Cook Island heritage celebrated
The vital economic contribution made by pioneering Cook Island migrants to CentralHawke’s Bay will be celebrated at a reunion being held at Porangahau over Easter.
Prolific travellers, Cook Islanders already made up 2.5 per cent of New Zealand’s population of one million recorded in the 1908 census, compared to 5 per cent forMaori.
However, one of the reunion’s organisers, Ngavii Pekepo Jnr, said the real ‘exodus’ of Cook Islanders toNZ occurred in 1920-50, between the ends of WorldWar I and WorldWar II, with many settling on the east coast aswealthy landowners sponsored them to work on their farms.
“Cook Island families stretched from the top of the East Cape right down to Wairarapa, where only decades earlier their fathers or grandfathers served alongside the localMaori battalions in both WorldWars,'' saidNgavii.
Sought-after due to their strong work ethic, Ngavii said therewas a strong concentration of Cook Islanders in CHB, particularly at Porangahau, where they worked at properties such as Wallingford Homestead, owned by prominent early settlers the Ormonds, and at the Porangahau StationWoolshed, owned by the Hunter family.
“CHB boasted more Cook Island families than Auckland during the entire 1945-55 postwar period,” he said.
Representatives of about 100 familieswould be attending the reunion, whichNgavii said would be centred at Porangahau’s Rongomaraeroa Marae from April 14-17.
He said the event was the brainchild ofDavid Aupapa, a first-generation New ZealandCook Islander whowas born in CHB and raised at Porangahau, but now lives in Tauranga.
“David wanted out grandparents and parents, who were pioneering immigrants, to be recognised for their contribution to farming in CHB.”
Pioneer
Ngavii Jnr’s mother, Toreka ‘Elizabeth’ Pekepo, born in Rarotonga, was one of those young Cook Islanders that arrived in CHBduring the postwar period.
The 83-year-old said she came to CHB in 1948 after a friend of hermother’s, who was working for the Hope family at Porangahau, wrote to the family.
“She wrote tomymother that she had a friend that needed a babysitter to work with children,” she said.
So, at just age 15, Elizabeth sailed from Rarotonga to Auckland on board the Maui Pomare before catching a train to PalmerstonNorth and then a bus to Otane, to work as a nanny to two children from the Carlyon family, who had arrived from England after buying Argyll Farm.
Arriving in June, Elizabeth’s first impression of her new island homewas far different than the tropical paradise she had just left.
“I stood there and I looked around and therewere no leaves on the trees. I thought: ‘Every tree on this island is dead. There’s no leaves.’ This was the middle of winter. At home, the leaves are green all the time.”
Elizabethwas thankful she already knew how to speak English after attending the convent school on Rarotonga.
“So Iwasn’t scared at all and the people Iworked for were wonderful. But after a while, I did get homesick. Iwas the only [Cook Islander] inOtane.”
But she was not alone. She remembered travelling in the bus that left from Waipukurau to Hastingswith some of dozens of girls from the Cook Islands working in the district, to meet up with othersworking in