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Matapouri Bay on Northland's east coast has always been a therapeutic visit. The stunning horseshoe bay with its broad ribbon of white sand is almost enclosed by bushclad headlands. Surrounding hills hold back the clouds and child-friendly surf rolls in most days.
The slow pace and feel of one of the north's most beautiful beaches is partly down to significant Maori land ownership: the baches on leasehold land at the southern end remain authentically Kiwi. But as seaside settlements around the country have found, money and progress can threaten the magic - and tear communities apart.
The recent carve up of the Morrison farm - bringing upmarket beach houses - at the northern end was an inevitable response to soaring coastal land values. Tarsealing of the coast road and the internet have also brought change: articulate, conservation-minded lifestylers and Whangarei commuters now rub shoulders with farmers and retirees.
Matapouri's serenity began to unravel last Labour Weekend after local woman Solange Bely stumbled upon survey pegs in dunes at the northern end of the beach. She asked questions and a public meeting was called. Most locals thought the 1.1 ha triangle of land being marked out for subdivision was part of the Crown-owned Otito Reserve. They knew it as wahi tapu (sacred), an area by a freshwater stream where bodies were processed and cleansed before burial. Unknown to the wider community was that a 1999 survey had given title to neighbouring landowners the Ringer family, descendents of the pioneering Morrisons.
In 1969, local Maori sold the Otito block, including the bushclad peninsula and Rangitapu Pa headland, to the Crown for $13,000 on condition it be kept as a recreation reserve and wahi tapu sites respected.
A quirk of the deal was that it included a beachhouse which the Morrisons built in 1946 - a retirement home on the dunes for original settlers Jock and Molly Morrison to enjoy the breathtaking view of the bay and bush. A 1965 survey found that at least part of the house infringed on the Otito block of Maori land defined by an 1877 survey. The Maori Land Court, the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Department of Conservation were all involved. It was agreed the Morrisons were in adverse possession but could remain in the house until they died - at which point the house would be removed.
The lifetime occupancy arrangement was never formalised but was understandably Matapourian. The Morrisons had great mana in the community - Jock arrived in 1912 and later chaired the county council while taming the flood-prone flats and neighbouring hills; Molly had headed the hospital board. They'd sold Whale Bay, a bushclad gem on the other side of the peninsula, to the Crown and provided walking access. For their part, the Rangiwhakaahu hapu (of Ngatiwai) maintained a benign presence in the community, though they were few in number when the house was built. Above all, says one former resident, "the local Maori have great patience".
The big event this weekend is the unveiling at the marae for hapu chairman Kris MacDonald's mother, who died last year. But it's the land dispute which has drawn the hapu and many European residents closer in the past year, and left the Ringers questioning their future in the bay.
Locals have mobilised behind the hapu, lawyers are involved and court action is pending. In the year since its formation, the Friends of Matapouri group has funded a geotechnical survey; the hapu and Department of Conservation have lodged caveats over the disputed land and DoC has had previous surveys reviewed. DoC accepted the 1999 survey but now claims in its caveat to be the rightful owner. But the Surveyor General has declined to order a correcting survey, opting to leave it for the courts to decide.
Local media coverage and letters to the editor have meanwhile entrenched divisions over a line in the grass-covered sand. For the Ringer siblings John, Martin and Val, it has severed friendships and split extended family.
This is not a case of Maori wanting unfairly taken prime real estate back - they want the land to remain in public hands. It's a saga of a decades-old boundary dispute, of massacres, buried skeletons and Maori customs, shifting sand dunes, vanishing streams and boundary markers, of folklore and conflicting documents and bureaucratic indifference.
It seems everyone knew of the lifetime occupancy arrangement - Molly made no secret of it. After she died in 1991, the hapu reminded DoC of their expectation that the house, built alongside a sacred knoll, would go.
It's at this point that the community's oral history diverges sharply from the Ringers'. They say their parents and grandparents never accepted that the house encroached on to the Otito block. Molly, they say, was intimidated into the arrangement - a prospect those who remember the "formidable" woman dismiss. Val Monk (nee Ringer) says the community is confused and has taken past conversations out of context. "People's memories are clouded by time."
With DoC asking questions and the carve-up of the Morrison farm under way, the Ringers commissioned the survey to settle the boundary issue which had bubbled away for more than 30 years. They say neither DoC nor Linz would contribute to resolving the dispute.
The survey found the southern boundary was the Wahitapu stream, north of the disputed land. It left the Ringers free to subdivide the 1.1ha block south of the stream and beside the beach. The Whangarei District Council approved a 3-lot subdivision, without public notification, on beachfront land worth millions. The Ringers have earmarked the sites for themselves.
"We were ethically, legally and morally aligned to getting this fixed," says Martin Ringer. "but because we paid for it, we are being accused of having stacked the result.
"We've had unpalatable allegations about our morality ever since."
For supposed villains, the Ringers present as decent folk. When we meet at Monk's Forrest Hill townhouse (it's some time since they set foot in Matapouri) their responses are measured and polite. They are clearly vexed by the erupting dispute and the personal fall-out."It's the house our grandparents were in, that we visited every Sunday, that we had Christmas in," says Monk. "It's our home."
At the beach, hapu chairman Kris MacDonald and Friends of Matapouri chairwoman Leonie Molloy are just as likeable. Their analysis is grounded in research - although MacDonald eventually betrays the depth of his resolve.
"We will never give up fighting for it - they will never have peace on that land."
The area was used as a cemetery until 1823 and yielded bones for decades afterwards, says MacDonald. The Wahitapu Stream was the closest freshwater source to the pa and its banks were used to process and clean bodies. Whitiora, the rocky knoll next to the beach house, was where skeletons and heads were laid out to dry before burial.
When the reserve was created, DoC was supposed to register its wahi tapu sites with the Historic Places Trust. Its failure to do so irks the hapu.
Like much of the community, MacDonald and Molloy cannot believe that history can be rewritten - that the 1877 survey of the Otito block and an 1893 map with more precise definitions can be overturned by a privately commissioned survey. Molloy links this to the 1990s trend for government departments to contract out work, with limited auditing of the results. "The Ringers were one of the first to use that new regime whereby accredited surveyors were trusted to get it right."
Communication between Crown agencies, the Whangarei District Council which approved the subdivision and the hapu also seems to have been lacking.
"If the Crown had formalised the lifetime tenancy it would have been much more straightforward," says Molloy.
Key to the Friends/hapu argument is a corner marker which has disappeared but whose existence has been verified. The 1877 survey measurements put the southwestern boundary marker about 40m south of the Ringers' survey, which places the peg north of the stream. The 1877 map has the southern boundary proceeding southeast to the beach; the Ringers' survey has it following the stream.
The Friends commissioned a geotechnical survey which suggests the possibility that a southern tributary formed the boundary. The Ringers say there was only ever one stream and it hasn't moved.
The friends and hapu have the backing of at least one Ringer - a cousin, John Lincoln Ringer, who lived for many years at the southern end of the beach.
"Our family had a historical understanding of the situation that at least part of Molly's home was on the reserve. I was not aware of any challenge or anyone saying it was wrong and should be resolved."
He disputes his cousins' contention that Molly felt pressured into agreeing to a lifetime occupancy clause. "She was a formidable matriarch - short of stature but not in any other sense."
The Friends/hapu's lawyer has unearthed correspondence showing Government agencies accepted in the 1970s that the Morrison house encroached on the reserve.
"There's a well-documented history of lack of clarity about the boundary which no one really addressed until the 1999 survey," says Martin Ringer. "And we are wearing the community feeling that's come from that."
But DoC's peer review of the previous surveys is strongly critical of the Ringer-commissioned survey.
The review by a former Surveyor General, Tony Bevin, found it was "not robust" in defining the stream as the southern boundary and ignoring the recorded position of the corner peg. The "very large differences" in title distances which the new survey created "should have been a signal to consider the definition and all available evidence more carefully".
Bevin's report says the original survey may have got the stream's position wrong; it's also possible the stream has since moved north. The more reliable guide is the old peg, which could be re-measured from landmarks and compass readings.
The Ringers point to survey principles outlined in Bevin's report which rank "well-defined natural features" above survey measurements. They are adamant the boundary is the stream.
Both sides share one thing in common - frustration that they face the financial burden of resolving a boundary dispute arising from confused Government records and decades of departmental shoulder-shrugging.
MacDonald: "We are now in the ridiculous position of having to sue the Crown to prove it's Crown land."
