Omokoroa

Place Details

DescriptionHistory of settlement in the area can be traced back to the earliest Nga Marama tribes, who were already living in the bush and around the Tauranga Harbour when the three recorded Maori waka arrived up to 700 years ago. In the central area Ngati Ranginui evolved with six hapu between the Waimapu and Aongatete rivers.
Pirirakau still remains the local dominant hapu but shared with affiliated tribes from over the Wairere Track (Ngati Haua) and Ngati Rangiwewehi from Te Arawa. Tribal settlements evolved circa 1700-1750 with accepted sharing of land and access for food gathering. There are remnants of two pa on the peninsula – Wai-huri on the headland and Rauhuria, but little is known of their history. In the early 1820s the first trade was established in muskets and flax with mission stations established soon after, along with a progressive Maori timber and flax trading economy especially out through Te Puna Point and widespread seasonal cropping.

Inter-tribal “Musket Wars” in the 1830s were frequent and savage until mid century and changed allegiances and balance of influence. Te Waharoa, the great chief of Ngati Haua, lived at Omokoroa in his later years and only returned back to Matamata to die in 1838. In 1858 the Kingitanga movement developed from the Waikato to protect land from growing alienation and local Maori alliances changed.The Land Wars of the 1860s with Government troops are well documented.Land confiscation after 1864 caused deep grievances, particularly to Ngati Ranginui and are still being addressed through the Raupatu Claims process. A further Ngati Ranginui Bush Campaign in 1867, objecting to the terms of the Te Puna Katikati Block confiscation, destroyed all the local settlements and crops and Pirirakau were dispersed and lost their presence on Omokoroa Peninsula. Few of the promised blocks were returned and Maori ownership was often forfeited due to the survey fees that were imposed. Europeans started acquiring the land for farm development.

Ngati Haua retained ownership of a block at the western end of Prole Road that is called Ngati Haua Orchards.

In 1876, the Reverend Joseph Tice Gellibrand, wife Selina Hannah and family friend Elizabeth Winspear, who later changed her name to Gellibrand, chose to live in Omokoroa. Gellibrand purchased land stretching from the tip of the peninsula, to where the Tauranga-Katikati highway is today from several
different Maori owners,including a group of Ngati Rangiwewehi from Te Arawa who were living on the Point, Ngati Haua from the Waikato, as well as the Pirirakau hapu of Ngati Ranginui. Tice named his property Omokoroa, meaning `The Place of Mokoroa’ in recognition of the man Mokoroa who had introduced him to Omokoroa peninsula.

Tice developed an orchard, and a vineyard and distillery to produce his wine. For the sum of 1,250 pounds, he built a 16th century style, pit-sawn kauri villa near the headland of the peninsula.
Around the house, he planted exotic trees from seeds he had brought from Tasmania.
In 1878, Elizabeth married Englishman Arthur Algernon Crapp, a captain in the Armed Constabulary with a distinguished record in the Land Wars. Their wedding took place in Auckland and on return
to Tauranga by ship, Tice’s wife Selina, hired a small boat and boatman for the short journey across the harbour to Omokoroa. She was drowned when the boat capsized in bad weather and local Maori found her body the next morning. Tice died in 1887.

Material was sourced from Peter Rolleston, University of Waikato, Local History Lecture Series 2000,‘Omokoroa’ written by Jenny Woods and ‘Matakana Island’ edited by Heeni J.Murray, Te Iwi o Matakana Last edited by: Sandra Haigh