View from the stream
Old flax factory
My ancestors built this homestead on the coast in 1883, no doubt with the help of the other new settlers in the community. The original homestead was built on the Tipoka Road. There are two versions of what happened to that house. One was that when the finishing touches of shellac were being put on the timber inside the house, it caught fire and burnt to the ground. The other version was that when the women were making the soap, it caught fire and burnt down.
It was for this reason that the family homestead was built, in what must have been a hurry, because it was built from two Army Barracks pushed together with a cookhouse out the back. Over time, the cookhouse was replaced with a coal range in a lean-to, and then that was replaced with a gully kitchen and washhouse. Now, it has a big open-space kitchen with a cupboard for a laundry. (No longer any need for a copper to boil up the linen!) A coal range has been put back in the original space.
This house has seen four generations of family growing, and even though there were six bedrooms, there were times when it seemed these were not enough. I am the sixth born of the fourth generation, and my husband and I have spent the last ten years renovating the house to give it back that feeling of family. The reason it took so long was that we were running the farm and could only do it in our spare time. It has been a labour of love.
A Special Day at Waitaha
Not everything about this land is in the history books.
Not long after we bought this property, an old family connection told me something I've never forgotten: that this district was once meant to be a 'Cathedral City,' built where the spiritual lines of the land were said to run close to the surface. I didn't think much more of it until, a few years later, a stranger knocked on my door looking for a place to hold a spiritual gathering. Not the rugby club, they said, too close to the cemetery. It had to be here.
We held the ceremony down by the river, a blessing led by someone from Parihaka Pa, water gathered from sacred sites around the world mixed with our own river water, songs, and a shared lunch out on the grass. We finished the day with a tour of Parihaka itself, which was every bit as special as the morning had been.
I still don't know what to make of the Cathedral City story. But standing by the river that day, I thought maybe there was something in it.