Opinion: The case for Rocky Bay

The issue of an 'official' name for Waiheke Island's Rocky Bay is puzzling to many locals.

By Nobilangelo Ceramalus

No place name is officially on the map till gazetted by the NZ Geographic Board, When history and marketing have created two place names, and one is to be made official with a gazette-application, which should prevail? The one in established common use, backed by Maori Land Court and Crown provenance? Or the one favoured by bureaucrats in Wellington misled by Pakeha marketing and unlawful actions?

That is now being considered by a village on Waiheke's southern coast, commonly known as Rocky Bay.

Why it should be an issue puzzles many. Official road-signs say Rocky Bay, buses say Rocky Bay, Waihekeans talk about Rocky Bay, villagers say they live there, the village hall is called the Rocky Bay Hall, etc.

Waiheke's seaside villages are named after their main bay. And it was in 1865, on a Maori Land Court map, that the bay below what became the village was first labelled Rocky Bay. A Crown map of 1877 also affirmed it as Rocky Bay.

Road signs on the island all point to Rocky Bay.

The land above Rocky Bay was Maori - the Kuakarau Block on those 1865 and 1877 maps - then spelt Kauakarau, but a Maori Elder on Waiheke said that was not Maori, it was meaningless nonsense, and should be Kuakarau, 'Place of a thousand godwits', which was gazetted. The godwits, alas, are long gone, but the name lives on in Kuakarau Bay, the other village bay, and in the Kuakarau Bay Forest Reserve.

In 1897 ownership of the Kuakarau Block went from the three Maori men awarded it in 1865 to an Irish-born Maori Land Court judge. Then his family owned the entire Te Whau peninsular.

He died in 1901 and in 1922 his two surviving sons decided to subdivide the least favoured part, the Kuakarau Block, making a 488-section village.

They obviously thought that giving their development a strong Maori spin would sell the sections better, so although their family did not have a drop of Maori blood they appropriated Maoritanga for their four-page marketing prospectus.

They embellished it with drawings of Maori carvings, drawings of a Maori warrior in full moko saying 'Haere mai', and a war canoe filled with Maori warriors. It was all nonsense, and blatant cultural theft. They had no blood right to do it, and the land had been their Pakeha farm for 25 years.

But for that Maori spin an English name did not fit. They needed a Maori one. They rejected Kuakarau, the original Maori name, which had also been the name of the vanished dominant whare. They also rejected the name of a vanished subsidiary whare, Ohinearei, deleting it from history. They used the name of another vanished subsidiary whare, Omiha, for a road, thus preserving it. But they also used it as the name of their development, perhaps because their father was Irish, and Omagh is an Irish province and town.

Their marketing prospectus shows they knew the bay was Rocky Bay, but they renamed it 'Omiha Bay' and used 'Omiha' for the village. That was unlawful, because under an 1894 Act of Parliament only the Governor-General could then assign place names. And nowhere in genealogies recorded for the area by the Maori Land Court in 1865 is there an 'Omiha' or any name like it.

Their marketing prospectus also had two falsehoods, which on a prospectus is criminal. The land looks and slopes south, but they said 'Sections have a northerly and easterly aspect' and 'is sheltered from the prevailing wind', which is southwesterly.

Rocky Bay re-established itself for the bay and village, but now some, ignorant of the marketing and the Court and Crown documentation, assume 'Omiha' was the original Maori name, and that Rocky Bay is an assault on Maoritanga.

But the assault was the cultural theft on the prospectus. Gazetting Rocky Bay would reverse that wrong, and make common usage official.

One or two, determined to fight for the marketing name, thinking they are fighting for Maoritanga, have made fabrications to "prove" their assumptions. The most outlandish is that a Mihi left the Te Arawa waka in the 13th century at Waiheke to be with Ngati Paoa. But that waka did not call at Waiheke (see

www.teara.govt.nz

), and Ngati Paoa came in the 18th century, so she would have had a 500-year wait. And the famous Mihi descended from Te Arawa was not born till 1870.

Rocky Bay is the historical truth. "Omiha" was part of cultural theft and unlawful action in Pakeha marketing. Having one name is vital for problem-free emergency responses. Competing names is a nuisance, and dangerous.

Editor's note: Submissions on the proposal to change Omiha to Rocky Bay can be made to the NZ Geographic Board until September 22. The board will make a decision at a meeting in October.