The Playshore of The Pacific

It might be difficult to imagine today, but the Ngāmotu Precinct was such a popular recreation area during the 1900s that it was nicknamed “the Playshore of the Pacific”.

Generations have enjoyed countless hours on the sheltered sands and family friendly waters of Ngāmotu Beach. Yet the beach itself is only one of many drawcards that have tempted people to spend their leisure time in and around the Ngāmotu Precinct.

Set on the lupin covered sandhills that once stretched back from Ngāmotu Beach, the two story Palladium was New Plymouth’s premiere venue when it opened in 1917. For more than half a century, visitors flocked to its tea rooms, bath house facilities and the events space that was hired out for all manner of private and public celebrations.

During the 1900s Ngāmotu Precinct has also been home to a skating rink, outdoor concert sound shell, tennis courts, miniature railway and even a crazy-golf course. During that past century there was a constant stream of community activity onsite; town picnics, fairs and fetes, race days (running, sailing, rowing and inter-school competitions) and an annual Mardi Gras which drew crowds of 25,000+ revellers during its 1940’s heydays!

In modern times, Ngāmotu Precinct continued to be the backdrop for a huge variety of popular community events. There were the crazy Birdman and home-built raft competitions of the 1980’s, Big Digs and Ariel Ping Pong Ball drops and of course the current monthly Seaside Market — all of which drew and draw thousands of visitors. The Precinct is the home to elite sports the World Triathlon Cup and Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge as well as popular family events like the annual children’s Weetbix Triathlon and Waka Armour. Yachting, Cruising, Underwater and Sports Fishing clubs still remain an active part of the area, nearly 100 years after the earliest were formed.

A Home For Generations

People have loved living in and around the Ngāmotu Precinct for quarter of a millennium. This is a place richly steeped in our shared history. The area has always been important to mana whenua Ngāti Te Whiti with Ngā Motu being one of the earliest places inhabited by the hapu.

Seaport Land Co fully recognise Ngāti Te Whiti of Te Atiawa tribe as mana whenua of the Ngāmotu Precinct area. Their rohe extends from the Herekawe (stream at Back Beach) to the Waiwhakaiho River, then inland to its headwaters on Taranaki, and back to where the Herekawe meets ocean. Ngāti Te Whiti have a rich, deep connection with this particular piece of whenua, including the motu and their waters. Ngā Motu was one of the first areas inhabited by the hapu, and the islands and reefs were all named by Ngāti Te Whiti.

As well as being home to their fishing kainga Mataipu, the land between Ngāmotu Beach and the Cool Stores is the site of Ōtaka Pā. Built in the early 1830s as a defence against raiding parties from Waikato who were fighting their way south, the Pā was quickly put to the test in 1832 when Waikato warriors instigated a three week siege on the Pā.

It was during the siege that the Waitapu stream (which we hope to daylight as part of this project) earned its name – thanks to the gruesome tactics Waikato warriors used to cut off the Pā’s drinking water during the siege. They killed and dismembered a woman then threw her body into the stream making the water or wai “tapu” and unsafe to drink.

The siege with Waikato mounting an all-in assault on the Pā. Ngāti Te Whiti fought them back and, with the help of cannons operated by the Pākeha Traders (which fired broken glass, rocks and pieces of iron as they had no proper ammunition), the hapu emerged victorious.

The victory was a hollow one however. Ngāti Te Whiti knew Waikato would return and so a large group joined other Te Atiawa tribe members heading south to the Wellington area in one of four migrations (or heke) of the 1820s and 1830s. In this group was the then infant Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III. Born during the battle of Ōtaki Pā and named after the eponymous Ngāti Te Whiti tupuna, this pēpē would become known around the world for the passive resistance he and fellow prophet Tohu Kākahi championed even in the face of the atrocities committed by British Troops at Parihaka.

The small group of Ngāti Te Whiti who remained at Ngāmotu moved to the islands Mikotahi, Moturoa and Motumahanga fearing reprisals from Waikato. A year later as predicted, Mikotahi was attacked. Extensively outnumbered, Rangatira Poharama Te Whiti (who is buried in the urapa adjacent to the Cool Stores) negotiated a surrender that would allow the hapu’s women and children to be spared.

In the years that followed, colonial legislation and forced evictions continue to alienate all remaining Ngāti Te Whiti from this whenua.

We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the hapu to engage with them using a co-design process throughout all development work we undertake. We are excited to be part of a vision that will bring this hapu back to its whenua as part of a journey of reconciliation.

Ngāmotu Beach is also the birthplace of colonial New Plymouth. It was here that the very first 147 would-be-settlers came ashore from the William Bryan and were originally housed. The surrounding suburb of Moturoa has grown over the following years and decades, with residents being integral to the development of much of the infrastructure and many amenities in and around Ngāmotu Precinct that still enjoy today.

Set on the lupin covered sandhills that once stretched back from Ngāmotu Beach, the two story Palladium was New Plymouth’s premiere venue when it opened in 1917. For more than half a century, visitors flocked to its tea rooms, bath house facilities and the events space that was hired out for all manner of private and public celebrations.

During the 1900s Ngāmotu Precinct has also been home to a skating rink, outdoor concert sound shell, tennis courts, miniature railway and even a crazy-golf course. During that past century there was a constant stream of community activity onsite; town picnics, fairs and fetes, race days (running, sailing, rowing and inter-school competitions) and an annual Mardi Gras which drew crowds of 25,000+ revellers during its 1940’s heydays!

In modern times, Ngāmotu Precinct continued to be the backdrop for a huge variety of popular community events. There were the crazy Birdman and home-built raft competitions of the 1980’s, Big Digs and Ariel Ping Pong Ball drops and of course the current monthly Seaside Market — all of which drew and draw thousands of visitors. The Precinct is the home to elite sports the World Triathlon Cup and Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge as well as popular family events like the annual children’s Weetbix Triathlon and Waka Armour. Yachting, Cruising, Underwater and Sports Fishing clubs still remain an active part of the area, nearly 100 years after the earliest were formed.

A Hive of Industry Throughout

The entire time people have lived and played in and around the Ngāmotu Precinct, industry has also flourished. Originally a Ngāti Te Whiti fishing kainga, then a Trading Post and Whaling Station, it is also the site of the British Empire’s first oil well (and later a series of oil refineries that were in operation until the 1970s) and has been a busy international Port since residents successfully petitioned for the first breakwater in the 1880s.

The Cool Stores have been integral to exporting the best our region’s farmers have to offer to eager customers around the globe. In fact, industry has flourished so much (in harmony with residents and recreational users) that many different land reclamation projects have been deemed necessary over the years to extend the area.

Ngāmotu Precinct has a proud history of industry dating back to when Ngāti Te Whiti established a fishing kainga there in the 1700s. It was at their kainga that Richard “Dicky” Barrett and Captain "Jacky" Love established one of New Zealand’s first trading posts in 1828. As well as trade typical of the day (clothes and blankets, muskets and powder, tobacco, razors and rum, barley and corn from Sydney) when their ship The Adventure sunk at her moorings off Ngāmotu, Barrett rescued and sold its cargo to a passing English trader — marking the first (but certainly not the last) direct shipment of goods from Taranaki to England.

In 1839 Barrett set up a whaling station at Ngāmotu. A lookout high on Paritutū would signal when a whale was spotted out to sea. Once caught it would be floated back to Ngāmotu and stripped of the highly sought after baleen and oil used for lighting (lamps) in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Taranaki’s reputation as the energy province dates back to the discovery of New Zealand’s first oil deposit at Ngāmotu Beach. The Hongi Hongi stream (which currently reaches Ngāmotu beach via a culvert, but which we hope to daylight as part of this project) got its name from the distinctive and peculiar odour associated with oil emitting from it. In 1866 four settlers hand dug “Alpha” well — the very first oil well in the entire British Empire and one of the earliest world-wide. The first of a series of oil refineries, that operated until 1971, was opened in 1913. Around the same time enterprising immigrants created a number of ironworks to (not particularly successfully) try to commodify Ngāmotu’s abundant iron sand.

The construction of the first (Moturoa Wharf) breakwater in 1881 paved the way for the Port as we know it today. Before the breakwater created a sheltered place to berth, cargo had to be rowed ashore from ships moored in deeper waters – a tricky business that was expensive to get wrong (as your cargo usually plummeted into the depths). As New Plymouth’s exports of meat, cheese and dairy boomed, the infrastructure to support it – including the Cool Stores – sprang up. Land reclamation work, started in the late 1800s, continued so that the Port could expand. Rock was blasted from Moturoa Island and Paritutū well into the 1920s when the, now decommissioned, Power Station was built.

Although these days Port Taranaki, owned by ratepayers and managed via the Taranaki Regional Council, dominates the area, there are still a variety of local businesses and industries operating in the Ngāmotu Precinct. We hope our vision will bring further revitalisation to what has been a multiuse area for the vast majority of its inhabited history.