Making history: The little farm that could

Just south of Raetihi, the twists and turns of the Parapara highway and the Mangawhero River cut through a parcel of ancestral land that has a monumental tale to tell.

In fact, a monument would not be out of place at Ohorea Station. It would commemorate the extraordinary story of a 70-year battle to protect 101,000 acres of ancestral land and return it to the hands of tangata whenua – the story of Ātihau-Whanganui Incorporation.

The hill-country breeding farm runs 37,000 stock units on 5628ha of land about 12km southwest of Raetihi. Three-quarters of the station is farmed, holding 17,000 ewes, 900 Angus cows and replacement stock, with most of the progeny transferred for finishing elsewhere. The rest of the land, steep and unforgiving, is unfarmed – but well tramped toward the back by deer-hunter shareholders who draw ballots four times a year to fill their freezers on Incorporation hunting days.

Ohorea has been providing for shareholder whānau since the 1950s, when it became central to the drive to resume control of land vested in the Aotea District Māori Land Board and leased to farmers.

Above: Old Farmhouse, Ohorea.

Ohorea was the first property resumed in a scheme painstakingly negotiated between Ātihau Whanganui tūpuna, the Māori Trustee, the Department of Māori Affairs, and European farmer lessees. The resumption was the first step in the vision to take back land that was originally vested in the Aotea District Māori Land Council following a meeting at Jerusalem in 1902 of landowners concerned about protecting what little land remained with Māori.

Blocks proposed at the meeting for vesting were Morikau 2, Whitianga 2, Waharangi 1, 2, 4, 5, Whakaihuwaka 1, 2, 3, Ohotu 1, 2, 3, 8, Ngārākauwhakarara, Puketōtara, Poutahi, Urewera, and Ngāpakihi. Between 1902 and 1904 about 106,353 acres of Māori land was vested in the five-man Council, which comprised three Māori and two Pākehā.

When the vested lands were offered for settlement, the Council immediately came under pressure from the Crown to change the lease terms to include perpetual right of renewal. Māori council members refused, but new lease terms were agreed in 1904, setting leases at 21 years with a right of renewal for a further 21 years, and, crucially, adding compensation to lessees for improvements.

Despite this, pressure for perpetual leases continued unabated, and led in 1906 to the Council being disbanded and replaced by an Aotea District Māori Land Board comprising three Crown-appointed members, only one of whom was required to be Māori. These new legislated arrangements meant that more than 100,000 acres of Māori land were now held under radically different conditions to those under which the land had been vested.

In 1913, the Native Land Amendment Act scrapped specific Māori representation altogether by reconstituting the Boards to consist of two members: the Judge and Registrar of the district’s Native Land Court.

The methods used to set rents and the amounts Māori owners had to pay to compensate lessees added to Māori concerns, and by the time the leases were due to expire, it seemed impossible that Māori owners would ever have the funds to pay out on improvements and resume their land. Following decades of petitions to the Crown, the issues became the focus of the Royal Commission into Vested Lands in 1951.

Above left: Old School House, on Ohorea whenua.

The Commission found that all legislation dealing with the vested lands intended that the lands should be returned to the Māori owners. It was especially critical of valuation methods and the way improvements were defined and assessed. Noting how owners’ equity and rental return had decreased, the Commission recognised that under the existing system the owners might never be able to afford to resume their land.

The Department of Māori Affairs stepped in, proposing that the Māori Trustee should advance finance for land resumptions.

In 1954, the Māori Trustee took over administration of 240 leases for the vested lands and was tasked to help the owners resume an area of land as a farm for Māori benefit. The Māori Trustee pledged £100,000 to finance the resumption of the Wright and Forsyth leases – 4000 acres in the largest vested block, Ohotu 1C2. With more than 2000 owners, this was seen as a way of providing benefit to the largest possible proportion of vested landowners.

The station was given the name Ohorea – a local place name which Wright had already been using. The name had a good reputation with stock, mercantile and transport firms, and was a wool brand well known for its quality.

The plan for Ohorea was for the Māori Trustee to run the station until the owners repaid the finance advanced to resume the property, and for Ohorea farm profits to finance future resumptions. For 15 years, the Māori Trustee administered the leases, arranged land resumptions and managed farming operations on the resumed land, including sale of timber from the Forsyth block to help finance the deal. The Ohorea timber was also used to buy adjoining blocks to improve access.

In 1969, control was handed to a newly formed incorporation of more than 5000 owners – the ĀtihauWhanganui Incorporation – and Ohorea Station became its flagship farm, setting the standards for future farming enterprises and the pace of further resumptions.

A resumption plan was formulated in 1973, prioritising properties in the Oruakukuru Valley area. In 1978, the Incorporation reported that two areas formerly leased by O’Neil and another property leased by Coleman were resumed, to be added to the Ohorea farming operation.

The farm’s first manager through the Māori Affairs/Māori Trustee administration was George Johns, formerly of the Morikau station. In 1973, another Morikau farmer, Lou Tapa, took over, becoming the incorporation’s first farm manager.

Above: Lou Tapa, first Ātihau-Whanganui Incorporation farm manger.

“Ohorea was quite easy to farm in those days compared to Morikau,” Lou told AWHI Magazine last year. “George had it pretty right. All the stock were looked after, all the paddocks were grazed. I got used to doing little jobs compared to Morikau, which was twice the size.”

Rex Martin manages the farm today. A major job in recent years has been fencing either side of the Mangawhero River and the Ararawa Stream. Replacing access to the water with troughs has also been a priority.

Above: Rex Martin, Ohorea farm manager.

“The Mangawhero is virtually all fenced now, except for a couple of paddocks that aren’t fenceable, and about a third of the Ararawa. There’s still a little bit to do over the next year or two,” Rex says.

The massive Oreore slip that blocked the Parapara (SH4) about two years ago was on Ohorea. Although the slip has stabilised and the highway has reopened, one 25ha paddock is still out of action, Rex says.

“There’s just nothing we can do with that one paddock.”

Not too many sheep and beef concerns host an on-farm wildlife reserve, but Ohorea Station is the proud kaitiaki of a kiwi sanctuary. The habitat has been developed over the past five years or so after monitoring picked up quite a population of kiwi on 351ha of land retired many years ago under the Ngā Whenua Rāhui conservation scheme. Since then, a major pest eradication programme has swung into action to protect the kiwi, with hundreds of traps and bait stations set and checked monthly. Numbers of kiwi are growing, Rex says.

“They’re definitely breeding in there. I’ve seen two lots of young kiwis myself, and at the right time of the year, I go out and play a recording of a kiwi and hear them all call back.”

Information sourced from: Whanganui Leased Vested Lands c. 1951-2000 by Heather Bassett and Richard Kay, with additional information from Ātihau Whanganui Incorporation’s first Secretary, Lex Moodie, first farm manager, Lou Tapa, and Ohorea Station farm manager Rex Martin.