When the Church Missionary Society missionaries established Te Waimate Mission Station in 1832, they had very clear goals in mind. George Clarke and his colleagues had visions of establishing Te Waimate as a model English wheat-producing farm, which would serve to educate the natives on 'proper' agricultural practices.
Ironically, however, the land's real potential for pastoral farming was first recognised by a local man who had no such sentimental baggage from 'home.' Taiwhanga, later baptised Rawiri Taiwhanga, was one of Hongi Hika's most experienced warriors, who had earlier taken part in the Ngāpuhi expedition to the Bay of Plenty. Skilled in battle, he was also a quick learner, or as missionary John Butler put it, 'a man of quick discernment.'
Taiwhanga worked for Butler as a foreman while his charges built New Zealand's oldest standing building, the Kerikeri Mission House, for which Butler paid him an axe a month, while, ever-curious, he became fascinated by foreign crops and farming methods, and was not slow in putting his new-found knowledge into practice.
By late 1826 his garden provided ample evidence of his extraordinary agricultural skills, boasting potatoes, corn, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons, onions, shallots, peas and parsnips. His vines and peach trees were also flourishing.
But it was Taiwhanga's interest in cattle that really set him apart. He established a farm near Kaikohe, close to the mission at Te Waimate, and amassed a respectable herd of cattle, while the missionaries' dreams of creating a wheat-based agricultural economy were steadily flagging.
