From Tauranga City Library’s archives
Lot 202, Section 1, Town of Tauranga: a century-long ownership anomaly
Lot 202, Section 1, on the corner of Grey and Elizabeth Streets, originated as part of the Te Papa lands purchased in 1838–1839 from Ngāi Te Rangi by the Church Missionary Society to be held in trust, and was transferred to the Crown under post-war pressure in 1867 for the creation of the Tauranga township. At that time it was one of the sections that Governor Grey had promised to Crown aligned Arawa and Ngāi Te Rangi chiefs to receive in recognition of their service during the New Zealand Wars. Twenty-six sections were selected for this purpose, and Crown grants were eventually issued for twenty-five of them. Strangely, and despite later being occupied, Lot 202 was never officially granted, remaining on paper at least, in Crown ownership.
This went unnoticed for decades.
From 1871, it had been occupied and used by Anaru Haua and later by his descendants. Although the family lived primarily on the sections next door, Lot 202 was fenced, cultivated as a garden, and used as a horse paddock. After the road level was raised in 1920 the section was re-fenced, with a gated and padlocked entrance at the corner. Rates were paid on the land from at least 1910, and it was widely known locally as Haua’s paddock. In 1950 Charles William Haua, who had been operating at the Spring Street end of Grey Street, built a blacksmith’s shop on the section and continued to operate his business there.
Charlie Haua's blacksmith's shop, cnr Grey and Elizabeth Streets
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 02-156
By the 1920s, when the Crown reviewed lands that were “looked on as Crown lands subject to Native claims,” the mistake came to light. Competing claims were raised by hapū who had originally been intended recipients of township sections in 1867, and in 1955 the Māori Land Court made an order vesting the land in Tamihana Tikitere of Ngāti Uenukukōpako. It looked like the Haua's might loose access to Lot 202 and the new blacksmith's shop would need to move.
Charlie Haua was not making his claim to the proprety through the Māori Land Court however, but under the Land Transfer Act, on the grounds that the land had been clearly and unambiguously in his family’s complete possession for several generations. In legal speak this is a principle known as adverse possession; and it meant that he could not make his case to the Māori Land Court, even though their decision directly affected the same land. Instead, he brought proceedings in the Supreme Court (A.122/59), heard in 1960 before Justice Hardie Boys. The Court examined the full history of the section and found as a matter of fact that Haua and his ancestors had occupied Lot 202 openly, continuously, exclusively, and notoriously (in the legal sense) from the nineteenth century onward. Lot 202’s ambiguous status, caused by administrative failure, was finally resolved by judicial decision after nearly a century.
Charlie Haua's blacksmith's shop, Grey Street, Tauranga c. 1940s.
Mollie Hardy, Charlie Haua, Pat Holloway.
Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 99-1161
Charlie operated his blacksmith business from the corner of Grey and Elizabeth Streets until 1969 when we finally retired. His blacksmithing operation was transferred to the Tauranga Museum / Historic Village, where it was preserved as a working exhibit. There, he continued to demonstrate blacksmithing for school groups and visitors, keeping the craft alive as a public heritage activity for many years.
The judgement is part of Ms 81, the Papers of Charlie Haua within the archives at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries, which have been digitised at made available on Pae Korokī Tauranga Archives Online.
