Rapaki – a slice of paradise
Amid the idyll of Banks Peninsula, Rapaki is a slice of paradise with a difference. Michael Wright reports on the community that balances its Maori heritage with life in postearthquake Canterbury.
Bill Phillips doesn’t need anyone to tell him Rapaki is the greatest place in the world. If he was in need of some validation, though, it came soon after his mother built a new family home in the Banks Peninsula village in the 1970s.
‘‘Not long after we moved in, some Japanese moved in and offered Mum a million dollars to move out,’’ he says.
‘‘We didn’t even have the fence up.’’ He points at the road, then the driveway. ‘‘This was a dirt track, that was a dirt track. We were like, ‘Take it, take it!’ I’m glad she didn’t.’’
His mother, a respected kaumatua, died a couple of months ago. Phillips still lives in the house. The floor needs relevelling after earthquake damage and something needs to be put up where the exterior brickwork used to be. Otherwise it is fine, perched on the hill above Rapaki Bay with a reasonably creditable claim to a million-dollar view of Lyttelton Harbour.
Rapaki is nestled on the north side of the harbour, about halfway between Lyttelton and Governors Bay. It is flanked by bays full of desirable real estate and has plenty itself, but it is different. Since the mid-19th century it has been the site of a Maori village. Ngai Tahu occupied the area for hundreds of years before that. Many of its current inhabitants would need two hands to count back how many generations their families have lived there.
In the last 40-odd years, since the Phillips house was built, Rapaki has managed to change markedly, but also stay the same. There might be 100 buildings in the settlement and most of them look about the same age as Phillips’, although his was one of the first in a mini building boom.
‘‘There was this house and that house up there,’’ he says, pointing to a tired-looking cottage next door. The two properties were all that was on Korora Tahi Rd.
‘‘Now, we’re number 13. Up from number 3.’’
There are a handful of new structures and a few ancient ones, including the one Phillips and his family grew up in further up the hill, just below Governors Bay Rd. The population is somewhere between 100 and 200, perhaps falling slightly since the earthquakes. It has been in that range for a while.
Present-day Rapaki can be traced back to the 1868 sale of the Port Cooper block to the British Crown. The claim of local Maori was reduced to a reserve of less than 100 acres. The multiple ownership model of the reserve land made development tough.
‘‘[It] caused a situation where it became impossible to build a house,’’ Rapaki runanga chair June Swindells says.
‘‘You needed to have the other owners agree to an area for the house but virtually the house became a ‘family home’ which could cause dissension in future whanau members.’’
Today, papakainga – housing on ancestral Maori land – is still ‘‘a huge and costly exercise’’, she says. As a result, there has been little development of late. A longstanding plan for housing on a hillside on the eastern side of the town is still in the works with no end in sight. The issue is perhaps more pressing with the damage wrought by the earthquakes. In February 2011, boulders from the mountain Te Poho o Tamatea rained down on Rapaki, smashing into several houses. Eleven properties were red-zoned.
‘‘Christchurch City Council understands the dilemma we are in and I believe we are all trying to find a [development] solution that will be helpful,’’ Swindells says.
So while neighbouring harbourside communities such as Cass Bay, Governors Bay and Diamond Harbour grow, Rapaki stays largely as-is, where-is. Most of the land that is developed is family-owned, passed down through generations, and rarely comes up for sale.
‘‘If someone wants to sell their house, they can,’’ Swindells says.
‘‘However, it does not solve the problems of land owners or those with whakapapa [genealogy] rights wanting to return home to build.’’
Several years ago, the property next door to the Phillips did make it to market. It was bought by an English couple. The family was ‘‘at war’’ with their new neighbours when they arrived, Felicity Phillips, Bill’s sister, joked.
‘‘Bloody rednecks. They were the first Pakehas we’d ever seen here.’’
Even the faux animosity didn’t last. Their mother was unwell at the time, Bill said, and neighbourly good will prevailed.
‘‘He was up here checking [on her].
‘‘Couldn’t meet a better f…… bloke.’’
But while one out-of-towner moving in might turn heads, larger changes are happening as well.
In 2010, a new $2.7 million carved ancestral house opened at the Rapaki marae. Additions are due to be finished by the end of the year. The runanga has bought an adjacent property to convert it into a conference centre as a new revenue stream and to free up the marae for cultural needs.
‘‘The necessity to develop Rapaki is to ensure the long-term connection to home remains, and the initiative to draw our young people home is a priority,’’ Swindells says.
‘‘Today, we have a lot more kaumatua . . . at home, it is not full of children like is used to be, maybe because it is cheaper and less effort to live in the city.’’
Tahu Rakena remembers a time when Rapaki was different. He grew up mostly in Taranaki and moved back with his wife, Judi, in 2001, having last lived there in the 1970s. His mother was a Couch, which means he’s not short of relations in town.
‘‘My cousin’s over there,’’ he said, pointing out a window. ‘‘My brother used to live across the road. Up here is my sister.’’
This time around, things have changed.
‘‘It’s not the beautiful happy atmosphere it used to be,’’ he says.
He points down the hill to the marae. ‘‘It’s all very business-like down there.’’
Still, he prefers it to Christchurch. They know it could be worse.
‘‘There’s so many people that would like to come and live here,’’ Judi Rakena says.
‘‘When I worked at Cholmondeley [Children’s Home], people would ask, ‘Are there any spare sections? We’d love to come live in Rapaki.’’’
Bill Phillips knows the feeling. Good or bad, there is nowhere else he would be.
‘‘This is your home. If I was from Auckland, I’d be up there. Wouldn’t want to move anywhere else, either.’’
‘‘The necessity to develop Rapaki is to ensure the longterm connection to home remains, and the initiative to draw our young people home is a priority.’’ Rapaki runanga chair June Swindells