For more than 30 years Tīrau’s Tapapa Marae sat vacant amongst farmland.
Now it’s home to the South Waikato’s first rammed earth wharenui (meeting house).
It comes after the Department of Internal Affairs granted $1.34 million for the first of three stages of the marae’s reconstruction earlier this year.
A wharenui was built on the site in the late 1800’s and was used up until the 1950’s before iwi migrated away for work. Having become dilapidated it was demolished in 1988 and buried on the site which has awaited the marae’s eventual redevelopment.
The new wharenui, which is expected to be completed next week, has seen approximately 16,000 bucket loads of soil manually mixed and poured to construct its 108 tonne walls.
Whanau project manager Martin Miles said iwi spent years planning its construction.
“From 1989 on they said yes we are going to do this thing, we are going to rebuild it but it was just a matter of how we were going to do it,” he said.
“The big dream was to build a wharenui, wharekai (dining hall), whare horoi (toilet/shower block), education complex and a playground but in 2011-12 things got condensed back to just the wharenui, wharekai and whare horoi.
“From there we had to decide if it was going to be a traditional build or contemporary. We wanted it to be low maintenance, ecosystainabe, and have a low environmental footprint so eventually we decided to go with a rammed earth building.”
Following resource consent being granted in late 2017 and “lots of boxes having to be ticked”, Miles said it then came down to the DIA signing off the funding.
“I got a call on April 1 saying that it had been approved so at first I thought it was a joke,” he laughed.
“We held the kaumatua ground breaking ceremony on May 4 and since then it has been pretty full on.
“Construction Advantage Limited were contracted for the build and for the walls we had a core team of six, four whanau members and two experts from Whangarei who have been doing this for 30 years. In the middle of winter we moved 108 tonne to build the walls in 22 days.
“We are now just getting some of the final external painting done which has been held up due to the weather, a bit more remedial groundwork out the front, acid wash of the concrete paths and kua oti (it’s finished).”
He said the same materials will also be used to build the wharekai and whare horoi.
“We have got 160 tonne set aside,” he said.
“Stage two will be the whare horoi which will have showers, toilets, a laundry, and a baby changing area and once that’s done we will then do stage three, the wharekai.
“Out the back we are also going to put a memorial area over the old wharenui site. It’s been a long time coming.”
For Makuini Tai the development is extra special. The block of land the marae is built on was secured as a reservation by Polly Tai, her husband’s mother.
She said her husband’s ancestors would be pleased to see the development finally taking shape.
“They would be saying it’s about time,” she laughed.
“They would be very excited and the good thing is it is also attracting young ones back.”
