The Sea Around
The thing about the sea is that you can often smell it long before you can see it. It was like that as we drew closer to Napier and somehow the hikoi (long journey) North to my great grandmother’s unveiling seemed like a whole other world, a whole other time, an event that had occurred on some parallel universe yet deep inside me I’d felt the change.
Changed how? I’m unsure really, just that something in my psyche had moved, been dislodged, shifted (however imperceptibly) but enough to make me sit up and take notice. The same kind of notice you take when you walk into a room in your house and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something has been moved, something’s out of place. You know even though you don’t know what.
These past few days have been in part euphoric and in other parts deeply thoughtful. I’m in a precarious state of overload. The smell of the sea is like a mental massage, cleansing. As we reached the outskirts of Napier city I felt glad for its familiarity and the comfort there is to be found in that.
Like all of us, Napier (Ahuriri in Māori) has its past, present and future. It “was first sighted by Captain Cook in October 1769, when he sailed down the east coast of the North Island. Depending on your historical perspective traders, whalers and missionaries were the forerunners of ‘permanent’ residency here. In the 1850s farmers and hotel keepers arrived. The Crown purchased the Ahuriri block (including the site of Napier) in 1851.
In 1854 a plan was prepared and the town named Napier, after Sir Charles Napier, renown for his role in the Battle of Miani (February 17, 1843 a battle between British forces and the Talpur Amirs of Sindh, Pakistan.) The town became a borough in 1874 and development was generally confined to the hill and to the port area of Ahuriri. The town flourished and became a well established commercial centre with a growing port, servicing a wide area.
The Ngāti Kahungunu tribe had arrived in the district prior to European settlement (which is why I commented earlier on historical perspective. A place can certainly have a history though to my way of thinking one ought not assume a definitive handle as ‘the’ history so agreement may be made in the fact that it is ‘a’ history dependent for the most part on who’s telling it) although the Whatumamoa, Rangitane (who trace their origins to Whātonga, one of three chiefs who commanded the Kurahaupō canoe when it sailed to New Zealand from their Pacific homeland in Hawaiki) and the Ngāti Awa (who shared with Kahungunu a common ancestry in the Far North and in the chiefs Kauri and Tamatea who led the migration of Ngati Awa from Mangonui to Tauranga.
Tamatea’s son, Kahungunu, who was born in Kaitaia, built a second waka named Takitimu and joined his father, one of the greatest navigators of his day, in a journey down the east coast to Te Whanganui-a-Orotu and then inland up the Ngaruroro River) and members of the Ngāti Tara iwi existed in the nearby areas of Petane, Te Whanganui-a-Orotu and Waiohiki. Later, Kahungunu became the dominant tribe from Poverty Bay to Wellington. They were one of the first Māori tribes to come in contact with European settlers.
The town was constituted a borough in 1874 and development of the surrounding marsh lands and reclamation proceeded slowly. Between 1852 and 1876 Napier was the administrative centre for the Hawke’s Bay Province, but in 1876 the Abolition of Provinces Act dissolved provincial government.
Development was generally confined to the hill and to the port area of Ahuriri. In the early days Napier consisted of an oblong mass of hills (Scinde Island) almost entirely surrounded by water, from which ran out two single spits, one to the north and one to the south. There was a swamp between the now Hastings Street and Wellesley Road and the water extended to Clive Square.
On 3 February 1931, Napier was levelled by an earthquake. The collapses and ensuing fires killed 256 people. The figure would later rise to 258 as two people were missing, presumed dead following the quake. The town centre was destroyed and rebuilt in the popular Art Deco style of the time. Some 40 km² of today’s Napier was undersea before the earthquake raised it.
Although a few Art Deco buildings were replaced with contemporary structures during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, most of the centre remained intact for long enough to become recognised as architecturally unique, and from the 1990s onwards had been protected and restored. Napier and South Beach (Miami) are considered by many Art Deco enthusiasts the two best preserved Art Deco towns, Miami Beach being mainly in the later Streamline Moderne Art Deco style. In 2007 Napier was nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated.
Driving along the Marine Parade with her Norfolk Pine-lined necklace of trees, her sea eyes hazel today from a slight swell in the ocean’s wave it feels good, really good to be back in the Bay. After years of being away the feeling of familiarity has felt more overwhelming than I realised it would be yet I feel entirely comfortable with that. Really comfortable.
