Blended celebration set for marae

DOUBLE: Wai Quayle, left, Te Rangimarie Marae committee chairwoman, Robin Irwin, committee secretary, and Masterton RSA president Bob Hill.

Celebrations will be held at Te Rangimarie Marae in Masterton next month that will observe a bicentennial and two centennials on a single day, says marae committee chairwoman Wai Quayle.

Mrs Quayle said she and secretary Robin Irwin were co-ordinating the blended celebration alongside Masterton RSA president Bob Hill and will help celebrate the observances on Saturday, September 5.

A memorial "pillar" standing in the marae grounds bears on a side facing forward from the wharenui, or meeting house - Nukutaimemeha - a legend in Maori regarding the advent of Christianity in New Zealand on December 25, 1814.

The purpose of the memorial was as a "witness of faith in New Zealand", according to the legend, to "help the Evangelical church, the Catholic church, the Mormon church, and the Church of Seventh Day Adventist".

"A letter to the generations that come to me and take the people to the faith. Love to everyone, respect the state, honor the king," the legend concludes.

Mrs Quayle said another face of the memorial recalls the road WWI soldiers from the district had taken to war through European and Middle Eastern nations. Research she undertook had found the names of 28 Maori volunteers for whom the pillar stands, she said.

"One of them was the son of the man who built the wharenui, Tunuiorangi," Mrs Quayle said.

The proposal to also mark the construction of the wharenui had sparked more research that discovered the building was officially opened on March 18 in 1918, she said.

The committee decided the dates were close enough together to warrant a combined observance.

Invitations to the celebration had been sent to Masterton Mayor Lyn Patterson and Masterton district councillors, she said, and to families of the servicemen immortalised on the pillar and families with close links to the wharenui and marae.