bob published the second edition of Mount
Maunganui, A History of the Land and Early Settlers from 1864 in November
of this year. As if this was not enough,
he also managed to produce the ninth volume of his series: Otumoetai, A
History following confiscation in 1864. Although
my editorial eye regrets the lack of macrons in the text, I was well impressed that
Bob had found a first-person account, an article from the Bay of Plenty Times of
8 June 1882 and quoted in full on p. 138, that illustrated the poignancies of
settlement in transition:
… most of the
other trees were planted by the natives.
Mr Matheson has erected a dairy under the willow trees. On the side of the house is a very old titoki
tree. The natives left this Pa at the
outbreak of the late Maori war and burnt all their whares before leaving. Since then, the old Catholic Church has been
left to go to ruin.
The titoki tree can
be identified in the photos Bob provides and – as visitors to the Otūmoetai
Historic Reserve can see for themselves – still stands [2]. Bob has done for his beloved suburbs what I
would love to see done for Te Puna: setting out the land use changes at a level
of detail that makes present recognition easy and delightful.
Communities are
another theme that gets varied treatment from our 2025 authors. Raewyn Otto, née Phare, has significantly
revised and augmented the photocopied booklet she produced to mark the 75th
anniversary of the establishment of her faith community. Celebrating 100 years: The Seventh-day
Adventist Church in Tauranga 1925-2025 is now a large-format hardcover
volume, lavishly illustrated in full colour, assembling personal testimony,
autobiographical accounts of the church’s families – the Ashtons, the
Goldstones, the Maunders and more – their poetry, a short story, their
performances of The Road to Bethlehem; and enough institutional history
to help us understand how a modern-day church establishes itself in a society
where the faith traditions that came with nineteenth-century settlers were
already well in place.
Kathy Wills’ Tales
of Old Katikati, third edition, is another reworking, based on
original author Elsie G Lockington’s reminiscences and stories of people she
clearly knew very well. Its sixty pages
have a conversational quality, often loaded with personal and place names; it
is occasionally vague as to detail, although Elsie makes it clear what the
impacts of dreadful events, such as the influenza epidemic of 1915, can be on a
tight-knit town and country society. The
tone is invariably polite. It is,
however, worth reading to the very end where, at a safe distance, the
third-generation editor lets us know that even Elsie had personal opinions.
Someone looking for a
more comprehensive – I would go so far as to say definitive – history of Katikati
will find it in Katikati, From First Peoples to the Present Day/Ngā Reanga
Tangata ki Katikati, co-authored by Francis Young, Sandra Haigh, Pauline
McCowan and Chris Bedford and produced in time for the 150th anniversary
of the arrival of the Ulster settlers in September 2025. That well-worked aspect of Katikati’s history
is, however, deliberately downplayed in favour of settlement patterns since
1300 CE and Katikati’s development since 1940.
“We had to make choices,” the authors say in their preface, “to keep the
book manageable; not everyone may agree with those.” This solid and readable book has the same
self-confidence that is shown in the small rural settlement it describes.
One significant element
stands out in reviewing the books mentioned in this article: the choice and quality
of the images used. Francis Young had a
busy year. He and Di Logan put together an
astonishing book, Pictures from the Ulster Plantation: Katikati 1898-1900,
of the very lovely photographs of Emily Surtees. Her album records the homes and people of the
Ulster families that George Vesey Stewart somehow persuaded and energetically
led to live on the other side of the world. These evocative images have been
carefully selected, even more carefully digitally enhanced, and are laid out in
such a way that each monochrome page is beautiful in itself.
Quite another, just
as compelling, approach is taken by Sally Pratt with her publication, Tauranga:
Just scratching the surface. As
every successful publisher knows, you can judge a book by its
cover: Sally’s lively account of interesting and exciting episodes of our
town’s past is accessible, impressively researched, packed with Tauranga’s more
unusual stories and a quantity of spectacular illustrations, almost all of them
colourised using AI and up-to-the-minute digital publishing technology. This is the perfect way to interest a younger
reader – a highly pictorial presentation showing the layers of history in our
place, with enough text to explain how streets and shorelines change, and who
was involved in changing them.
No review of the
histories published this year would be complete without acknowledging the two
mainstream books shown above.
Sarah Ell gave a talk
to Tauranga Historical earlier this year.
The Spirit of a Place celebrates the status of one of Aotearoa
New Zealand’s significant heritage sites, and Sarah explained how she steered a
careful course through her chapters. She
set herself to meet the demands of the expected readership of her book: serious
scholars, heritage enthusiasts, and of course the tourists who flock to The
Elms from the cruise ships and elsewhere, seeking something that will mark a
memorable experience rather than - maybe as well as – explain the background to
a distinguished building and the family that made it their home for so
long. Glossy, with sensitive photographs
and even more sensitive side-stories, the book is a triumph by any standard, and
the writing of a quality that shows even a well-trodden tale has fresh insights
to uncover.
Tame Iti’s autobiography,
Mana, is a quality publication of a very different kind. Beautifully
designed, with lots of white space on its matt-paper pages, it has a congenial
font that helps make the considerable amount of te reo, although not invariably
translated, adequately understandable in context. The overall tone of the book, as might be
expected of its subject, is one of drama in both the narrative and the
images. It is also sober and reflective, the story of
an examined life, one we are privileged to see too.
What a vintage year
2025 has proved to be for us here in the Bay of Plenty. Local history really does enrich our lives
and the way we deal with our present day.
We must be grateful to all our local historians who take the time, and expend
prodigious effort, to help us understand how things were and are now. Tame Iti’s approach, in connection with the
Waitangi Tribunal’s hearings of the Tūhoe claims, sums it up:
…we came up with
a way to convey that history. Instead of
a lecture about colonization and confiscation, we would paint the picture of
the experience of our tīpuna. We
reminded ourselves: Imagine being in that space. What are we thinking? [3]
[1] We published a
description of Te Kaewa/The Wanderers on this blog on Tuesday 28 October
[2] I am indebted to
Harley Couper of the Reference team at Tauranga Library for helping me to find
this on the 3D Tauranga Web Viewer, https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/council/maps
[3] Tame Iti, Mana,
p.201
Author and images:
Beth Bowden
