15th - Kaipara Konnection - Dargaville.BIZ

I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my life story.
Elvis Presley
union would result in the loss of ‘loving service’. The domestic workers who complained about their lot, she concluded,
were ‘mainly those who were incompetent’. Women’s groups that might have been expected to support better conditions
for their ‘sisters’ also struggled to accept the need for a union. Domestic service was seen as ideal preparation for
marriage; ‘no girl can do better or higher work than that of making a home happy and comfortable’ (even if it wasn’t her
own home).
Ironically, it was having a domestic servant on call that gave many middle-class women the freedom to escape the
confines of their home environment. This freedom was often used to pursue interests that were seen as improving New
Zealand society and the position of women in it.
An administrative blunder gave opponents of the union an opportunity to nip it in the bud. In mid-1907 Marianne Tasker
left New Zealand to visit Britain. The acting secretary failed to re-register the union and the Registrar of Industrial Unions
cancelled its registration. To add insult to injury, the Registrar justified his decision on the grounds that a domestic was
not a ‘worker’, because ‘domestic servants were kept for comfort and convenience’.
Image: Domestic Servants wanted poster
23 September 1887 Tongariro mountains gifted to Crown
In February 1887, newspapers reported Ngāti Tūwharetoa’s proposal to gift the mountain tops of Tongariro, Ngāuruhoe
and Ruapehu to the Crown for the purpose of establishing a national park. The Te Aroha News suggested that the gift
was ‘one of the best proofs yet afforded of the gradual extinction of native superstition, for Tongariro has been strictly
tapu’. In reality, the gift reflected Ngāti Tūwharetoa’s ongoing concern for its sacred mountains.
In early 1886 a Native Land Court hearing was held in Taupō to determine ownership of various blocks of land within
Taupō-nui-a-Tia. Approximately 600 people attended, including the paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Horonuku
(Te Heuheu Tūkino IV). Horonuku was reportedly concerned about the inclusion of the iwi’s sacred mountains in the
proceedings. In his book, The Tongariro National Park, historian James Cowan recounted Horonuku’s concerns, as
voiced to his son-in-law Lawrence Grace: If our mountains of Tongariro are included in the blocks passed through the
Court in the ordinary way, what will become of them? They will be cut up and perhaps sold, a piece going to one pakeha
and a piece to another. They will become of no account, for the tapu will be gone. Tongariro is my ancestor, my tupuna;
it is my head; my mana centres round Tongariro. My father’s bones lie there today. You know how my name and history
are associated with Tongariro. I cannot consent to the Court passing these mountains through in the ordinary way. After
I am dead, what will be their fate? What am I to do about them? Grace, the member of the House of Representatives for
Tauranga, reportedly advised Horonuku that the only way to preserve the mountains ‘as places out of which no person
shall make money’ was to ‘make them a tapu place of the Crown, a sacred place under the mana of the Queen’.
The suggestion was placed before the Judge, Major David Scannell, and ‘by common consent the mountain tops were
left in the hands of Horonuku and his family’. A preliminary deed of gift offering the peaks to the Crown was drawn up,
signed by Horonuku, and sent to the government. The peaks were formally offered to the government in a deed signed
the following year. The 1887 gift of 6518 acres (2638 ha) became the ‘nucleus of the proposed Tongariro National Park’
– the first national park in New Zealand and the fourth in the world. Over the next 20 years
the government sought to obtain further land with which to establish the park. It was formally
constituted by Act of Parliament in 1894 but not gazetted until 1907, when sufficient land
was in Crown title.
Horonuku’s ‘gift’ of the mountain peaks is currently being considered by the Waitangi
Tribunal as part of its National Park inquiry.
Painting: Lake Taupō with Tongariro National Park in the distance
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