As Kiwi as it gets
Visitors to Eketāhuna, the first significant settlement on State Highway 2 north of Masterton, are greeted by a large white kiwi. Born a natural brown, the concrete bird was re-painted to honour three rare white kiwis bred at nearby Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre. Pūkaha, located in a special remnant of an ancient podocarp forest, is the biggest visitor magnet in Eketāhuna's orbit, and kiwis are Pūkaha's main attraction. Eketāhuna, therefore, is as kiwi as it gets. By Simon Burt. Photos by Sarah Watkins.
This area is known by Māori as Te Tapere-a-nui-o-Whātonga, the great food basket of Whātonga. The Scandinavians who settled Eketāhuna in 1872 named their village Mellemskov, heart of the forest. They'd come to fell the Seventy Mile Bush, part of a massive land clearance across the lower North Island, the biggest in NZ colonial history. The town sits on the banks of the Mākākahi River, and the accepted explanation for its name is that this is as far up the river as you could travel by waka, canoe. Eke, to come up on. Tāhuna, a sandbank. Eketāhuna. Or, crudely, 'Ecky' to many locals.
Eketāhuna's population of 440 naturally looks to Masterton, 40kms away, as their closest big town so, despite Eketāhuna officially being in the Tararua District, affiliation with Wairarapa sits well with most of them. Wairarapa MP Kieran McAnulty, whose sprawling electorate strangely stretches from Cape Palliser to Waipukurau, has a soft spot for Eketāhuna.
The McAnulty family goes back four generations in the district. Kieran's parents met and married here, as did both sets of grandparents. “Eketāhuna seems tiny, but it's bigger than people think. It's not much to drive through, but there's lots more off to the east and west. It's got a really special vibe, the old macrocarpas on the hill, the mist in the valleys ...”
Heading to Eketāhuna from Masterton, just past Pūkaha, you'll cross a bridge. Beside it, gleaming white and distinctively decorated, sits another bridge which opened in 1922 and closed thirty years later. It replaced an unreliable ford and was the first safe crossing of the Mākākahi River, doubling duty as a war memorial for six local men. Now, Friends of ANZAC Bridge maintain this listed heritage item and have created a pleasant walkway to it from nearby Millers Reserve. Look carefully from the bridge and you'll see a collection of poppy-painted boulders sitting in a paddock like concrete frogs.
The ANZAC bridge opened in 1922, crossing the Mākākahi River.
At Eketāhuna, the distinctive War Memorial Hall with its striking ANZAC installation can't go unnoticed at the southern entrance. Three silhouetted soldiers, heads bowed, guard a group of dark steel poles representing the nine surrounding districts from where people perished. 'Peace, sacrifice and unity' is the theme of the site; it's lit at night, providing a sombre and evocative scene.
During the day, the Eketāhuna main street lights up too. Augmenting the Eketāhuna Inn are two cafés and the Four Square with its adjoining liquor outlet. Maison, a smart homeware store could be on Lambton Quay, while the eclectic clutter of Retro Republic spills onto the pavement and the obligatory op-shop announces itself much more boldly than the neighbouring 'adult boutique'. A diminutive beauty salon contrasts the farm supplies store opposite. The real estate office window is festooned with 'Sold' stickers.
At the Waka Park, north end of Eketāhuna’s main street
At the north end of town, opposite Ryli's Kiwi Kai, in a tiny square that looks like it's been clipped out of the industrial streetscape, is the Waka Park. In 2016, when this space – the Queen Mother Elizabeth Garden – had succumbed to neglect, the Community Board commissioned kaumātua Warren Chase and his fellow elder and artisan, the late Russell Gaskin, to carve a waka tīwai, a small waka, to help revive it. With some native planting, a carved seat and further decoration, the Waka Park whānau, which includes Warren and his wife Everlyne, has created an oasis of calm on the busy road. “It's not just a park to us,” Warren says, “we see it more as a marae. A marae doesn't have to have a building, it's just a place where people can come together.”
Eketāhuna people seem to be very good at togetherness. When the grocery store closed in 1987, the community formed a Trust, bought a building and opened its own. A fire razed the petrol station in 2001 so the Trust re-built it. In 1988, when the town's GP retired and no replacement could be found, they created New Zealand's first nurse-led health clinic. Three decades later the Eketāhuna Health Centre is still run by nurses, with occasional visits from a doctor or nurse practitioner. The Centre also facilitates Plunket meetings, a budgeting service, cooking classes, exercise sessions, the Menz Shed, a food bank and even homework groups.
Recent Auckland import Jules Burt volunteers at the Eketāhuna Information Centre. She also sits on the Our Town Committee, writes the community newsletter, collates the Eketāhuna calendar and helps resident Alan Gray to promote his popular annual lawnmower-racing event, raising money for Arohanui hospice. Jules says that in her four years here the population has definitely changed. “I see new faces all the time, and more people stopping and using our shops.”
That increase in retail custom might be due to a significant rise in guest numbers at the Eketāhuna Camping Ground. The previously rather scruffy and under-utilised Council-owned facility has been transformed by effervescent off-site managers Kerry and Loreen Cunningham.
It's an idyllic setting, defined by the Mākākahi River as it does a majestic loop around the informal, grassy site. Culinary herbs grow outside a small, spotless kitchen. The bathrooms would look at home in a design magazine. The Cunninghams say when they took over ten years ago there were ten or fifteen visitors a month – they now host seven or eight hundred. Low fees attract younger travellers while the nearby golf club, and glowing reviews on camping apps, encourage 'grey nomads' to take a chance on the hitherto bypassed park.
The campground entrance is also one end of the Cliff Walk. Opened in 1911 for the coronation of King George and Queen Mary, the Walk follows the Mākākahi to the town bridge, negotiating gnarly macrocarpas and scraping past peoples' back yards. From above, large brown trout are easy to spot, but catching them is not. A well-placed wooden bench affords a view over lush farmland.
Like everywhere, Eketāhuna house prices are rocketing, but by national standards still seem pretty reasonable. Often a feature of the cheaper places to live is that they attract creative people. Painter and sculptor Mark Dimock bought here in 1980 and still beavers quietly away with two assistants in his studio-workshop-gallery on the western edge of town, supplying art dealers nation-wide.
Around the town's fringe, here and on the eastern side of the rarely-used railway line, there's a can-do attitude to housing. Modified containers, stretched tin sheds and self-built 'tiny houses' occupy generous sections alongside renovated villas and relocated bungalows. Eketāhuna is blessed with abundant building platforms and a DIY aesthetic is very evident.
We're just a block or two off the main road and the noisy has turned to a beautiful calm. An overalled bloke sculpts a hedge with hand-held clippers. Sheep graze in number-8-fenced backyards. Kids amble home from school, licking ice-cream cones.
Eketāhuna is as Kiwi as it gets.
In the Tararua district, and just 40km from Masterton.
