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news • business • opinion • sport Thursday, July 4, 2024
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Rocks and a hard place In 1952 a subdivision was approved on a spit at Mōkau local iwi said was an urupā – a cemetery. Seventy years later fall out continues – and erosion continues. Paul Charman files part one of an exclusive report. Peter Sole says his side of the story has gone untold. The Taranaki contracting company owner has been fined $80,000 for constructing a rockwall in front of a Maōri burial ground at Mōkau in 2021. He was convicted for breaching an abatement notice and having no resource consent to place boulders in a rockwall on the Te Naunau sandspit. He admitted using his digger without permission in December 2021, and on several other occasions over the years. But Sole, who was prosecuted by the Waikato Regional Council, told The News the rock wall was originally built with the blessing of some local iwi. And he says what he did in December 2021 was maintenance of the original wall, not construction of a new one. Almost 20 years ago he says the construction of a rockwall was organised and paid for by property owners in Point Rd, who formed the Mōkau Protection society. “In 2006 the Mōkau Protection Society applied for a resource consent at a cost in excess of $100,000 to construct it. They were declined but they decided to go ahead and build it regardless at their own cost, using volunteer labour and machinery. I was approached to supply them with rocks as they were desperate to protect their properties.” Most of the property owners from that era were long gone, having sold their sections and moved on, he added. “In December 2021 I was asked by two property owners to supply two loads of rocks to strengthen the wall in front of their properties.
Peter Sole in front of what remains of the sea wall on the Te Naunau sandspit at Mōkau. The urupa is on the section to his left, marked by a sign.
“The work I did in front the urupa and sections on the beachfront, one of which was mine, was just that, maintenance. “It involved digging up and reinstating boulders already on the beach that had been dislodged from the rockwall during adverse weather events.” Another Point Rd property owner, Peter Crowley, handed the News a letter to
back up Sole’s claim that the wall had the blessing of some iwi. Written and signed by a then Hamilton resident, Aroha Terry, in June 2006, it said: “On behalf of my tipuna and with the support and blessings of our kuia Jessie Te Waitiehu Terry, of Huntly, we hereby sincerely support your cause to build a rock wall across the said urupā to protect it from
erosions and stop the bones of our ancestors from floating out. “Over the years many people have found bones from that urupa and have reburied them in Maniaroa, which is in fact how Maniaroa Urupā started. Each year since! Bone has been found along the shores of Mōkau.
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