History of Motupipi Hill explored
Tony Reilly talking to keen history students last Saturday. Photo: Ina Holst.
Shrouded in history, a hill towers like a natural bulwark above the Motupipi River and estuary. On an ordinary day, the silence surrounding the hill’s quiet presence is only interrupted by the odd cry of a seabird and the shuffling activity of the mudflat creatures.
Last Saturday however, some 40 members from U3A, Probus and the Heritage Group clambered over the rolling farmland. Their host Tony Reilly, and DOC ranger Simon Walls regaled them with revelations of Motupipi history.
The hill was once a vantage point for Maori defences and later the hub of coal and lime trading, and a progression of well-known family names such as the Bairds, Mansons, Lovells, Packards, Scotts, Wallis and Winters has entered into its chronicles.
Under Captain Arthur Wakefield, NZ Land Company surveyors discovered the Motupipi area, which they found favourable for settlement in 1842. In the same year, James Lovell, accompanied by with his wife and four-year-old daughter, were the first settlers to arrive on a whaling ship on the Motupipi shores. One of their descendants, Myrtle Lovell, was present on the day.
“The Motupipi Hill is important for the history of Golden Bay,” said Tony Reilly. “Motupipi and Collingwood were once the main ports for Golden Bay, and there is still evidence of the early shipping history. Lovell built at least six boats here, but as the boats got bigger, Motupipi lost its importance as a boat-building area in favour of Waitapu.”
The Motupipi Hill boasts a large variety of rock types, predominantly limestone and coal. A brick lime kiln still sits in the hillside in a thicket of jasmine, and coalshafts and other remnants of the old wharf structures in the estuary allow an imagining mind to paint a picture in sepia of ships, heavily laden with local coal and lime, departing for Nelson from a string of primitive housing built along the Motupipi River banks.
Coal exploitation began in 1842/43 with the Massacre Bay coal company, and was the first serious attempt to establish a coal trade, which continued on and off until 1891. Miners had another go at it in 1929, but this ended in bankruptcy in 1930. Coal was picked from under the estuarine mud, on the beach, in the riverbed, the nearby swamp and underground from horizontal tunnels.
Today, Tony points out, the old shafts and tunnels are closed off for safety reasons. “One of the shafts was a hellishly deep hole, probably all dug by hand and very straight-sided. We found tunnels and side tunnels and collapsed roof sections, and when we first explored down here, boxes of explosives were still down there. These are now all destroyed.”
The relationships between new immigrants from England and the resident Maori were not always amiable, and Arthur Wakefield was warned prior to his inaugural visit to Massacre Bay that the Motupipi Maori community was looking at the company’s land claims with some disdain.
As an act of resistance, Maori chief Poakawa sabotaged the lime exports by breaking up barrels of lime, and was frog-marched by 25 constables and Captain Wakefield to an open-air court at Waitapu, where he was fined £1, paid by his wife.
Prior to European settlement, the Motupipi Hill was dotted with several Maori villages and a pa site. With a population of 200-300, Motupipi was the largest settlement in Golden Bay at the time.
“It was quite a surprise to find the Maori sites,” said Simon Walls. “A fire once went through, which revealed a set of storage pits—kumara and later potatoes—on Three Hill Pa. Kumara needed special conditions for storage to keep for the following year or else there would be no food. The pits were dug out by adze on a well-drained site and were made into little sheds with sunken floors and fronds to cover the kumara. These pits were set up away from the village and hidden, because there may have been other people trying to borrow them.”
One of the walkers said as a child he had always believed the kumara pits were part of the defence line dug for the Japanese.
In 1994, the Motupipi Hill saw another attempt at settlement when a proposal was lodged with TDC with a plan to carve it into 500 allotments for a residential village. A group of 20 residents appealed council’s approval and the Environment Court vetoed the plan two years later.
The hill’s future, it seems, may well be quieter than its past.
Ina Holst
