A short history of Pukerua through the eye of a potato

Te Rauparaha himself planted and harvested kumara regularly at Pukerua as documented by his son Tamihana in He Pukapuka Tātaku i Ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui, A Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha. Te Rauparaha traded kumara with ships in Cook Strait and he may well have been the first to introduce potatoes to the Wellington region.

In November 1839 Edward Jerningham Wakefield, an agent and explorer for the New Zealand Company and author of Adventure in New Zealand (1845), passed through Pukerua. After walking from Taupō, now known as Plimmerton, he came:

to an extensive and somewhat tabular amphitheatre, cleared to the extent of two or three hundred acres for native potato-gardens; and whence we looked, through the naked trunks of the trees left standing in the clearing, upon the island of Kapiti, and a long reach of the sandy beach and level country opposite. Penetrating through the gardens to the edge of a steep declivity overlooking the beach of a semicircular bay, we saw, on a spur of the table-land separated by two deep gullies through which streams run to the sea, a native pa or fort. This, my guides told me, was Pukerua, or “Two hills.”  (Wakefield p224)

A Mr W. Ferguson in a letter sent from Wellington on 1 November 1842 to a friend in England wrote:

we came to Buccarra [Pukerua] wood, which was much like that of Porirua, with this exception, that there were no trees thrown across the brooks, as in the latter, and we were consequently obliged to wade through, sometimes up to our arm-pits. This bush was about twelve miles through, and we then came to Buccarra Pa, (the native town), and entered the house of a chief. We were obliged to go through the hole into it, on all fours, and found two fires in the middle of the hut, no outlet for smoke, except the door, and after they had boiled us some tea and tiven (potatoes) we had supper, and lay down to sleep  –men, women, and children, altogether. (Letters From Settlers & Labouring Emigrants (1843) p47)

In June 1845 nine-year-old Thomas Bevan (1836-1913) his younger brother Will and older sisters Mary and Margaret, walked from Port Nicholson, Wellington, to Waikawa. They were accompanied on their journey by a Māori guide, Ropina. On the third day they came out of forest at Pukerua and saw Waimaphi pā, stronghold of Ngāti Toa. The pā was occupied by hundreds of people and was surrounded by three rows of palisades.

The outer stockade, consisting of huge tree-trunks set side by side in the ground, was called the pekerangi. The tops of these high posts were carved into hideous figures with protruding tongues and great glaring eyes set with the shining paua shell. Inside this defence were two other lines of palisades with deep ditches between, and underground ways for the defenders to retreat through if driven back from the pekerangi.” (Bevan p5)

Although initially afraid of the noisy welcome the children slept safely at Waimapihi and went next day north to Scotch Jock’s. Kahe te Rau o te Rangi, Jock’s wife greeted them:

Soon she had put before us potatoes, kumara, and fish; but she knew the love of the pakeha for bread and set about to supply a substitute for the deficiency. Procuring a root of the rewarewa tree, she took some potatoes, grated them on the natural grater, formed them into little cakes, and baked them in the hot ashes. These cakes were called pakéké by the Natives. For tea, she made an effusion of the leaves of the hutiwai (the common Native burr or piripiri: Acaena sanguisorbae), and we enjoyed a good meal before resuming our journey.” (Bevan p6)

Another early record of potatoes being grown at Pukerua was during the time of tension when European settlers wanted Ngati Toa land. John Wade, a Wellington merchant, wrote a letter to the New Zealand Spectator & Cook’s Strait Guardian in October 1846 defending the senior Ngāti Toa chief Rawiri Puaha who was believed to have joined Te Rangihaeata. Wade wrote that Puaha “…has been for some time past at Pukerua planting potatoes.” Wild pigs were a menace to Pukerua gardeners, Te Rauparaha had been abducted by the British and the fight at Battle Hill was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Puaha’s “pig-proof fence round his potato field has been magnified into a fortified pa. I have visited him twice within the last fortnight, and am quite persuaded he is peaceably disposed,” wrote Wade.

In 1847 when a “settlement” was reached in relation to Ngāti Toa land £5,000 was paid and three blocks were reserved for Ngāti Toa. “The third block commences at the Taupo pa and extends to Wainui, containing all the unsurveyed land between the sea and the back of the sections in the Horokiwi valley, including the potatoe grounds and clearings at Pukerua.” (New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian 20 March 1847).

In April 1868 George Henry Wilson undertook a walk from Pāuatahanui where he was a storekeeper up the Horokiwi Valley and along the Coast to ‘Pukarua’ as he called Pukerua. Later he wrote a letter to Isaac Featherston the Superintendent of Wellington Province advocating small farm settlement in the area. He wrote:

…we are now fairly in Pukarua a right noble and grand place it is, the district is owned by natives of Porirua who have let it at a yearly rent to a tenant at present in occupation. The natives used to grow better crops here than in any of their cultivations on the coast….

small streams…. now providing luxurious muddy baths for the indolent porkers that ‘saunter through’ this place. A place of great and charming loveliness is this Pukarua; now we come to Sugar’s potatoe garden, then to Simeon’s kumara garden, then to the fern ground…( R17834668, Archives New Zealand)

The Māori census published by the House of Representatives in 1906 made special mention of a successful Māori farmer at Pukerua. He had just received £100 for the wool from his 300 sheep and was selling wethers for 15 shillings each. He had ploughed two acres which were planted with three varieties of potatoes. The Derwents were a complete failure because of potato blight but his Huakaroro and another variety, thought to be the blight resistant Red Dakota, were highly successful. These were, recorded the census enumerator George Davies, “stored in what to me was quite a new and certainly a most effective way, instead of being stored in a shed or pit.”

This new and effective way was a seventeen foot by five foot horizontal frame four feet above ground level. Slats on the frame were covered with manuka on which the potatoes were placed and then covered over with loose fern six inches deep. Battens were nailed along the sides and ends of the frame. Mr Davies wrote “the potatoes did not heat, and, being fully exposed to wind and air, no matter how heavy the rain they soon dried. My informant told me that he had seen potatoes so stored at Parihaka in June last, and that they were quite sound then.” There were one and a half tons of potatoes stored in this way at Pukerua.

Although the Māori farmer was not named in the report it was highly likely to have been Ringi Horomona who with his wife Amiria had been farming at Pukerua for four years. His potato storage method became well known through newspaper articles published after the 1906 census report. Details of the Pukerua potato storage method were even published in Sydney and Queensland. In 1913 George Davies published “Storage of Potatoes. A Good Native Farmer’s Method” in the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture again praising the Māori farmer of Pukerua. He went on to speculate that the storage method might even be suitable for apples.

A full-page item entitled “Pukerua Bay is Calling” in The Dominion Christmas Number of 1929 was written to entice Wellingtonians to either holiday at Pukerua Bay or to buy sections. The climate and soil were noted as being very favourable to gardeners:

There, too, the soil is rich and fertile; there can be produced exceptionally early vegetables – new potatoes and green peas have been known to be ready for the table by the latter end of July.

Planted at Easter and growing steadily during the winter months, potatoes of a good size and well-filled pods of green peas have been gathered long before the average gardener has deemed it fit to sow.

Huakaroro or “seagull eggs” are “Waxy, great for boiling with a buttery taste. Good keeper.” They are still available from Morton Smith-Dawe in Christchurch: https://www.mortonsmith-dawe.co.nz/Our-Products/Maori-Potatoes

Huakaroro may yet again be Pukerua Bay’s favourite potato.

 By Ashley Blair