The Environment

 

Awatuna Homestead –

A Success Story for Conservation &

Responsible Tourism

It is with modesty and humility that we write this statement of facts with conscious regard to culture, history, the environment and people, both past and present who are linked to this place on the West Coast called Awatuna.

To set the record straight and with due defference to the teachings of our ancestors, let us share with you the true name of this place now called Awatuna.

The old name came from the first footprints on these lands and was placed there by the Navigators who came here from other places almost 2000 years ago, settled, lived and died, as is the way of the natural world in which we lived then and now.

The old original name is WaimeawhakahirahiraRonawhakamautai (the place where Rona stood to control the tides) and has been shortened by time and ignorance to be called Waimea.

These waters and the river itself were navigable for a long ways inland by vessels that came in from the sea after inter-oceanic voyaging. In order that this safe haven was always to be here for travellers, tikanga and kawa were set in place by the old ones of those past days to protect the environment.

Tikanga and kawa are the rules and expected ways of doing all things so that natural harmony is maintained at all times as a state of well-being for all things inter-related through it, this is what people now know as ecology and the environment.

We have a traditional saying handed down to us which reminds us of our place in the environment as it is practiced in our culture:-

Kia whakatu tika Te Tai Ao me te Tai Ao tiaki Te Tai Ao

(If the environment is kept well and strong it will look after itself)

So it is with this statement firmly behind us at the Homestead that we now tell you of some other happenings which relate back to those words.


As the centuries passed, the site of the present Homestead and environs saw many changes which had become necessary to suit the needs of the people occupying the lands here at those different times.

However, one factor remained for many of the early generations living here - this place was always focussed on traditional; environmental care, the eco-systems, navigation and the sea voyaging.

In circa 1700’s (approx.) a cultural change came which had a permanent affect on those living in this area at the time – conquest by invasion of superior warriors bent on strategic control of resources, lands and people.

This change lasted until the early 1800’s when the next wave of invaders arrived, this time from far away places in both the southern and northern hemispheres – they had come to try and find gold! The goldrushes were another threat to the old ways of environmental harmony taught by the old people – but the search for gold led to the most tumultuous and horrific changes to the natural world of the Waimea that had never been seen before.

To retrieve the gold, massive amounts of forest, vegetation and soil overburden were removed to reveal the gold-bearing gravels that lie beneath the naturally protective mantle which the land wore like a cloak in the earlier times.

The processes of gold retrieval caused high-powered erosion of the landscape which ultimately had an effect on the waters of the Waimea catchment itself. The run-off from the industrial sluicing processes, then rainfall carried the mud, silt and debris into the waterway tributaries, to the river itself and finally out to sea and the shellfish beds which lie off-shore from the river mouth.

Imagine a navigable river system whose waters were clear and deep, full of shell fish and fish species from bottom feeders to free-swimmers. All of the breeding cycles of the migratory species which used the natural wetlands of the river and stream margins for their breeding grounds now being faced with water-bourne pollution from siltation, mud and rock debris never before seen and for which they were ill-equipped. So much so, that the natural cycles of the environment were changed completely.

Species disappeared, returning migratory fish and birds faced increasingly hard times trying to stay alive – and many of them didn’t! Some of the water-bourne species required clear natural waters for their lifecycles. Clear water was one of the major factors that gold mining could not supply – and not supply it in great quantities, day and night, twenty-four hours a day, seven days of the week, all year long for the period of time from 1864 until the 1970’s.

In 1970, we arrived at Awatuna to live and immediately felt the pull and contact of our old people who were still here, though physically departed for many hundreds of years prior to our coming.

In spite of the passage of time, our ancestors’ old sayings and words of environmental wisdom had been passed down through the generations and were still remembered for use and guidance here at Waimea again.

When we came to the Waimea, the river clarity we likened to muddy porridge. The bottom had layers of silt and mud, the depth of the river was only 2 metres at it’s deepest points and the clear, stony bottom was gone, replaced by debris and pollution from many years.

As the Waimea has a small catchment area, rising in the local hills behind the Homestead, there is not a high volume flushing effect of the system as found in larger waterways in NZ and overseas. This factor, when added to the despoliation of the past, the 1970’s & 1990’s and continual industrial useage, were major problems for any recovery of the Waimea catchment.

Culturally, personally and traditionally, Pauline and I knew that you cannot do these terrible things to natural water and the environment without disastrous effects. To address this, we set out to take actions to see if we could reverse the process that had changed the waterway from a healthy one to a degraded state that was barely able to support a residual life system for hardy species.

We had belief in the wisdom of our old people and in their traditional words of wisdom in saying:-

Kia au mai ngä tatai ngä whetu atu ki te kaupapa
(Hold fast to the geneology lines from the stars to oneself and all things)

If you know who you are and where you come from then you have a base and a reason within yourself to try and keep those old words alive and functioning in the twenty-first century, where exploitation is considered a norm.

We decided to approach the causes of the degradation at source and went to speak with the miners, the farmers and the foresters to understand why they used the processes that they did and to see if there was another course of action that could be used to achieve the same or better result for them. We suggested ways that could be considered by them that would lead to a better outcome for the environment of the Waimea catchment whilst still maintaining their livelihoods.

We found that a lot of the problem was driven by habit and laziness that was wrapped up in a parcel called economics and good practice.
Comments such as

“We have always done it that way”;
“It will cost too much to change and we have always put it in the river”;
“We have to make a mess first to achieve a better outcome in the future”;
“Who are you to come here and tell us what we can and cannot do on our
own lands”;

were thrown in answer to us at every opportunity – rational conversation was hard and we were perceived to be a bunch of “greenies”, “tree-huggers”, “hippies” and “lazy no-gooders” who should keep their noses out of other peoples’ lives.

These words hurt but still we believed in something that was rooted in the mists of time, was a concept that would be able to stand for all time if given due care and respect by all users:- the words of our ancestors!

We continued to talk, show and suggest other ways of doing the same things for progression of industry and lives but always with the river uppermost in their thoughts even although it was the last link in a long chain of actions. It was the most important.

To us it wasn’t a question of stopping mining – it was how you are mining;
Not to stop forestry preparations for new plantings – it was how you did it;
Do not stop farming – it was what was happening to the effluent produced.

It was always ironical to us to note that the very practices that were being undertaken by these developers on land and waters would always cease from early September to mid-November each year without fail – the reason, it was the whitebaiting season, a national past-time.

This is a time of year when many people go to the rivers in NZ to catch the young fry of the indigenous NZ trout, a traditional delicacy and the catching of which is also considered to be everybody’s right worth fighting for!

It was hard for us to understand and bear witness that the people doing the industrial changes to the landscape were also the same ones bemoaning the decline in the whitebait fisheries! It is not rocket-science to put two and two together and see the connection between cause and effect!

We continued to talk and suggest changes at a local level, but realised very early on that true change in these times would only come by regulations and enforcement procedures that supported the concepts of healthy waterways.

To this end we wrote submissions to Government and local authorities, spoke to our submissions at hearings and planning meetings, sought legislative changes to the law and political acknowledgement that the status quo was unsustainable for anyone.

Kia mohio tika te tangata ngä korero me ngä tikanga o Te Tai Ao

(The one who teaches about the environment must understand the structure, lore and rituals pertaining to it)

Time:-

All things in the natural environment of our world are linked to time.
The seasons, body clocks, breeding cycles, personal biological cycles, birth, growth and death – are a few examples of the millions of life aspects that are still linked to time.

We were fortunate to have inherited our ancestors’ universal, natural and ecological concepts and time.

Time passes regardless of human intervention;
Time allows systems to heal
Time restores a balance, maybe not the original balance but still a balance
Time is what we have so little of
Time takes care of all of the problems in the end.

The title of this script is:-

Awatuna Homestead –

A Success Story for Conservation & Responsible Tourism

And so it has been and continues to be with great outcomes for conservation and responsible tourism.

• We were successful in having the measurement of water turbidity (suspended solids against background) reduced from 1400 ntu’s to 10 ntu’s which is now the national NZ standard measurement;

• The mining industry now has to have extremely tight water management plans in place for discharge of mining effluent and make up waters, settling ponds and after mining restoration care planning;


• Dairy farms are subject to enforceable effluent disposal and water discharges regulations to control run-off to natural waterways

• Land subdivision and development must have storm water and construction water management plans in place prior to receiving permission to start works.

These are a few of the changes that have been made to the legislation and we are glad to have played a large part in helping these changes to happen.

Sadly, however, it is never going to be possible to restore the Waimea to the deep clear, navigable waters that it once had - the whole of the catchment ecology has changed too irreversibly in a physical sense for that ever to happen.

The brightest factor for us personally is that the water catchment of the Waimea River has a legal, legislative water classification bestowed upon it which marks the waters for all time to be of cultural significance and places enforceable restrictions on the useage and developments that may affect that status.

As for Pauline, our children, grandchildren and myself, the work goes on and we are now well into a programme which has:-

• restored the indigenous vegetation to the river banks retired from grazing;
• established in conjunction with DOC and local Runanga a 70 acre cultural reserve for the traditional gathering of medicinal, cultural and healing plants;
• enhanced the bush-clad hills that you see across the river and are part of Awatuna Homestead;
• ensured that the old cultural sites are preserved and known, be they Mäori or non-Mäori.
• Share the ancestoral stories of the navigators to our guests


The old people have passed from this world to the next, the invaders have left their own cultural marks on the landscape, the miners are still here but the work methods and sensitivities to environment have changed.

Kia tapu te mara o Paptuanuku. He karakia mo tërab mara mo tika kai me mahi kai
(Keep the garden of mother earth sacred and open through appropriate incantations for all things and when planting or gathering food).

Tëna koutou oku tüpuna mo ou koutou whakaaro mai ki a matou ou uri
(Thank you to all of our ancestors for giving us, their descedants, the gifts to understand and help heal Te Tao Ao, the environment as a whole).
Hëmi Te Räkau - 2008

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