Taputeranga: Disputed Island

Colin Feslier

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 15 2020

Taputeranga Island is a much-used symbol of our community. It’s been the subject of story-telling since people first saw it perhaps 30 or 40 generations ago and it is still painted and sketched endlessly by people charmed by its beauty and intrigued by the sense of ‘so near and yet so far’.

Its name has been much misunderstood and translated into English in ways that ignore its provenance. ‘Taputeranga’ is also the name of the island off Napier known in te reo Pākehā as ‘Watchman’s Island’. The scholar Jock McEwan argued convincingly that the local name was brought from Hawkes Bay by early Māori migrating to the area from Heretaunga (Hawkes Bay) and that it had in turn been the name of a place in Hawaiki, the ancestral home of Maōri. Similar comments were made by Elsdon Best. 

Further research may turn up other views on the origin and meaning of the name but the efforts to ‘translate’ it by breaking down its syllables such as ‘tapu’ (restricted, set aside, holy) ‘te’ (the) ‘ranga’ (group/shoal of fish) really provide no indication of true meaning at all. Such efforts are a bit like saying ‘Brooklyn’ means ‘a stream associated with someone called Lyn’. 

The presence of the word ‘tapu’ has sometimes led people to believe it is an area subject to ritual restriction but evidence of this in the past or present is not easy to find. 

Then Ngāti Toarangatira entered into a deed of settlement. This did referenced Taputeranga and provided for a series of actions which:

1. Transferred ownership from the City Council to the Crown

2. Transferred ownership in turn to Ngāti Toarangatira through the Toa Rangatira Trust

3. Then declared Taputeranga to be a reserve and classified as a historic reserve under the Reserves Act 1977.

4. Named the reserve ‘Taputeranga Island Historic Reserve’

5. Established the City Council as the continuing administering body ‘as if the reserve were vested in the Council’.

In other words, Ngāti Toarangatira ownership is established, but administration continues much as before. Historic reserves’ historic sites are preserved by law, as are other features such as indigenous flora and fauna. Subject to the usual rules Councils impose, the public have access.

In this case there was not even a cross claim situation. One iwi had claimed and the other had not, because of a restriction it believed to be in place.

The Te Atiawa action in the High Court failed with the Court noting the Tribunal findings that both ahi kā (traditional ownership rights) were held by both Te Atiawa and Ngāti Toarangatira parts of the south-west coast.

The court noted that the Tribunal had specifically rejected a claim by Taranaki Whānui (Te Atiawa) that their rights excluded Ngāti Toarangatira having similar rights in the same area.

While Te Atiawa argued that it would be unjust and unlawful were Taputeranga Island to be transferred to Ngāti Toa when in fact it was situated within their area of exclusive customary rights, the court found that Taputeranga Island:

• As an island is not in the coastal marine area of [Te Atiawa] (to which they already had rights in law) and,

• Even if it were, the south coast zone was not declared in any [Te Atiawa cultural redress to be exclusively theirs.

The court found there was, therefore, no basis in law on which to conclude that there is any inconsistency between the two settlements.  And so things have stood since 2012. But iwi memories are long. 

Island Bay: memories of a beach

Beverley Morris

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 8 2012/2013

When they married in 1920 my parents, Percey and Vera Williams, bought the house at 14 Mersey St, Island Bay. I was their first child, born in 1923, followed by Billy in 1925. Although the beach was 10 minutes walk away, (we never owned a car), it was my favourite playground. While in my pram I was wheeled to the Island Bay play area on the sea front where my mother and her friend Mrs Sutton-Smith gossiped while the babies were safely seated in the small four-sided swings. They would finish off by going over to the the beach to dip our feet in the cold water. I am not sure but I think Mum and Dad joined the newly-formed Lifesaving Club.

After my brother arrived, we often spent Sundays having a picnic at Princess Bay which meant hiking for half an hour around the coast, with Mum pushing Billy in a pushchair that carried much of the paraphernalia and Dad holding my hand and carrying our swiming gear.

Most of Saturday afternoon was spent at the beach (Dad worked in the mornings) and on Sundays we stayed till the sun was sinking behind the South Island.

By the time I was six I was lifting my feet off the seafloor and doing dog-paddle.  The diving platform in the bay stood a long way out at hightide but at low tide the rungs of the ladder were within a metre’s paddling distance. Just before my seventh birthday I achieved my goal of climbing up the ladder of the ‘pier’ as it was called locally. It was almost harder to get back to shore!

However, before I could savour my new skill, Dad was assigned to a job in Western Samoa and the Williams family moved to Apia where we lived or five years. When we returned to Island Bay, my brother Bill and I were confident swimmers, having swum every day in the nearby Vasesegago.

The summer of 1936 I ran barefoot to Island Bay beach for after school swims thus scandalising the neighbours who thought I should not go without shoes. I remember the ladies’ changing shed on the extreme east of the beach and the nearby girls’ changing shed which was open to the sky. The men’s shed was closer to the middle of the beach, flanked by the boys’ shed, and it was also without a roof.

Looking back I see the Surf Club facillities offered an excellent place for teenage girls and boys to ‘hang out’ – where there was a big room with an old table tennis set-up and an ancient piano to play on. I don’t remember as much emphasis on eating and drinking as there might be today. 

During the next few years my group of friends from Wellington East Girls’ College became fully fledged members of the Island Bay Surf and Lifesaving Club. When World War ll broke out in 1939, many of the older men enlisted and later the younger men were conscripted. Women’s teams were more accepted as a part of the war effort. We turned up regularly for training in the clubrooms at night and for swimming practice in the Bay. As the island protected the beach from pounding surf, we sometimes went around to Lyall Bay to experience some real surf. Mr Colin Coleman was our main trainer and the girls’ names I remember were Betty Dellow, Nancy and Morna McKenzie, Joan Ritchie, Eva Pointon, Rae Johnson and Phyllis Heather.

Because of our physiological differences, the ladies’ team was allowed to operate fixed positions in competition events while the men had to ballot for them. In those days it was not considered healthy for women to swim when menstruating. The boys who raised queries about this anomaly were given a sex education lesson by the leader. I usually took the belt position as I was the strongest swimmer and Betty the ‘patient’  while others looked after the land positions with the reel.

At the signal the ‘patient’ swam out to a buoy and on arrival put up her hand. Then I ran down the beach, jumped into the belt and swam out to ‘rescue’ her. The land team pulled us in on the rope and effected resuscitation in a number of approved steps.

Some of the competitions involved marching standards and so we practised marching in the soft sand which made our muscles ache. Occasionally we swam from West Beach to the island, surfacing in rock pools in which we imagined octopuses were lurking.

We went to regional competitions at Fitzroy Beach in Tatanaki, Piha in Auckland, Sumner near Christchurch and St. Clair in Dunedin. This all happened in wartime with its associated difficulties of travel and accomodation but we managed to beg for petrol and were billeted among other surf club members. 

The St Clair experience I remember very well. Betty swam out to the buoy and we saw her hand raised above an enormous crest so I followed in the belt taking note where I saw her last. But soon I was in the depth of a huge wave and lost sight of her. When I climbed up the wave again, I caught a glimpse of the buoy and changed my dirction and after several dips and rises managed to reach her. It was a terrifying trip.

We had one very sad happening. During a competition on Lyall Bay beach, when one member was pulled in by the line it was discovered that he had drowned. It was believed that Tom Redican had suffered a heart attack. 

When I moved on to Teachers’ College and Victoria University in 1941, it became more difficult to fit in training in the weekends and I linked up with a boyfriend, Peter Morris, who lived in Karori – the other end of the city. He was drafted into the army in Feilding which further complicated my life. We married in 1944. When Peter returned after serving overseas, we lived in a  house in Newtown, close enought to bring my babies by tram to Island Bay to visit their grandparents and once more to enjoy playing on the beach.

A 1939 sensation - a bomber upside-down in Island Bay 

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 18 2023