OHURA, BOAR HUNT AND HANGI

Barry and Margaret Williamson                                                               August 2005

This is an account of a week's visit to the Taranaki town of Ohura, on the North Island of New Zealand. We were fortunate to be able to stay with Charley and Janet, and to do so when they and their son John were busy organising a boar hunt and a hangi.

Ohura will be found on a good map near the large bulge in the south-west of the North Island. The bulge was produced by the formerly very active 9,000 ft-high Mount Taranaki (also known as Mount Egmont). The town is out on its own, among hills of volcanic lava, now covered by the greenest of grass and the happiest of sheep. Go west from Taumarunui, east from New Plymouth, south from Te Kuiti or north from Wanganui, keep asking passers-by and you will finally reach Ohura.

To know where it is you have arrived, read on . . . . . . .

OHURA is typical of many small New Zealand towns, which once had a prosperity based on mineral extraction but now lie quietly in the bush, among remote mountains and rivers. Ohura had a coal mine and there are still rich deposits in the area, waiting the right economic moment for their exploitation. Meanwhile, the town (a hamlet, really) awaits the closure in November of its other employer – the prison.

Originally called Mangaroa ( = long stream in Maori), after the Mangaroa River on which it stands, the name was changed to Ohura in 1913 to avoid confusion with other Mangaroas. In Maori, 'O' corresponds to 'Of' and 'Hura' was an ancestor of the local Ngati Ruru tribe. There is an Ohura River in the next valley and the Mangaroa River joins it a few kilometres away. The Ohura River goes on to join the Whanganui River at Marae Kowhai, flowing on through Taumarunui and eventually reaching the Tasman Sea at Wanganui.

The population of Ohura is now about 200 and it has been falling steadily in recent years – for example, it fell by 40% in the 5 years preceding the 2001 census! What was once a bustling town with shops, clubs, service station and churches is now quiet and peaceful. One small store remains and the garage has given up selling fuel. The St John's Ambulance stationed in the town lacks both a driver and mechanical reliability and the one fire engine relies on local volunteers. A doctor visits for half a day, once a week.

There is no signal for the mobile phone, but a repeater station supplies the basic diet of New Zealand Television. People wanting a speedier internet connection put up a satellite dish!  

According to the 2001 census, the average income of the people of Ohura is only 60% of the national average and unemployment is twice the national average. See Ohura Information for more census detail and maps of the area.

All this information points to a town in decline, but it also points to a way of life that is enviable. Little money is needed to live in Ohura and everything is within walking distance. Wood is plentiful for the stove, there is a great spirit of mutual help and support among the people, Maori and European. House prices are among the lowest in New Zealand. There is plenty of space in the town and everyone (except Paul) lives in a detached timber-framed house on its own plot. The town lies at around 500 ft and it is surrounded in every direction by hundreds of grassy hills and ridges rising to over 1,000 ft (300 m), the uneroded record of snow-capped Mount Egmont's volcanic past.

Ohura is not on a through route for either tourists or trucks – SH43, the Forgotten World Highway (it used to be called the Lost World Highway), passes by 10 km away, linking Stratford with Taumarunui and forgetting (or losing) Ohura. With the nearest town (Taumarunui) over 50 mountainous kilometres away, there is little to disturb or pollute the air of Ohura!

The centre of life in the town is the Cosmopolitan Club, a non-profit-making centre, managed and staffed by the community itself. The club provides refreshment, food on certain nights, snooker, TV and, above all, a meeting ground for townspeople and local farmers. The club also puts on special events and we were lucky enough to be there for their very first annual Boar Hunt and Hangi.

On Saturday mornings an otherwise-empty shop is used for coffee and a bring-and-buy sale with quite a few items, including books, being given away free. Again, this enterprise gives people a chance to meet and gossip.

Our hosts for nearly a week in Ohura were Charley and Janet Hedges whose house, grounds and shops (now storerooms and workshops!) front the broad main street. Charley, brought out as a child from Yorkshire, is a fluent speaker of Maori with a love and fascination for Maori culture and history. He is also a keen cyclist with a splendid collection of bikes, some of which he built or modified himself. He is also working on the restoration of a number of vintage motorbikes. And this is only a small part of his range of social and practical skills – not least, he is an excellent host!

Janet has relatives high in New Zealand's Maori hierarchy and is greatly respected by both communities, in Ohura and beyond. She plays a key role in the management and running of the Cosmopolitan Club, just across the road from their house. She plans to take over the bring-and-buy shop in the near future.

We first met Charley and Janet in Maryborough on Queensland's Pacific coast. They were on holiday, while we were just completing a 16,500-mile campervan circuit of Australia. Charley saw our English touring bicycles and immediately came over to talk. We have been good friends ever since and met again in Ohura in 2002 when we were on a 1,500-mile cycle ride through the North Island.

Our other friends in Ohura include John, the son of Janet and Charley, a big man in every sense of the word! Initially intimidating in appearance, he soon comes through as kind, patient and hard working. In addition to long days tree and scrub-cutting in the forest, he helps to run the Cosmopolitan Club and works behind the bar till late most evenings.

Jack lives in the former Bank of New Zealand building on the main street, complete with vault. He has a fund of stories from his days as a pilot in the RNZAF and as a civilian pilot with Air New Zealand. He obviously loves Ohura but his V8 Jaguar easily transports him to other parts of the North Island (and sometimes the South Island, too).

Paul lives in a pair of 'house buses' which he has built himself, utilising his skills as a carpenter. He is very fit, cycling the 100-km round trip to Taumarunui to collect his weekly groceries and the 160-km required for a regular visit to relatives in Wanganui. He has also made several successful attempts at the annual round-Lake-Taupo bicycle race of about 160 km.

Along with this fitness, his main interest in life lies in striving to increase the efficiency of his bicycles on two fronts: streamlining to reduce air drag (the main absorber of the cyclist's energy and therefore the final limiter of a bicycle's speed), and reducing the mass of the bicycle wheels. His efforts have taken many forms: streamlining different parts of the bicycle; making a windscreen for the rider to get behind; removing spokes; drilling holes in rims; removing tread from tyres; designing new mudguards.

He is also skilled and keen enough to use his chain saw to bring down the most challenging tree, his specially-built trailer being used to tow the ladder behind his bicycle.

Roger is an English farmer transposed to several hundred acres of good New Zealand hill land. He runs cattle, sheep and chickens on an 'organic' basis, one reason being that it raises more income for less work! For example, the sheep require less drenching and no tail docking! He is also a website developer, with over 20 to his name, and a keen photographer. People live a full life, in and around Ohura. 

Jack took us to the 10 am Sunday Morning Service at Ohura's Methodist Church, with refreshments in the church hall afterwards. The wooden church was built in 1912 and inmates of Ohura Prison have recently repainted the outside walls, but only as high as they could reach (they are not allowed ladders!) Inside the church, the woodcarving of the Last Supper was also done by prisoners and signed by them all on the back: this was a 'thank you' to Hazel, who runs the church services and acts as Prison Chaplain. Not least, she always visits accompanied by her excellent baking!

The service was taken by her son, Dave. In the congregation were Hazel, Jack, ourselves, Natalie & daughter Keitlyn, Barbara & 3 of her 6 children (Sarah, Mitchell and baby Rosemary) and Carol from the garage. The singing was unaccompanied, with requests from the congregation including favourites such as 'Amazing Grace'.

Later on the Sunday, we were invited to the end of the Wild Boar Hunt and the ensuing Hangi feast. The Hangi pit fire was lit by John and his mates before dawn and used to heat up bricks, stones and metal pieces. The cooking began about noon, when the fire was raked away and the pre-prepared meat and vegetable meals stacked on top of the hot stones in foil containers. These were covered in wet cloths, more water was poured on and the whole thing covered in a plastic sheet and lots of earth until it looked like a freshly-filled grave!  

Janet and helpers had prepared the 100 hangi baskets and 100 individual trifles and was later to supervise their distribution within the Cosmopolitan Club! What a labour of love.

Cooking (by steaming) took from noon until 4.30 pm, during which time hunters appeared with their dead boars, eels and rabbits. Each and every item was weighed against the later awarding of prizes. We learned that the boar is usually killed by dogs – 2 or more trained to go for the rear legs, one to go for the head. Hunters may use a knife and also carry rifles, though it would be seen as poor sport to actually fire them!

As evening approached, prizes were awarded, including special ones for children who had brought in eels and rabbits. Finally, all the hunters and hangers-on (that should be hangis-on) were right royally fed and 'watered'.

At times throughout our week, we enjoyed the other attractions of Ohura – talking, reading, emailing, dhobi, riding a variety of bicycles, visiting Taumarunui to collect post and have lunch in Ruddies Café, walking, photographing, getting the motorhome unstuck from its hole in the mud, watching a DVD of Part 3 of the Lord of the Rings (filmed locally!) and more talking.

TAUMARUNUI (in Maori big screen or shade) lies at a height of about 500 ft, in a green and pleasant valley at the confluence of the Ongarue and Whanganui Rivers. A small town, it is nevertheless the commercial centre for a large surrounding area with a hospital, cafes, a good supermarket, shops of all kinds, and agricultural equipment suppliers. It is on the main railway line that runs from Auckland to Wellington, has a good holiday park (4 km east of town) and a couple of motels – we highly recommend Kelly's Motel by the river at the northern end of town. For more on the area, visit www.tourism.net.nz/region/ruapehu

Travelling to Taumarunui from Ohura, four of us in Charley's car, we went out via highway SH43 (the last section of the Forgotten World Highway) over Nevins Lookout and past Herlihy's Bluffs (mudstone which causes landslips on the road). The highest point on the road is 1,060 ft at Tunnel Hill.

Returning to Ohura, we drove north up the SH4, then left along 9 km of winding gravel road, steeply up and down over the Ohakuhura Saddle, the highest point on the road at 1,260 ft. A good road then wound its way to Ohura via the small settlement of Matiere. The total distance, there and back, was about 110 km.