Early years

I was born in Waipiro Bay, a beautiful, remote bay on the east coast north of Gisborne, the north island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Driving down the narrow, windy gravel road to get to it from Te Puia in later years, was something I remembered fondly when watching the film Mahana, directed by Lee Tamahori.

Dad was the Power Board engineer and like his dad was also raised in Gisborne and on the coast, grandad being a truck driver in the district in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Posted to Tokomaru Bay in 1957, Dad’s job was liasing with the local communities, farmers and power board gangs to plan and install powerlines and bring electricity (what he called juice), to the coast north of Ruatorea. Mum raised me and my three brothers, grew most of our veges, cooked our kai, did (and still does) some incredible baking, made most of our clothes, and  engaged actively in community affairs. Toko was a small but intimate and vibrant settlement with its own picture theatre, quite a few shops and a wharf, and there was always lots happening, as some of the East Coast pages of the former Gisborne Photo News remind us of.

I return to Tokomaru Bay every year, and always buy a calender, produced by the Tokomaru Bay Heritage Trust as a fundraiser towards restoration of the old wharf. This month’s (March 2024) page has a photo (posted below) of my primary school class soon after I started school. Standing two to the left of her, I remember the pride us little kids felt, when our teacher was crowned Queen of Tokomaru Bay. Life was slower, relationships and communities were strong, and few locked their doors at night.

Like many in the community at the time, Dad loved tramping, and would go away on Search and Rescue trips or take my older brothers and sometimes me into the bush, or up the slopes of Mt Hikurangi. The hill behind our house in Toko, was a decent climb and high enough to be a mountain in many countries. It was also a rich hunting ground for the possoms my brothers trapped and skinned, then nailed the furs to the walls of our garage to cure, before selling them for pocket money.

Mānuka and kānuka were scattered throughout most of the hilly sheep farms at that time, native pioneer species then considered a nuisance by farmers but cut for firewood and an extra income, by motivated locals.

Many areas of te ngahere (the bush) nearby contained a diverse wealth of native trees at all stages of growth, including kahikatea, pukatea, rimu, puriri, totara, matai, tanekaha, karaka and kohekohe. Smaller plants such as koromiko, tutu, kawakawa and ferns were also endemic, and many coastal areas were protected from storms or erosion by native plants including our famous pohutakawa, the one in Te Araroa being the largest in the world.

However, te ngahere back then was only a tiny fraction of what it was when Captain Cook and co landed on Kaiti Beach. Waihirere Domain and Greys Bush near Gisborne are reminders of the pre-European bush landscape that once characterised the region. A weekend trip to Waihirere Domain for a swim and turns on the long slide, followed by a family walk in the mysterious bush, was paradise as a youngster.  It made absolute sense when I learnt that Māori regarded trees as being senior to humans, and respected them for their provision of shelter, food, clothing and medicines, and the connection they provided between humans and their sacred ancestors, Papatūānuku and Ranginui.

A rich growing region

Horticulture was and still is the main type of farming in the Gisborne district. Watties once had a lot of vegetables grown for their canning and freezing operation by the Gisborne wharf, which was the biggest employer in town for many years. Sweetcorn from Gisborne and the east coast is amongst the sweetest and tastiest in the country, and can be eaten five nights a week with butter and a little salt when in season, without taste bud fatigue.

Fruit such as apples, pears, persimmons, citrus and strawberries have also long been grown throughout the entire ‘Poverty Bay flats’, as the district was once misnamed by  Captain Cook. The bay is now the largest citrus growing area in Aotearoa, and a growing provider of avocados, feijoas and kiwifruit.

A German migrant named Fredrich Wohnsiedler, who moved out of town to Ormond after his butchers shop in town was trashed during the first world war, became the first commercial grape grower and winemaker in the district. Since then of course the industry has grown and flourished in the region. Gisborne chardonnay is amongst the best in the world, but unlike Marlborough sauvignon blanc, hasn’t had the same marketing dollars put behind it, to achieve such a global reputation.

LeaderBrand, one of the biggest vegetable and salad growers in the country, was conceived in and grew out of the Gisborne district. It has grown to become a major producer of fresh vegetables for families in Aotearoa, and markets around the world.

The Farmers market in Gisborne every Saturday, is a wealth of offerings of what is one of the richest foodbowls of Aotearoa, and a warm reflection of a close and committed community.

Recent tough times

However, the Tairāwhiti region has also had it hard over the years, due to a combination of adverse economic and climatic events. The demise in traditional animal-based forms of farming, factory closures, unemployment and urbanisation, have exacerbated longstanding cultural and socioeconomic inequities within the region as with many areas of our country, and lead to increasing poverty related problems. The Covid 19 pandemic put a temporary brake on tourism, and the impacts of Cyclones Bola in 1988, and the dual hits of Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle in 2023, were massive.

Health Research Council of New Zealand data has found the level of housing and health deprivation in the Tairāwhiti region is amongst the highest in the country. Māori, who make up 45% of the population, are particularly prone to negative health outcomes, due to a range of factors including poor access to some health services.

Cyclone Gabrielle was a devastating event, when normality took a nosedive for the entire region of around 50,000 people. Flooding, slips, road closures, total destruction of hillsides and homes, forestry waste being deposited on beaches and farmland, and the subsequent loss of jobs, took a huge toll. Climate change and the relatively young geology and soil types in the region contributed to the severity of these impacts, as did an over reliance on an exotic plantation forestry sector. Large scale plantings of Pinus radiata in areas and on hillsides prone to erosion, a monoculture model based upon a single species that can impact negatively on many native plants, was in retrospect a flawed policy decision.

Future opportunities

The Tairāwhiti region’s history as an efficient and rich producer of a diverse range of plant crops and processed foods and beverages, provides insight into future opportunities. However, the peaks and troughs in supply and demand that various industries have incurred over the years, due to climatic or global economic events, changing consumer trends or corporate priorities, are sobering and informative.

A powerful attribute of the region and its population is resilience, something that has got it through many natural disasters and climatic events, and economic shocks, over several generations.  Out of adversity comes opportunity, and out of struggle, comes renewed strength and resolve. These truths are particularly relevant to the Tairāwhiti region in March 2024. While mistakes have been made with how we humans have treated and tried to reap a living from the land and sea, lessons have also been learned, and many new opportunities revealed.

Several local companies continue to make headway, into providing meaningful jobs and livelihoods for people in the region through horticulture based activities.  Apart from Leaderbrand and many vineyards, Riversun is the leading national supplier of grafted grapevines, and a breeder and propagator of premium avocado rootstocks and a range of other plant materials for commercial horticulturalists around the country.  Rua Bioscience operates a plant discovery and breeding programme from a research and cultivation centre in Ruatorea, with a vision to create cannabis-derived medicines that change people’s lives

The wealth of benefits provided both to the land, air and waterways, as well as to humans and other animals from a landscape that is rich in a wide range of native plants, needs little further explanation or justification. The challenge now, is to apply the knowledge gained from past successes and mistakes, and allocate resource and mahi to return many unstable terrains to native forests, and to foster a greater biodiversity within the ecosystem. Identifying and leveraging existing and new ways to obtaining some form of commercial return in the process, will catalyse and incentivise these much needed changes in our approach to land care.

Several opportunities also exist for crop trials or land use diversification, for landowners and iwi within the region. I’ve learnt from my personal experience that plants such as calendula, echinacea and withania all love the east coast soils and climate. There are many, many more, where commercial scale operations involving non-native as well as native medicinal plants could become profitable, through a sustained and collaborative approach.

Te Taiao

In Māori culture, Te Taiao is the natural world that contains and surrounds us, and acknowledges the interconnection of people and nature. It is underpinned by three guiding principles: 

• Our land, water, air and biological life must be able to thrive without over-use.
• Any use is a privilege, not a right, and
• If something is not healthy or well, we must fix it.

For Aotearoa New Zealand, many factors are emerging which are likely to lead to increasingly difficult challenges to the current format and operational models of our farming sector. We have become over-dependent on agrichemicals and farming animals, and need to invest more in new crop and companion crop research, and give greater respect to Te Taiao and the need to nurture our natural heritage.

With rapidly changing geopolitical and climatic landscapes, supply chain disruptions and an increasing need for healthcare to revert to more natural and selfcare based approaches, phytomedicines will make a greater contribution to our country’s future.

As I reflect on the Toko Bay March 2024 calender page, I feel very grateful to have been raised in this part of Aotearoa, and conditioned by such a culturally and naturally rich environment and community.  These reflections and experiences also reinforce my long held belief, that Tairāwhiti is one of the most suitable regions for establishment of an industry based upon medicinal plants, and that this would have enormous benefits for both its people and environment.