Hopukiore

Ocean Beach and Hopukiore (Mt Drury) from Mauao, Mount Maunganui, c. early 1950s
Postcard, unidentified publisher, collection of Justine Neal

Hopukiore, at 40 metres high is much smaller than its famous counterpart, Mauao but it’s history is just as fascinating. From the late 1500’s the Ngati Tauaiti had a marae there, along with another marae on Moturiki. The name Hopukiore means to catch kiore (rats), the bones and the teeth of which were used for carving chisels and tattooing instruments. The area was used as a carving school and a wahi tapu (sacred site) for ta moko (traditional tattooing).

Ocean Beach, Mt. Maunganui, c. 1970s-1980s
Postcard published by Pictorial Publications Ltd, Hastings
Collection of Justine Neal

On the eastern side of Hopukiore there are at least five caves, some of which are known to have been used for burials. The 1820 battle fought between Ngapuhi and Ngaiterangi resulted in a large number of deaths for the Ngaiterangi. Te Waru’s (Ngaiterangi) chivalrous treatment of Te Morenga (Ngapuhi) after the battle led to peace between the two tribes and the Ngaiterangi dead were honoured with burial in the caves of Hopukiore.

East Cave, Hopukiore, 2025
Photograph by Justine Neal

The caves were also used by the men of the 80^th Regiment under Major Bunbury when they were sent from Auckland to deter hostilities between Arawa and Ngaiterangi, occupying the hill from December 1842 to March 1843. One cave was enlarged and shelves installed for munitions storage and a door was fitted. Another two caves were used for general storage and a bakehouse.

Hopukiore (Mt Drury) and Mauao, from Marine Parade, Mt Maunganui, c. 1950s
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo 99-028

In the 1980’s two young local boys were amusing themselves using old boxes to slide down the slopes of Hopukiore,  After a while, as they happened to have a small torch with them, their attention turned to the caves and they decided to do a little exploring. On entering the cave it felt cold and damp, the floor was hard packed dirt and there was enough headroom to walk. The cave narrowed, then came a shoulder height drop but they were still able to walk down to the next level. The cave narrowed again, it appeared to be solid rock in front of them but the torch showed that in one place the rock overlapped leaving a narrow gap to squeeze through. There was no way an adult could manage it but the boys thought they would be able to. At that moment they had a couple of choices and sensibly decided the way back was the safest one.

In 1853 Hopukiore was given the extra name of Mount Drury, named after Commander Byron Drury who arrived in Tauranga in 1852 on board the H.M.S Pandora to complete a coastal survey of the Bay of Plenty started in 1848.

Hopukiore (Mt Drury) from the quarry on Moturiki, Mount Maunganui, 1921
Postcard by unidentified publisher
Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0197/08

In 1913 a railway line that had been built to the railway workshops (situated between Salisbury Avenue and Rata Street) was continued up the main street, curving round the northern end of Hopukiore to service the quarry on Moturiki. A crushing plant had been built on the foreshore of Hopukiore to deal with the stone coming from the quarry.

The big swing at Mount Drury (Hopukiore) playground, Mt Maunganui, January 1967
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 13 Jan 1967
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14286

Mrs. Gilchrist in the book ‘A History of Mount  Maunganui’ by Don Cunningham remembers the Public Works picnics:

“When they got the rail through a bit they would have open carriages with seats across and you’d come down to the Mount from Te Puke. The railway line went right along where the Main Road is now. We would all get off at the foot of Mount Drury on a platform and then take our picnic baskets into the big pine trees.”

Tunnel of the Mt Drury (Hopukiore) Railway Line, Mt Maunganui, December 1966
Crop of 120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 28 Dec 1966
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14079

From 1960 to 1975 there was a miniature railway as part of a children’s playground. There was a man-made tunnel that it went through at the base of Hopukiore and that’s where it lived. There were doors at each end that were kept locked when it wasn’t in use. It only used to run in the summer. Since 2008 there has been a playground on the western side of the reserve.

Mount Drury Tower (Hopukiore), Mt Maunganui, February 1963
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 26 Feb 1963
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-4488

In 1958 the Harbour Board Signal Station was erected on the summit of Hopukiore, the ideal place with its sweeping views out to sea. It served as a communication tool for navigation and relaying important information to the ships. It has been inoperative for many years now and at the present time only the signal station mast and a shed remain on the site.

Hopukiore (Mount Drury) with Soundshell, taken from Moturiki (Leisure Island), c. 1970s
Silver gelatin snapshot print by unidentified photographer
Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0040/25

In 1967 a Soundshell was built on the flat surface at the base of Hopukiore on the Moturiki side. The seating was provided by man-made terraces or by spreading a towel or a blanket on the grassy slopes. It proved very popular with locals and visitors alike, and was regularly used for concerts and events, such as the Miss Mount Maunganui contest on New Year’s Day. The Soundshell was demolished in 1999 and the area reverted back to grass.

Mount Maunganui 5,000 Club junior pageant at the Soundshell,January 1967
120-format film negative, published in Bay of Plenty Times, 4 Jan 1967
Collection of Tauranga Libraries, Pae Korokī Ref. Photo gca-14153

In 1978 the Council decided to extend the Grace Avenue frontage of Hopukiore by buying the small cottages that had been built there. These worker’s cottages were relics of the days when Moturiki had been quarried by the Railways Department and coincidentally several of them came on the market at this time and others were obviously reaching the end of their useful life.

Radio mast and shed, Hopukiore, 2025
Photograph by Justine Neal

The Council employed a land agent whose job was to enquire from the landowners if they were interested in selling. Unfortunately, he rather overstepped his job description by threatening them that if they did not sell the Council would take the land under the Public Works Act. Eventually the cottages were acquired by the Council and the land incorporated into the reserve. It just took a little bit longer and without the help of that particular land agent.

References

2019 Tauranga Reserves Management Plan
Tauranga City Library
Tauranga Heritage Collection
Explore Tauranga
The Weekend Sun, 22 February 2013
Sunlive, 10 May 2021
A History of Mount Maunganui, compiled by Bruce Cunningham & Ken Musgrave, 1989

Talking about the Weather

Considering topics for my next blog while the storms of August raged, I found myself wondering how early Taurangians got their weather reports. 

Art Deco Wall Barometer
Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 3115/84

Of course Māori systems and practices for assessing weather patterns from one Matariki to the next were already well in place in Tauranga Moana, and tenaciously remained in use[1].  It is more recent efforts that are the focus of this essay, which not only explores the mechanics of colonial arrangements but also offers a few reflections on how weather and weather commentary percolated through Tauranga’s day-to-day life in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. 

Thermometer, “Compliments of T.H. Hall“
Image courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection, Ref. 0154/83

In the balmy Bay of Plenty, sheltered from the prevailing westerlies in a rain shadow kindly provided by the Kaimais, it is not too hard to read the day’s weather merely by looking at the sky and testing the wind direction (usually on a wet finger).  But mariners and farmers depend on forecasts to plan their work – and even urban folk like to know their opportunities for digging their garden, mending the roads or planning their first outing after an illness[2]. 

Bay of Plenty Times, 7 August 1883

Editors of the Bay of Plenty Times consistently used the weather as news as well as background information in their reportage.  When it came to forecasting, however, they were more erratic, although definitely biased towards storm warnings.  Which makes sense.  Calm seas and prosperous voyages are universally appreciated, but dull journalism.  Appetites for disaster avoided can be well satisfied if the forecast is wrong; and disaster as predicted is always good copy. 

Bay of Plenty Times, 24 April 1878

This was the first time the Bay of Plenty Times ran what might be called a weather report on its pages, although the new service’s set-up was noted in a timely editorial of 28 March 1874[3].  Possibly the logistics and expense of regular telegrams (and the fact that the Times was at that stage still a bi-weekly publication) made it all too hard to fit into the press schedule.  Even ten years later, the long-distance relationship between our Editor, W B Langridge, and Captain R A (Robert Arbuthnot) Edwin RN, the first official appointed to the Weather Reporting Office, a branch of the Marine Department, was best characterized as friendly exasperation, at least on Langridge’s side. 

Bay of Plenty Times, 26 July 1884

Bay of Plenty Times, 30 December 1884

Captain Edwin’s attitudes are impossible to glean from the official records[4] but he seems to have been thick of skin and sharp of intellect and tolerant of people who moaned about the weather.  And who failed to do so: Tauranga’s reports of wind, barometer and sea level movements were incomplete in 1879 and so the town was not included in Captain Edwin’s statistical table, “Return showing Percentage of Correct Forecast at the undermentioned Places during the Twelve Months ending 30^th June 1879.” 

Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1879 Session II, H-10 Page 3

Captain Edwin was justifiably proud of his efforts to put together a national service to support the provision of forecasts, incuding hand-drawn isobaric weather maps.  “About two dozen stations telegraphed daily (except Sunday) to Wellington,” notes the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand[5].  He attended the Inter-Colonial Meterological Conference in Melbourne in 1879, which enabled information to be exchanged daily by cable between here and Australia, then to be correlated with one of 24 “typical isobaric patterns commonly occurring over New Zealand”, thus supplying newspapers with a guide to printing a daily weather map.  (I have been unable to find evidence of any such maps actually appearing in the NZ press.  What follows is an example from 1953): 

Portion of Australasian synoptic map
Dept of Lands and Survey, National Library, Sourced from LINZ. Crown Copyright reserved
(NB. the map is a blank - isobaric pressure lines would be drawn in by hand)

The Captain became, in fact, a household name: weather reports were ascribed directly to him, without any allusion to the (evidently tiny) staff that made up his service.  By degrees, he also became, apparently, responsible for the weather itself.  “A correspondent writes:“ the Editor noted wryly on 1 December 1893 (which was of course an election year), “- Unless Captain Edwin manages the weather better than he has been doing lately we will have to go in for an elective meteorologist.”[6]

It does appear that Edwin was the phlegmatic victim of editorial judgment.  His daily telegrams did not invariably make it to print.  After the 1878 squall warning no further reports appeared in the Bay of Plenty Times until 1882, when 32 wires, all tidings of bad weather, were published.  About the same number appeared in 1883; turning our attention to past Augusts, a notoriously difficult (those sou-westerlies!) time in the Bay, the numbers range from more than a few to none at all, from which we can infer that newborn lambs did occasionally get a settled spring in which to thrive.  In other words, Captain Edwin’s conscientiousness and dedication to the fine naval tradition set by Vice-Admiral FitzRoy[7] were not always matched in the local press. 

We might, however, forgive the editors.  Not only did the Times eventually introduce a cheerful column inch or two, headlined, “Briefs”, with entries like:  “WARMER. Weather on change.  Borough Council tonight”[8] and “GALE miscarried. Weather still fine.  New butcher’s business booming”[9] --  every household had, if not a barometer, at least a means by which to tell if there was to be a change in the weather: a strip of seaweed by the back door (if it softened, rain was on its way) or a rheumatic joint (if it ached more than usual, barometric pressure could be dropping).  Telling people what they already know is not news. 

All that changed when Captain Edwin’s 1909 successor, the Rev D C Bates, made arrangements to receive radioed weather reports from ships at sea.  Sadly, this was interrupted by World War I but a sad truth of war is its opportunity for significant scientific advances.  The quality, reliability and accessibility of modern weather reports offer a view of our planet, and our small place in it, that early weathermen would greatly appreciate.  This is a small offer of appreciation to them.

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[1] See, for instance, Hohepa, B.  Bill Hohepa’s Fishing Book , Harlen 1977, essentially a collection of his weekly and widely published newspaper columns, often based on Māori practices and observation of the lunar cycle. A current example of his advice is at https://www.fishing.net.nz/fishing-advice/maori-fishing-calendar/

[2] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18820818.2.4

[3] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18740328.2.6

[4] See, for instance, Annual Reports of the Marine Department 1878 (Appendices to the Journals, H-12) and 1879 (Appendices to the Journals, H-10).

[5] A H McLintock (Ed.), An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, Vol 2, Government Printing Office, Wellington 1966, p.549

[6] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18931201.2.13

[7] Captain of HMS Beagle 1831-36, Governor of New Zealand 1843-45, pioneering meteorologist and author of The Weather Book: A Manual of Practical Meteorology (pub 1863).

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18950805.2.2.5

[9] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT18950816.2.2.5