Fitting tributes to pioneers of the Hokianga 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, winterdraped 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

Earlier, at dawn on 29 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.

By Michael Hooper

read more in Heritage New Zealand, Spring 2008