Sometimes only trees are left to remind us of human settlement. And sometimes their absence does the same. Now that a lattice of shelter-belts characterises the landscape around Tauranga, including my home locale of Te Puna, it is difficult to picture the transformation that has taken place as a consequence of both Māori and European settlement.
Google map, screenshot of Te Puna area, Snodgrass Road in the centre
About a millennium ago, when a group of ocean-voyaging waka made landfall in the sheltered waters of Tauranga Moana, the new immigrants found a remnant population, Nga Marama, and a vista of timbered hills receding to what came to be known as the Minden dome. A tiny sample of that dense bush, the reserve at Whakamarama, can be seen as a dark irregularly-shaped patch in the bottom left-hand corner of the above Google maps image[1]. But even that is not ngahere horomata (virgin forest). It was milled for timber in the early twentieth century by the Sharplins, a rival to the Gammans’ operation in Oropi[2].
Most of Tauranga was without trees for centuries before Europeans arrived. An early survey noted its countryside as “good soil, fern and tutu”[3] and the sketch made of the harbour entrance looking south from the deck of the HMS Pandora[4] offers no indication of a fuzzy, tree-lined inland horizon. Archaeological studies tell us that the local style of agriculture was a cycle of burning, cultivation and planting, moving on when the soil ceased to be productive and returning when it had recovered.This allowed no time for aboriculture. Such timber as there was was likely dedicated to building waka and important wharenui. The most venerated tree in Te Puna, a pohutukawa growing on the ravaged slopes of Pukewhanake close to the Wairoa River, is unlikely to be very ancient, although these tolerant and adaptable trees can live for half a century or more.
Old gum tree, corner of Tangitu and Te Puna Roads, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden
The trees we see in Te Puna, therefore, were all planted after European settlement. Many of them were indeed markers of settlement, nineteenth-century examples of exotic arrivals in waves of arboreal fashion. This Australian gum has stood at the end of Te Puna Road for possibly a century. A rapid-growing species, this specimen was already huge to my five-year-old eyes in 1958.
Phoenix palms, end of Snodgrass Road Te Puna, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden
The rusticity of this image was chosen in deliberate contrast to the sophistication of a stand of three phoenix palms that mark the end of Snodgrass Road, an area of Te Puna that was subdivided by landowner Sandy Snodgrass between 1930 and 1950.
Sutton kauri woodlot, Wallace Road Te Puna, 2025
Photo by Beth Bowden
For years after the Snodgrass homestead itself had disappeared, the Norfolk pine that marked a shady corner of its tennis lawn stood high above the surrounding rows of casuarina and matsudana willow shelter lines: cheap, mass-produced and unbeautiful trees kept trimmed for optimal economic benefit to the orchards they protect. That pine no longer pierces the skyline of Te Puna; but just along the road, on land that once was Snodgrass’s farm, a stand of kauri marks a twentieth-century investment.
Baby grey heron, Ettrick Farm, 1960
Photo by Shirley Sparks
Snodgrass Road is a name applied to a more ancient ara – a well-used pathway between the harbourside and the Minden that surveyors marked as a convenient line for a road. At its inland end, the trees changed. Farmers like John Munro preferred sturdy macrocarpas to wind-tossed fronds. Not only did a line of conifers mark his boundary with the Harper property to the north; he planted a macrocarpa near his barn and cowshed, at the bottom of wife Mary’s beautiful garden. By the time my parents took over the property, which they named Ettrick, this tree was a vast Ent-like structure.[5] Its strength and generous shade made it the ideal site for the periodic slaughter and butchering of a farm sheep for the household’s mutton. A more innocent image was caught by my mother in 1960.
Macrocarpa planted on L T Harper’s property, Te Puna
Photo taken 1970 by Shirley Sparks
The Harper farm had its signature macrocarpa too. I think Len’s father must have planted it, on the very top of the hill that was the highest point of their farm. This tree, much loved by the Harper family and ours, succumbed to disease in 2015 or so. It was a true landmark on both State Highway 2 and the horizon of the surprisingly small pastoral area that made up the productive part of the Munro’s, Sharp’s, and then the Sparks’ family farm.
Hay harvesting, Ettrick 1967
Photo by Shirley Sparks
My father made his hay on paddocks that were flat enough to take the machinery. While he cut and wind-rowed the grass himself, using his trusty Fergusson tractor, Rex Williams’ baler was a large and unwieldy beast, and the bales once made were picked up on a truck. Gradient was the key factor in an efficient, mechanised harvest. And macrocarpas loomed over the whole operation.
Hand-drawn map of Ettrick by Shirley Sparks, 1964
Photo by Beth Bowden
The treeline boundary on the lower left marks an important, original survey line that dates from Theophilus Heal’s map of 1867[6]. Here it is again, running on the diagonal in a hand-drawn map done by my mother in 1964.
Shirley Sparks mock-planting with a tiny trowel on the new house site, Ettrick,
1967
Photo by Beth Bowden
Local memory is bound up in trees. They have a chancy existence amongst their human companions, being vulnerable to development pressures, carelessness and climate change; but, left to themselves, their lifetimes extending well beyond those of the people who planted them, they can command a quiet significance. My mother who turned 95 while this essay was being written, has planted many and many a tree, not all of which have lasted her distance. But those that will survive her will carry her memory. The same is true for others who set their saplings at roadsides and on hilltops. Trees may indeed have a secret life – and they tell a public story too.
References
[1] For an interactive scan of the extent of the thousand-year-old Kaimai bushline, go to
[3] Map of Otumoitai West, Parish of Te Puna, Cook County, SD 420
[4] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ Pacific Ocean NEW ZEALAND From Surveys in HM Ships Acheron & Pandora Captn. JL Stokes, Comndrs B Drury & GH Richards Assisted by… 1848-1855
[6] Map of Otumoetai Block, parish of Te Puna, Cook County, SD 424
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