Plans to build a new wharewaka in Tākaka for the ancient Anaweka waka, described as one of Aotearoa’s most significant archaeological finds, are heading to public consultation after the Tasman District Council agreed on Thursday to test community support for the proposed Pioneer Park site.
The carved hull section was pulled from sand dunes at the Anaweka estuary on the rugged west coast of Golden Bay in January 2012 by Flynn Nicholls, whose family was picnicking when he noticed a piece of timber protruding from a dune that a recent storm had stripped back. The fragment is about six metres long, carved from a single mataī tree, and features distinctive East Polynesian construction details including vertical ribs, a longitudinal stringer along the interior and a raised relief carving of a sea turtle on the outer surface. Sea turtles feature heavily in Eastern Polynesian art but rarely appear in conventional Māori carving, a detail that has drawn researchers from across the Pacific.
Radiocarbon dating places the wood between 1226 and 1280 CE, while caulking made from tōtara bark has been dated to between 1313 and 1415, suggesting the waka was repaired and used over many decades. That puts the vessel within a generation or two of the first Polynesian arrivals in New Zealand around 1300 CE. Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 described the waka as an early adaptation of East Polynesian canoe technology to New Zealand and noted that the hull was almost certainly part of a much larger double-hulled ocean-voyaging vessel rather than a coastal canoe.
After 14 years in conservation, where the timber has been carefully dried and stabilised, the waka is finally ready to come out of storage and be put on permanent display. The working group steering that next step is made up of two claimant groups, Manawhenua ki Mohua, which brings together Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Rārua and Te Ātiawa, and Ngāti Kuia. They have proposed building a purpose-designed wharewaka on Pioneer Park at 79 to 81 Commercial Street in Tākaka, on the same site as the Golden Bay Museum. The two buildings would share a welcoming space and the new wharewaka would also include an exhibition area for more than 1,000 taonga held jointly by the museum and the iwi, along with material on mātauranga Māori, celestial navigation and traditional waka construction.
Working group member Chris Hill told the council the highly significant artefact needed an appropriate home, while Ngāti Tama general manager Jenna Neame stressed the need for early certainty around land tenure so the project could move on funding applications without further delays, according to a report by 1News. Mayor Tim King called the wharewaka a massively exciting project for the district, while councillor Mark Greening flagged concerns about ratepayer costs that have yet to be fully scoped.
The council had already agreed in principle to the use of the land last year, subject to public consultation, and on Thursday formally agreed to begin testing community views on whether Pioneer Park is the right spot and on the leasing terms that would underpin the wharewaka. Consultation is expected to begin soon and is budgeted at around 200 dollars for newspaper advertising. Council officers have flagged that the new building would require the removal of several trees, some of which are already causing maintenance issues for the museum, and the relocation of a pioneers’ memorial that has been moved before. The Golden Bay Community Board has already canvassed alternative sites for the memorial.
For Tākaka, a town of around 1,300 residents at the gateway to Golden Bay, the project promises to add a genuine drawcard to a main street already known for its arts scene, cafés and the museum next door. For the iwi groups, it offers the first chance to publicly tell the long story of how their tūpuna navigated thousands of kilometres of open Pacific Ocean to reach Aotearoa, using only the stars, swells, bird flight and cloud patterns. The vertical ribs and stringer details inside the Anaweka hull are precisely the kind of technical evidence that ties New Zealand back into a vast voyaging culture stretching across the Society Islands, the Cooks, the Marquesas and Hawaii.
Whether ratepayers will share the council’s enthusiasm is the question consultation is meant to answer. Funding for the building itself is expected to come from a mix of iwi sources, grants and philanthropic contributions rather than rates, but the council will still need to commit to a long-term lease on the land. Submissions will open through the Tasman District Council once the formal consultation document is published in coming weeks.
What do you think of the proposed Tākaka wharewaka and is Pioneer Park the right site for it? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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