This town wants to be the next Tirau

ELEANOR BLACK visits a small Bay of Plenty town which is trying to shake off a violent past and attract visitors.

Taneatua, as close to a frontier town as you would find in New Zealand, has a population of 800 and an image problem.

Ever since a series of gruesome gang-related killings in the early 1990s, it has been an unlikely spot for tourism.

But try telling that to optimistic residents, who insist the town's fortunes are about to turn.

Just 14km southeast of Whakatane but a world away in terms of resources, Taneatua hopes to position itself as an authentic alternative for foreign visitors who want to try horse trekking, pig hunting, a marae stay or a guided visit to Te Urewera National Park, next to the town.

It's a far cry from the town that made headlines when three men were killed in the space of three years as the result of warfare between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power.

Kunere Kohunui was beaten to death by five men on a marae in March 1991, 24-year-old Andrew Daniels was shot in November 1992 and Claude Takao, 29, was shot in the face at a rugby game on Anzac Day 1993.

Constable Andrew Biddle - the town's only law enforcement official - says the hotheaded young men who made the gangs powerful have grown up and there is little trouble today.

The main street, recently decorated with murals, has a legacy of closures and unemployment.

Teenagers sit on the side of the road waiting for something to happen, while their older brothers and sisters drive around in clapped-out cars.

Taneatua used to have a food processing facility, dairy factory, saleyards, a major hotel, rail station, and enough spillover work from the Kawerau and Whakatane mills to justify three busloads a day.

Today, work is scarce.

Gary Climo, assistant principal of Taneatua School, says there is little to keep his students in town after they have spent their secondary school years travelling to Whakatane each day and had a look at their options.

Much of their education at the picture-book primary school, which has a snappy peppermint paint job and old-fashioned school bell, is intended to prepare them for the wider world.

Of course, if community leaders have their way, the world will come to Taneatua.

The local community board is determined to change the town's image.

Like so many struggling small towns desperate to attract visitors, it is struggling to make itself noticed. But for every small town like Tirau, which has turned itself from dairy factory town into arts and crafts and cafe stop on State Highway 1, there are others like Taneatua.

The locals have painted murals and decorated the shopfronts.

Much of the rest is hope.

Don Turnbull, a retired schoolteacher who grows raspberries and asparagus on his nearby Ruatoki farm, believes the natural beauty and hospitality of the locals put the region in a prime position to pick off visitors who already head to Whakatane for fishing and sunshine.

Although attempts to popularise jetboating and tramping failed, Mr Turnbull believes aggressive promotion and a range of accommodation options are the key. He went as far as building two self-contained units on his property, but family soon moved in.

Dave Kyle, chairman of the community board, would be happy if passing motorists who roll up their windows and speed through Taneatua on their way to Opotiki and Gisborne would simply stop for a look. "It's annoying actually," says Mr Kyle, owner of Taneatua Auto Services. "It's not a bad little town."

He says Taneatua would make an ideal satellite to Whakatane, where a three-bedroom home costs four times as much as the tidy home in the town's main street that just sold for $40,000.