Taharoa surf turf wars: People don't call it the Wild West for nothing

Friday, 24 August 2018

At high tide, the water and sky spill into each other, each the same flat, sulky grey. As the crow flies, it's only about 12km from the sleepy Waikato bach and fishing outpost of Kawhia, to the tiny settlement of Taharoa, across the yawning mouth of Kawhia Harbour.

But by car it's an hour and another world away. A slow, nauseating 50km coastal curl around the harbour to the remote village of 65 houses.

Past the feral goats and the new lambs cruising the highway. Past the limestone stacks poking up like rocky nipples on green pasture mounds. Past Lake Taharoa, where police twice dredged for clues to the 1938 disappearance of Taharoa assistant storekeeper Delu Desai. They only ever found his dentures.

At the last intersection, Taharoa is to the right - if there was ever a sign, it's not there any more. A cluster of tired cottages and new corrugated iron units greets the visitor, together with whitebait nets, roaming rottweilers and horses in the middle of the road.

**READ MORE:

* Taharoa shooters need to be taught a lesson

* Access to break where surfers shot at 'generally by invitation'

* Two directors of Taharoa ironsand mine quit over governance concerns**

There's a school, with about 25 kids - a line-up of mini Red Band gumboots at the classroom door. There's a tennis court and rugby field and a playground with a climbing wall. There are two marae and a general store, but no accommodation, no restaurant, no pub. A roadside stand promises free espresso grounds, but there's no sign of any cafe. 

The rural steering-wheel wave is met with the usual acknowledgement. But when we open our mouths, the reception is decidedly frosty. Closed coast, closed lips.

Taharoa was the site of a famous 1820 battle between Te Rauparaha's Ngāti Toa people and the Waikato tribes. Te Rauparaha fled south and Ngāti Mahuta settled the fertile area. Now it's the scene of a stoush of a different kind. The conflict no-one wants to talk about.

When three Te Awamutu surfers took jetskis from Kawhia Harbour out to the little-known surf break off Albatross Point, they caught the attention of locals. The bloke, his 14-year-old son and an old mate heard two shots but initially dismissed it as hunters. The third shot landed in the water metres away from the teenager, and the traumatised trio later told police they saw two people on the bank shouting abuse.

The only access to Albatross Point is across private land or by boat. Surf access is apparently 'by invite only'. One sign on a closed gate seems to sum up the sentiment: 'No land, no entry'.

A week on, everyone has stopped talking. The surfing trio have gone to ground. They're taking heat, a surfer who knows them says. It's not clear whether that's from Taharoa locals, or other surfers angry their secret break has been outed to the world. 

'Surfers shot at while surfing (former) secret spot,' noted the Carve Magazine headline. Media had even provided a handy map, they added sarcastically. With nearby Raglan's waves steeped in anger over overcrowding and surf turf wars, outing an isolated break is surfing sacrilege. 

Taharoa locals clearly feel aggrieved they've been painted as inhospitable vigilantes. But no-one would speak up for the settlement on the record.

Some suggest the shooting never happened. Maybe they got growled at and made up the bit about the shots, one offers. They'd have had to be snipers to get so close - it's ridiculous, says another.

'It's different out here, but it's not as bad as in the media and on Facebook,' says a resident at the general store. If it was true, why wasn't the village swarming with Armed Offenders Squad officers, he adds.

He has a point. While police publicly condemned the shooting, pointing out the ocean is for everyone, they don't appear to have visited until Wednesday - six days after the incident. The wee town is served only by Kawhia community constable Jono Maoate, who has one of the biggest sole-charge areas in the country.

Reports suggest this kind of thing has been happening for up to 20 years. The classic car enthusiasts who were abused and threatened earlier this year, when they parked up overlooking the beach. Boaties shot at while diving for paua off the coast.

One guy was on a fishing charter from Kawhia about a year ago. One of the Taharoa locals hitched a lift back across the harbour.

'He was basically telling us there were awesome crays and paua and kina down there, but if you were seen down there harvesting them, even if it was from a boat, you would get shot at. It's been like that for years out there. It's always been really rough. They just see it as their beach.'

People don't call it the Wild West for nothing.

Back at Kawhia, no-one wants to get involved. A fisherman says there have been rumours for years that Taharoa locals don't like people coming too close to their land. They see the coast as the kaimoana collecting area for their whānau.

'It might have been a couple of young fellas flexing a bit of muscle. They are pretty possessive over there, but hey, it is their land.'

Like most of the peninsula, the 166-hectare block encompassing Albatross Point is collective Māori land, with 35 owners. The fisherman won't say who controls access. 'I could give you his name but I don't want you to go talk to him. Because he will tell you to bugger off and if you don't move quickly enough he will probably shoot at you.'

Under the cloak of anonymity, two old codgers outside the Kawhia general store take a couple of potshots of their own.

'The Land Wars finished in 1864 - maybe the news hasn't reached there yet.'

Taharoa locals come into Kawhia and never cause trouble, they add. 'There are civilised ones.'

'It's not about surfing,' they say. 'They don't like people being there who aren't from there.'

Even Constable Maoate seems jittery about speaking out. He deflects questions to the centralised media centre, who fail to answer them, except to say police are investigating 'appropriately', with community support.

A Māori resident reckons police will never find the culprits. He grew up on both sides of the bay and is happy to chat, out on the porch at dusk in his bush shirt and trackies. But he won't be named either.

'I do remember it happened to someone else in a boat. They were diving. Fellas took a potshot from up on the hills. They never got them. That was about 10 years ago. The cops won't get them. Those fellas are not going to tell him who it is. It's a waste of time.'

He has some sympathy for their staunch stance.

'That is not public land out there. They go out there like they own the bloody thing. I don't support the idea of pulling a gun on anybody, but I can understand why they get angry over there. It was most probably the young ones. Growing up, we always made people welcome in our homes. People assumed it was their damn right to come on our land. People used to camp on our land without even asking for permission. I don't agree with that.'

Asked if he thinks the sea should be free for all, he says: 'It's our ancestral land for gathering around here … Growing up here in this harbour, it used to be plentiful. You could throw a line out and get a snapper quite easily. It's not like that now. It's the same as the shellfish and cockles. Sure, they are still around but they are only little ones.'

Only Kawhia Community Board chairman Kit Jeffries will comment on the record. Locals are horrified at the shooting, he says.

'If he'd been a metre or two one way or the other he could have killed somebody.'

Jeffries has had a house at Kawhia for more than 30 years and lived there permanently for almost four. He's heard of potshots being taken at fishing trawlers coming too close to shore years back, but they were stripping the place clean. Shooting at surfers is a real worry.

'When it becomes almost personal, like when you're actually firing a warning shot at a person as opposed to something inanimate like a fishing boat, that's quite a different story … I mean, what a harmless occupation. How can they be of threat to anybody…There's absolutely no justification for someone to discharge a firearm in the direction of another human being, in my view. It doesn't matter how pissed off you are about things.'

Thursday is town day at Taharoa. The village pa is empty, as kaumātua have taken the free bus out. 

It's another sign of the isolation of the settlement that was only accessible by horse or boat up until the 1950s, when the discovery of a huge iron sand deposit brought roads and outsiders and national attention. The mine - a black slash on the land just beyond the village - was opened in 1973, by then Prime Minister Norman Kirk.

Friday was supposed to be strike day at the mine, which employs about 100 of the town's 220-odd residents. Since the mine changed ownership last year, there have been layoffs and ructions over pay and conditions.

It's been an unsettling time, says E Tū union industry organiser, Joe Gallagher. But they've struck a deal and he was back on Thursday for a community meeting. Taharoa is a special place, although getting there is not for the faint-hearted, he says. He reckons the community has been unfairly maligned.

'These are good, hard-working people. They have a good marae down there. They have a great preschool for their mokopuna. They work hard and look after their kids. They are just trying to get on with things.

'Every time we go down there, we have been welcomed onto the marae. We celebrated the king's coronation last year, which was a moving and special experience. We get lovely home-cooked meals and generally stay at the community houses, because there's no accommodation down there. I have nothing but positive experiences - apart from the drive.'