Te Mata Park Trust – Mike Devonshire

Joyce Barry: It’s just such a pleasure to have Mike Devonshire here today to talk about Te Mata Peak. Since I’ve been involved in Landmarks, every time there’s been a survey or we’ve talked about the iconic places of Hawke’s Bay, Te Mata Peak comes out every time at the top, and it has always reinforced just what a [an] icon it is. I think Te Mata Peak just represents a difference and that’s been the joy of it over the years. Mike, what is your official position at the Te Mata Trust?

Mike: So I’m a trustee, and I’m the Chair of the board.

Joyce: Over to you Mike, thank you.

Mike: Okay. All right, well thank you everyone, for inviting me here today. Te Mata Park is ours forever, that’s really the message I want to get across today. So just by way of introduction, I was appointed to the Trust board just over four years ago now. And prior to that if you all recall there was going to be a planned visitor centre up at the main car park, so the Trust board engaged me at the time to do a review of that, and what I recommended was that no, we should not do that because it’ll be a white elephant; [coughing] won’t be able to be sustained. And then at the same time I wrote a review of the governance structure of the Trust board, and that was fine, I left that. And then the next thing I knew I had a call from the mayor, saying, “Would you mind getting involved in the Trust and helping us implement this thing?” I said, “No.” [Chuckles] Anyway, so here I am; [chuckles] and I guess after about a year of being appointed to the Trust, I assumed the chair role. So let’s just get into it, because this is part of our story, our vision, which I’m going to explain or show you today. But there’s a lot more to come, and there’s a lot more work being done which will become apparent in time.

So, here we go. We are the kaitiaki of the maunga, so we must protect the past whilst planning for the future. Now that’s a bit of a dichotomy, isn’t it? How can you do that … you know, how do you look backward to look forward? That’s a challenge for all of us, but history tells us it is the right thing to do. Right – well we know a bit about history, don’t we? We all know about the legend of Te Mata, the Waimārama chief; and we knew that the Māoris have been over that mountain for many, many [cough] centuries. And prior to that, who knows what else was ranging around there as it was uplifted. But the facts of the matter in terms of the European history are that in 1862, the land was purchased by John Chambers from the Crown, and eventually three of the Chambers brothers gifted the land in perpetuity to the people of Hawke’s Bay. So that is still the case; it is a privately owned asset, owned by the Trust for the benefit of the people of Hawke’s Bay. You could probably read ‘New Zealand’, and you could probably read ‘the world’ in that. And then there were further steps made around the QE2 Open Spaces Covenant; so effectively, above a certain level – two hundred metres – there’s quite strict requirements about what you and can’t do for the open grassland there.

So the way we think about things – we sort of chunk the maunga down. So there’s the natural environment; some of you probably know it’s a hog’s back limestone structure from a geological point of view. It’s pretty light soil, so it … you know, dries out quickly. Not that fertile, and we have our issues around maintaining it or looking after it. In terms of vegetation, before the humans arrived it was a dense, dense forest like most of New Zealand was – it was covered in forest. It was teaming with wildlife. The Māori came; they started to clear, and do works; planted certain species which they used to, you know, thrive upon, so to eat and use for various craft. And there’s evidence of that throughout the park still. And some of you may know, there are groves of trees and there are a few sites, midden sites, and other sites of archaeological significance. And they are identified, and there are some plans and programmes around that, so we can talk about that later if you so wish.

Obviously when the Europeans came, like they did throughout most of New Zealand, they started to graze and produce various, you know, products. And also, over time some forestry was planted, with a view to you know, [child’s voice in background] some commercial turn. And it should be worthwhile noting that there are remnants of native coastal forest which are specific[ally] unique to the park, still deep in the heart of it. So we have a management plan [with] which you may be familiar. This was something that was established probably about six years ago now. It’s actually been superseded, but I’ll just talk about it, and I can also talk about what’s coming in terms of our whole planning.

[Shows slides throughout] But as you can see, this is the park here, sort of in this wider area you can just see through here. I won’t go into detail there, but there are different pockets of plantings which were pretty much, let’s say, ad hoc over the last sort of seventy or eighty years. But yeah, we’ve got pine; obviously we’ve got the redwood grove which we have the original receipts for – the purchase of the seedlings; quite amazing. And they were planted pretty much around the time of the establishment of the park; so about 1927 was the first purchase of redwoods, and then there was a secondary purchase – the smaller grove of redwoods which is near Chambers Walk, if you’re familiar with the park; they were planted in the early seventies. So there’s a lot of natives … karaka, ngaio, and some macrocarpa … and then there’s a bunch of introduced exotics; so the cypress, the douglas fir, eucalyptus, cedars and poplars; and obviously there’s pine.

So down in here, this is what we call the old plantation block. That’s just come out – well, I’ll talk about that in a minute – we’ve harvested that. And then up in here, that’s on the old plateau; most of that pine’s come out as well … we’ll get onto that in a minute.

So one of the other key purposes for us is encouraging and perpetrating native fauna. It’s phenomenal the amount of birdlife in the park, and with our new plantings we will see this increase. We also think about what’s going in the wider environment as well; there’s been a lot of work around encouraging fauna, so you know, some facts there. [The] tuis and the bellbirds travel up to thirty ks [kilometres] … come and feed on our eucalypts in the winter. The kereru and kingfisher and the fantails in particular, they’re always in there nibbling away, and they sort of range from right up to the top of the Maraetotara [River] and over to the Cape, [Kidnappers] so it’s really something to behold when you’re walking through the various forests we have, or pockets of trees, to see all of these species. On occasion we get kaka and the New Zealand falcon coming through; these are [be]coming a bit more prevalent.

And there’s a picture of Mike Lusk there … many of you may know Mike … he’s the person who’s worked tirelessly in the park. He knows where all the skinks and the geckos are … he won’t tell us; [chuckles] but he knows they’re in there and he works tirelessly to protect those. So pest control’s really a key element for us, so Mike, you know … sort of like, anti-cat; completely anti-cat. And obviously we have stoats and rat traps about the place. But he works with a group of volunteers; some of you may be a part of that group. For over twenty years he’s been working tirelessly in there, and The Friends of Te Mata Park is his group, but there are other groups that we’re encouraging and working with to help sustain and encourage this fauna.

We’ve obviously got, you know, quite a bit of biodiversity within our park and within our region, and that’s something that we need to continue to encourage. Obviously if you’ve got a vibrant biodiverse strategy you will enhance and protect the various ecosystems and indigenous species that we have. So as I referred to before, there is a bird corridor, you know, the Cape to the City project; and we’re part of that. I guess that chain is a real focus for us to work on plant pests; reduction of that, and on animal pests as I alluded to before. We’ve got to work cooperatively, both with our neighbours whether they’re landowners, and our key stakeholders, both the regional council and the district council, and we do meet regularly to talk about this sort of stuff; and we are organised and funded to deal with that.

And obviously we’ve got some sensitive areas ecologically that we want to protect. Wetland development is another area, so that’s on our radar; [cough] we’ve got some wetlands that we’re looking after but we’d like to develop more, but that’s really down to a function of time and money. And with all of these things there’s a balance between the values of people who want to get out and recreate, and build a track or run or walk, or whatever they want to do … bird watch … that’s fine. There’s a deep cultural, spiritual connection to the Peak, so there’s you know, heartfelt values around that. And obviously we’ve got our ecological values as well, so there’s a balancing act; you know, there’s conflict at times, but like anything, conflict’s good in the sense that issues come out and we discuss it and we try to work towards a decent resolution. But it’s all about vision as far as we’re concerned, and the vision’s got to be to protect, and then you enhance in the best interests of those values. So it’s quite an interesting area, and fraught with debate.

Okay. Everyone’s got a view on Te Mata Park … everyone. And it’s great to hear them. [Chuckles] We know – we’ve measured this – there’s been at least a million visitors a year come into the park in a car. So it might be people coming three or four or ten times, but it’s a million visits in a car. That’s a lot. So we’ve got two entrance points, remember – Tauroa, and up through the Main Gates. So what’ve we got? Well, we’ve got ninety-nine hectares, of which about five hectares is road reserve; so that road that comes up, that’s actually owned by the district council ‘cause they maintain that road. But the rest, everything that’s around it, is ninety-nine hectares; and our recent purchase of eight and half hectares, what we call the Jack’s block, you may’ve seen that we are developing that and that’ll basically integrate into the park. So we are privately owned but we’re publicly funded, and we don’t get a lot of money from the district or the regional council from an operational point of view and we have to look outside to manage that, you know, to fund all our activities; and I can talk about that in more detail later.

One of the biggest issues for the Trust board is growth; growth in the sense that more and more people want to come. And what we’ve seen probably in the last five years, I think it’s safe to say the volume of people accessing the park has more than doubled, and it is putting a lot of pressure on it. And that was one of the reasons we did purchase the new block, to actually open up opportunities and reduce some of that congestion. But along with that, you know, the increase in traffic … the major issue is safety, and safety on the road; so the irony of that situation is, from a trustee point of view or from a governing point of view … we don’t own the road, we don’t control the road, but our biggest risk is on the road. So like anything, balancing conflicting wants and desires; so obviously, alluding to this user group conflict, some people think it’s great; we should shut the road and then we can walk up it. But you want to walk up it, but you can’t ride on it, so – hang on … So there is a continuing conflict around that; it’s not a negative thing in the sense that people have a view, and that’s fine – we can work through that, and we will. But everyone’s got a view, as I said before. And we do have bottlenecks, so you know, designing or planning to alleviate those pressures is a key function for us, and a key concern.

From a more prudential management, you know, we don’t want the environment to be pressured by the amount of people, so we don’t want to be cutting, where possible, wider roads or putting in a myriad of access tracks. There has to be very careful balancing around that; and obviously, at the same time we want to be planting efficiently and effectively, and sympathetically to the environment. You know, that is a major concern for the Trust board, and we do focus on it.

And then, this bottom one is really interesting, ‘cause I’ve been in the national press; you may’ve seen me [in] discussions with some people [of] probably less savoury nature about how they want to access the park and do patching ceremonies and various things. Everyone has the right to access the park, there’s no doubt about that; it’s just what you do when you’re there and how you respond to others that’s really the key concern for us. But, you know, it’s like anything … you’ve got to be careful [‘cause] sometimes you can be victims of your own success. So the ambience of the park is pretty critical – it’s a hugely spiritual place and very culturally significant, so that’s part of our balancing act. Anyone want to be a trustee? [Laughter]

Okay. So this is our vision, and this is where it begins and this is where it ends. So this is what I went to the first time I got involved in this park because it’s fundamental. The vision drives the objectives that drives the strategy, and then it drives what you do from the back of that, so:

‘Te Mata Park is a taonga tuku iho’ (a heavenly gift) ‘and an iconic feature of Hawke’s Bay’. I would say ‘the’ iconic feature but that might ruffle a few feathers, but I believe it. [Chuckles]

This is lifted out of the Trust Deed:

‘It will always be a place of cultural, scenic, recreational, scientific, and educational significance for all New Zealanders. The Trust will sustain, enhance, protect and maintain’ … now there’s conflict in that phrase … ‘Te Mata Park’s outstanding natural features and open spaces’. And needless to say it’s recognised by others as being a very, very significant place, and we’ve got a quote there from the Hastings District Council’s district plan:

‘The single most significant landscape icon in Hawke’s Bay, having district, regional, and national significance’. Well, I agree with that. ‘It is the most prominent landmark in the Eastern Heretaunga Plains, with a distinctive silhouette-style skyline’. So that’s a fact. ‘It is the source of identity for both Hastings and Havelock North residents and Ngāti Kahungunu’. So I would say significant to all people of Hawke’s Bay and the wider area; but anyway …

So our vision is to sustain, enhance, protect, and maintain; so our objectives – they’re driven off the vision, of course:

‘To kōrero and strengthen our relationship with tāngata whenua and weave the voice of mana whenua into the planning and policy making of Te Mata Park’. And I’ll talk about that in a minute, ‘cause we have done that; we have changed the Trust Deed to give effect to that.

‘To enhance and expand Te Mata Park’. Now I’m not in the business of, you know, getting another hundred and fifty acres or something like that, but it’s about what we need to do.

‘To understand the behaviours and preferences of park users, enabling sustainable and prudent management of the Park’. Now this is key. When the Trust board effectively stopped the development of the visitor centre, we said to them, “Look – why don’t we ask the users what they want?” So … “Do you want a big visitor centre?” “No.” “What do you want?” “I’d like to get a drink of water and go to the loo if possible.” That was all they wanted. “Everything else is all right, thank you.” So, if you don’t ask, you don’t get, so we continued to ask regularly, through surveys in the park – and some of you have helped us with surveys – and reflect back. It’s not channelled down one area, it’s an open book.

“What do you want?” You know, I’m always concerned what people are worried about, you know, “What’s worrying you? And what’s the problem?” “Okay, well what’s your response to that?” So the communication – the korero – [coughing] is really, really important, ‘cause once we understand [cough] behaviours and preferences then we can start to go about designing or fixing or making it better; or trying, anyway.

Okay. Now this next one is very dear to my heart, which is:

‘To build significant financial resources to enhance, protect and sustain Te Mata Park’. So we are like the bamboo in the wind, you know – we don’t really have a big structure behind us at the moment; we don’t have solid resources. We’ve got a bunch of stakeholders who try to blow this way and that and, you know, try and influence you in a certain direction. But the fundamental fact is that we’re a privately owned asset and the Trust board is there to preserve it and look after it. So to do that, we’ve got to be able to be resourced adequately – in fact, more than adequately – so that’s one of our key challenges, and I can talk to that in a minute.

This bottom one here is probably what underpins, I guess, the kaitiaki element of what we do:

‘To nurture an environment for the recreational, spiritual, cultural and educational benefit of the public’. So communication is key. I understand this is being recorded for the Knowledge Bank; this philosophy around communicating has been probably one of the areas that the Trust board has – not let itself down, but just hasn’t really got on the front foot – and that is that we haven’t told our story. And our story’s an amazing story, because we exist for the benefit of the people. Okay? That’s what we exist for, and the reason we exist is because it’s a place that should be protected, and it should be explained, and people should learn. So that’s our future though, for the next hundred years really; and that’s our vision. Our vision is a hundred-year vision – that’s what we’ve put in place now. So if you think it through, you know, our children’s children’s children should be imbued with an understanding and a want to nurture this environment as well. So you know, they’re big objectives; at a fundamental level it’s stewardship from the trustee perspective, and we’ve got to have a real clear and keen focus on what we need to do.

So the governance – we’ve established a very clear, almost on a corporate governance, I suppose – but I’ve got a clear governance structure. We’ve got a Trust board; we’ve got subcommittee structures; we’ve got terms of reference; we’re minuted; we engage with our stakeholders strategically; we’re building a master plan at the moment which will be as good as anything around here in terms of how it’s organised, described, communicated. So you know, getting organised is half the battle in life; so getting organised around a plan, reviewing it regularly, having structures to support … that’s really, really important.

That flows down into how we manage the park, so we’ve got a manager – didn’t have a manager when I started. We’ve got someone to help her as well; she’s a comms [communications] person. She can a manager as well, so we’ve built resilience in the organisation already. And then we have a communications strategy around our key stakeholders and our wider community, and also people that we engage with in terms of contractual arrangements and stuff like that.

Sustainability – so the pressure; that’s really, you know … while we have this organisation, while we have this planning focus, we’ve got to be able to deal with the issues that are in front of us, and future issues as well. As I mentioned before, preservation – protecting what we’ve got – the integrity of the place – that’s really, really important. And it is a beautiful place, so, you know, whatever we do, we’ve gotta be careful about how we implement any changes, if at all.

Health and Safety’s a fundamental concern for everyone nowadays as it always has been; you know, we’re living the COVID reality right now – probably a good place to get up and out, away from the COVID thoughts up there. I know through Level 4 I was up there on my bike; it was wonderful. But health and safety is a continuing concern … how you communicate what you’ve got, what you need to be aware of, what you need to be … not fearful [of], but probably how you engage with people who want more out of the place. They need to be aware that there are certain challenges in there. We can’t have a bunch of signs everywhere saying, ‘There’s a cliff – be careful’, but you can communicate that there are issues; you can design your track network to accommodate and incorporate safety. So a whole bunch of stuff like that that has to be thought through, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to be very mindful of that.

Where we’re going? Educational programmes; so we are engaging with youth and with, you know, young children, and that’s really demand driven by them. But we’ve learnt through sustainability programmes and various other things that are initiated by some of our key stakeholders, there’s a huge thirst to learn, so why not learn within the park? So that’s our basic philosophy there. And we’re very, very mindful that there is a deep cultural heritage, both Māori and European, so we need to continue to develop the story around that and keep that engagement going, so that’s a key focus for us. And then like I’m doing today, having a chat within the community about what we’re up to, and getting probably feedback from people as well about what they feel about that and what they understand or don’t understand, ‘cause it all builds for our story. But fundamentally, we need to collaborate more; we see ourselves as probably a leader in terms of park management, or should be. But also, you know, if we hold things dear like I’ve just described, you know, why wouldn’t the community come along for the ride? If we’re all involved on that level, fundamentally we’ll be in a better place in time.

So, what have we done in recent times? Well, you’re probably all aware that we work collaboratively with the district council to develop our two main car park areas. So there was some generous funding from both the district council and [to] a lesser extent from the regional council, with this specific project in mind. But the success of this project outweighed our wildest aspirations, so it’s become a destination in it’s own right. We just thought it would be, you know … come in here, go to the loo, wash your hands, have a bit of a look. People come up here … families … and as you’re probably aware there’s various seats around the place to go and have lunch, just at the main gate car park. Great! But it’s brought some challenges with it, and I’ll get onto it in a minute; but you know, we’ve developed off the back of that the new block as well.

But what we’ve learnt through this … you know, we work well with the district council … we had a joint planning initiative; they’ve got some really good landscape planners in there and jointly project managed it. It was a good job, so, you know, it was a really good outcome.

You may be aware we’ve got new tenants. We’ve had a few false starts in recent years with tenants, but we’ve got some fantastic tenants in Peak House – a young couple who are very stylie [stylish], very commercially minded and quite entrepreneurial; so they’ve got a bunch of interests and they have really taken it to a new level. And that’s great, because, you know, in our surveys everyone was asking, “When’s Peak house open?” You know, “When can I have my twenty-first, or my wedding there, or whatever; or my sixtieth or my seventieth or whatever it is.” So you know, we’re over the moon about that and we’ve invested quite a bit of money just bringing it back up to standard, remembering it was designed and I think opened in 1965, primarily as a caretaker’s sort of shed, and a bit of a tearooms; so back in the day when they were designing bus tours and stuff up here. So anyway, it’s come a long way.

So our new land – is everyone familiar with the purchase of the land? So there was a real strategic reason; we had the Tauroa car park here, and at the top up here is the Main Gates car park. Chambers Walk’s only about fifteen metres wide; that’s the only strip of land that we had ‘til you got to this point down here which was opening up into the main park. So there’s a lot of pressure on Chambers Walk from all range[s] of users, so that obviously with opening this sort of area up, you know, it gives the opportunity to alleviate those demands. And there’s quite a safety element to it as well – there’s sort of people crossing over, and bikes and walkers and – God knows what was happening, so we thought, ‘Well here’s the opportunity to get this and incorporate it into the wider park.’ We were also concerned that there was going to be some further development as it’s sort of creeping up the hillside there; so that ensured we wouldn’t be stuck with a couple of garish houses or whatever [chuckle] … maybe five or six houses, who knows? And as it’s transpired, it’s been a magnificent purchase really; right now we’re in the middle of building some tracks … we’ve got to allow for resource consents and various things … and we’ve already planted in that block probably about five thousand plants and trees, mainly at the top here. You might see it if you drive up, all around these knobs here. So that’s good.

We’ve got a planting programme about sixty thousand plants and trees over the next three years in the two blocks that we’ve just harvested, and in here, and we’ve planted about seventeen thousand trees this last couple of months just before the … there’s a good planting season right now.

So here’s yours truly with Emma; we undertook a programme. I won’t be doing that again, I can tell you. [Chuckles] That is quite a difficult challenge, but we got there by [chuckle] hook or by crook; and it’s fantastic. So we’ve raised 1.25 [$1.25million] to buy it, but we raised another million [$1million] to develop it which I’ve done with Emma, so we’re well underway in there. I think it’s one of these things – you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy the neighbour generally – and we did, with a bit of jiggery-pokery we got there. And I just think the feedback we’ve had … I don’t think we’ve had one negative comment from anyone, which, you know, normally you get a few sort of people throwing clods or something. So yeah, we were humbled by the response and the interest by the wider community. So again, what we learnt out of this … we hadn’t really, to this point, hadn’t begun to tell our story. And once you start to tell your story … and, you know, it’s not a fanciful story, it’s based on fact, and it’s quite interesting … you get a lot of very positive engagement, and money.

So as part of this process we consulted with the community; so this is the block, and this is our sort of proposed track network which we made a big point of engaging with all of the community about, well … “What do you think? What do you want?” Like we did within the car parks, you know, every twelve months we’d ask people about the whole park. So we engaged – got a project team on board with engineers and specialist park planners, and the trustees and people like Mike Lusk, you know, people who know the area. So we built up quite a detailed plan, designing tracks, designing planting programmes. And you’ll see already if you’ve been up there recently, we’re doing it in stages; so there’s some bike tracks being basically built round this perimeter; and there’s sort of an uphill track that’s come up from Chamber’s Walk – it’s been built; the Rongoā garden area … so that’s a Māori medicinal garden … we’re sort of halfway through that, we’ve done the hard landscaping and we’ve done the first round of planting. So that involves consultation with a lot of people to get to that point. As I say, there’s been a lot of planting done already with our community planting days as well, so we’ll get onto that. So there’s quite a bit in sort of buying and developing a piece of land, so we’ve learnt, and it all costs money.

That’s our wider park here, and you can see that this is the bit that we bought, which sort of widens that; so that’s the lower bit; that’s Tauroa; that’s the main gate car park. That is quite a strategic point, and it was getting quite congested so you can see how it fits. And we’ve got these sort of wider networks of tracks, which obviously since we’ve done some harvesting around here … so this was the old plantation block down here. So that’s all been cleared; we got that out just after COVID. And then the plateau up here, which was about eight and half hectares of old man pine, probably about seventy years old, eighty years old and in reasonably good nick in the end; but that’s all come out. So these tracks are sort of under review – we’re looking at the whole network anyway, just to make sure that we’ve got the appropriate design, and where possible we can work with what we got. So that’s just an explanation of the Jack’s block.

We’ve actually got a new signage programme underway which we got funded privately; so that’s about a seventy-thousand-dollar project re-looking at how … you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is doing signage in the park. We’ve got junctions crossing over; you’ve got to work out, you know, clarity of what you’re trying to explain; so even just trying to get a map of the park that people can actually discern is quite a challenge. And what we’re trying to do is build in a bit of future proofing, so you might be able to bring your smartphone like I’ve got here, and just put it on that and you can know exactly where you are. But if you can get that working off, you know, the GPS [global positioning satellite] or whatever, it’s even better. So there’s a whole lot of stuff that underpins the design of a fence post with a stick on it, there’s actually quite a bit of thinking behind it. And then it’ll link to your online stuff as well.

Anyway, there’s sort of new signature signage starting to be rolled out through the park at the moment; we’ve had some public planting days. We had the kids involved; we’ve had three of those… and they were fantastic. We had about … think at the first one we had about a hundred people; second one pretty much the same, and then the third one. So this was in the new block, so this is all people up there just planting. And what happens on the day, you get the public in and they do the planting or whatever, then the next day you bring in your experts in to make sure everything, you know, wasn’t planted upside down or whatever; [chuckles] but that’s okay, you know … worked out all right.

This is this mana whenua … turned up for the Rongoā. I wasn’t there for that one, I was away, but I think there were about seventy people there, which is fantastic; so the blessing and … They did a lot of work clearing prior to that planting day. You know, there’s a lot of getting rid of thistles and blackberry and stuff like that so you can get into planting. Yeah – so, you know, we’re really excited; the uptake has been phenomenal [in] terms of support, and what we’ve learnt is if you ask to help, people put their hand up and come, which is great [as] long as you explain what your doing and it’s worthwhile.

Okay – the forestry project; I just talked about it before. So we harvested these two separate blocks; you know, about twelve hectares. It was a significant project and we had significant hurdles. The Trust board for a number of years refused to sort of deal with it for whatever reason; it was too hard. But we dealt with it and it was hard. So as you can see, this is in the old block … just sort of a track and then these trees falling down and this sort of stuff going on, which … oh, it looks great, but from a health and safety perspective it’s not great. So we had to do very, very detailed planning around how we were going to access the block; how we were going to make the surrounding areas safe while we were harvesting; and how we were going to protect important sites – so there were some Putiki [Putikitiki] in there … some special rocks; there’s a couple of midden sites. They had to mapped off and then when the logging occurs then you’ve got to make sure that, you know, there’s protocols and systems in place. Or you might discover something, so what’s the protocol around that? So there’s quite a lot of work with that.

And obviously, before you start these things you’ve got to start looking into the mind – what do we want it to look like? So we developed a three year programme of planting and how we’re going to do it, so we had a community engagement and support plan as well. And most importantly, how’re you going to fund it? ‘Cause at the end of the day we had a lot of challenges along the access roads in and out. So when the previous Trust board planted up the plantation block, they thought they were going to get quite a bit of money. Well, the fact of the matter is … and COVID came which was fantastic ‘cause everything got held up … so we were trying to log in the middle of winter. Anyway, we broke even; which is to me a tremendous result – in fact, a magnificent result for twelve hectares of stuff, you know. The larger blocks’d been pretty much untended so it was in a rough state, and quite difficult terrain. So you know, a big, big project, and a lot of risk that the Trust board took on. And yeah – we got there.

[Shows park detail on slide] So if you remember, that’s the old block; so from the plateau, so if you’re looking at over sort of Tauroa valley, and you’re looking towards the peak, that’s the road there, you know, comes back to the Main Gates. So this has all been harvested through here. And that’s the plantation block, so we’re looking right round … so that’s Tauroa Station there, so that’s right around the southern side of the park, so the gap you look through when your on the Plains here; so that’s where that was, so that’s all come out. So that’s just some pictures for you. Logging tracks – they had to cut a track up, so that’s the old block in here – that’s the Redwoods just there, so we’re coming up from the Tauroa valley. And then that’s the plantation block … looks a bit different; no trees. So we had to use the neighbour’s skid site; the neighbours there allowed us to have a skid site, so that’s looking back up towards Chambers Walk – it’s on the other side of that brow. And there’s some pretty big machinery in there. So that’s what we ended up with – a mess. Yeah? [Chuckles] There were some tracks there somewhere … see, there’s the Redwoods there. And then that’s, you know, up to the goat track and right through there. And that’s the plantation block from a different angle, from a drone. You know, you walk round the back to that red track round the back there and you go up to the peak, so that’s looking out towards the Tukituki [River]. So they did a pretty good job cleaning up. And there’s mulching piles in here, which is actually causing a few problems because what happens is they heat up so they got to be spread fairly shortly because they become, you know, a fire risk.

So what’ve we got now? Well, he was right – more views, more light and more native trees. So this is one of our planting days – that’s looking down to that skid site down there, so all of this valley’s been planted, so we’ve got about ten thousand plants and trees in those valleys. That was done primarily professionally, so we had to pay for that, but they’ve done a fantastic job. We got most things in, so there’s like totara and a lot of native stuff. The only things we couldn’t get in were the ngaio, they just weren’t quite right so we’ll do that next year. But yeah, quite a big project, and very, very exciting ‘cause, you know, these things will spring up over the next few years. And that’s the vision. So what was pine then becomes native forest with the tracks sort of through there. And the Jack’s block’ll be like that as well, on the other side.

So, what’s the future look like? Well, there’s quite a lot of future going on now, so the master plan – and we’ll probably have a better description of that – that’s going to inform for the whole maunga, not just what Te Mata Park is; the vision, the values for the whole maunga – that’ll be quite detailed. And off that we’ll drive detailed management plans and various other things. So we’re pretty close to finalising that; that’ll be presented to council fairly shortly, and that will inform all the strategic plans forever more, so we’ll just keep updating it regularly. And then, you know, you have operational plans driven off that.

Education, that’s under way now; so enviro schools is a very, very important project. That’s where your local schools get engaged around, you know, working positively in the environment, like planting trees or clearing, or whatever it is … flora, fauna. So we’re fully engaged in that; we’ve got schools, I think three schools currently, working on programmes in the park, so that’s pretty fantastic. And we’ve obviously got more planting coming, and what we’ll do – with this master plan, basically we’ll chunk the whole park down into ten square meter blocks, if you like – and we’ll have a vision on, you know, planting; but also there’s the culture on and of it; there’s flora, fauna, all that sort of stuff, so we’ll have a register of stuff. And then from there, yeah, we’ll develop a plan for, I guess, a quadrant … an area of the park, whether it’s a valley or a ridge or whatever. So you know, that’s been quite scientific, on how you manage what you’ve got.

And obviously I talked before about wetlands; that’s an area that we need to continue to work on. The regional council’s got a lot of expertise in there so we’re talking with them about that. We just need to make sure that we’re doing the best by our wetlands, and we’re planting sympathetically.

The wider maunga – and we just talked about … connectivity’s fundamental; so we had a lot of hoo-ha about someone nearby who cut a track up the wrong side, and was allowed to. Can’t have that happening. So really, connectivity is important; people do access the whole mountain at the moment, and they come in across ridge lines and various other things. We just need to make sure that we’ve got a future design that’s going to work, ‘cause the reality is that people are getting round a lot more quick nowadays on their mini bikes or whatever, and they have a thirst for walking and doing a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t happening before. So we’ve just got to make sure that the connectivity’s there, and that comes through discussion and planning and leadership, which is what we’re trying to provide here.

Community engagement – that will continue. Volunteer days for a whole range of things, and that’s fundamental to what we do ‘cause the community being part of the story is really the key message here. So we’ve changed the Trust Deed to include a mana whenua appointee; so we have a mana whenua subcommittee. I wrote to the Attorney-General and said, “I want to change this”… because we have to go to the High Court to change the Trust Deed … and he wrote back to me and he said, ‘Dear Mike, Thank you for your letter.’ Apart from that he said, ‘You don’t have to do this but given the cultural significance of the mountain, that is the right thing to do.’ And I think that’s the important thing for everyone to understand here – that is the right thing to do. All this stuff is the right thing to do.

And then I’ve established with [at] the behest of the Trust board, an endowment fund. So we seeded that with, I think, $50,000 just recently from our own reserves. The aim here is to have $20million in twenty years in there – which we’ll get to. That’s my background, so I have no doubt once we tell our story better and we get engaged with key people, we will get that money; and the reason we’ll have that money is to protect and ensure that the maunga will always be protected. So … anyway, that’s the key focus for us.

We’ve got a hundred-year anniversary coming up; we’ve commissioned a book as well, so we’re working through quite a deep research element of that; we’ve got an author; we’re working with the Knowledge Bank … kicked that off as well, so we’ve got a whole lot of information reposited in various places. That’s the hundred-year anniversary of the establishment of the park, of course. The idea is that the story will be told not just about the hundred years, but what’s gone before as well, so what has gone before will inform the future; that’s how I started this talk.

So this is part of the connectivity. This is what they call the low track coming up from Waimarama Road … people may be familiar with it. Here’s Craggy [Range] over here, like Voldemort … “Do not speak their name” [chuckles] … I love him. Right; so coming up the low track, that’s what I’ve been calling the lower western traverse. So, there’s always been some design in here; there’s been quite a lot of acceptance by a bunch of landowners that that’s the right thing to do, people will always come across here. What we’re trying to say here is that there’s an accepted link coming in here in time. You can see that this is our new block here. There may be an opportunity to develop an access out the back through here … who knows? And then there may be other opportunities to come into here … who knows? But what you’ve got to think about is that it’s the whole maunga, it’s not just here; there may be an opportunity to come in round the back here … who knows? But you’ve got to be thinking about connectivity, because the fact of the matter is it’ll be less and less likely that people will be able to access the peak in a car in the medium term. It’s just not in line with what’s there, and it’s not safe. But you can access it through planning, and everyone can have access to it so it won’t be cut off to anyone; but you have to allow for others that are less able to get there, or whatever. So [cough] there’s a lot of stuff coming that we need to plan for, and you know, accessing the park in different ways is part of that, so it’s just part of the challenge.

What’s quite interesting here … so this is our car park area here of course, and the access point; you know, it is a beautiful place… and obviously, looking up along the ridge line there, there’s someone pointing out to Mount Erin – there you go. But it’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it? And we’re very, very fortunate to be able to look after it.

[Applause]

Joyce: Mike, that was inspirational. I’d just like to add that we all knew that Te Mata struggled over the years with the pressures. And you join a group that have [has] really changed the Hastings district; Te Mata Peak’s going to add to this. We’ve had the Peka Peka wetlands, which I know James Morgan was a huge fundraiser for; and we’re quite proud that with the council we did Roys Hill … the dump … and did all the planting there. Another thing is the writings where the early pioneers said they were deafened by the native birds … and it’s been years and years since people were deafened by native birds.

Question: Mike, do you see the potential for a gondola?

Mike: No. [Laughter and applause] Sorry mate, but no.

Question: When is the centennial?

Mike: 2027.

Question: You mentioned health and safety and what-have-you – is it likely that you would need to fence any of the precipitous parts of the tracks?

Mike: Well, most of the precipitous parts of the park are currently fenced. There’s a fencing programme that’s underway, to upgrade those. We’ve done a health and safety sort of survey, so if there’s specific risks identified it has to be dealt with. Yeah, but you’d need to get it independently audited as well, that’s pretty important.

Question: The native trees that you’ve planted, will you just rely on the weather and the rain, or ..?

Joyce: Irrigation, he’s talking about. [Hammering in background]

Mike: No, no – they just rely on the rain [for the] planting programme, and making sure they get a wet [?] planted at the right time, so yeah, there’s challenges in that.

Question: And for the wetlands, would you need to get a source of water in?

Mike: Well you have plenty sources of water; [cough] there’s springs all over that, so the wetlands are, you know, they’re wet because they have a source of water. [Hammering] They all need to be designed and thought through quite carefully.

Question: Mike, I know that there is a native flax endemic to Te Mata, and I think I’ve heard just recently that there’s other native vegetation; do you have a list?

Mike: Yeah … no, we’ve got a lists of stuff, there’s lists everywhere. So if you want a list of anything you contact Emma Buttle [email supplied] she’ll reply to it.

Question: [Are you] spreading those out into other areas?

Mike: There are planting programmes, and part of that master planning process is, you know, how do we develop our indigenous flora and fauna. I mean I might add, we’ve got quite a population of the black piwakawaka, [fantail] which in the North Island is very, very rare. And they came to the fore while we had the middle of lockdown post-harvest; it was incredible, they just came out of the woodwork, literally. It’s incredible what we do have there.

Question: The Te Mata ridge I presume, was created by uplift?

Mike: Yeah. [Hammering]

Question: [Is there] evidence to how far back ..?

Mike: Yeah, there is. I think its quite a few hundred million years ago. Over the years we’ve had various university geologists all over; there is definitive information there – I just don’t have it to hand.

Question: Mike, in due course there’ll be less and less vehicular traffic going up the peak, that’ll all be cancelled right off?

Mike: Well, less free will … so yeah, there’ll probably be vehicles going up there but they might be … who knows? They could be green trains, you know, electric trains, with just controlled access. So there will definitely be vehicles going up there but under control.

Question: You were talking also about the fact it is without a doubt our number one tourist place; what access are we going to give the likes of us?

Mike: Yeah, yeah. Everyone should have a chance to see it, so it has to worked through. But as I say, [you] could see, you know, an electric train going from the centre of Havelock. There’s a myriad of options, yeah. And this has been done before in New Zealand, you know, in Mount Wellington … those sort[s] of places. You know, I think what we didn’t discuss here is that in New Zealand there’s two tīpuna; so they are basically landscapes which are accorded the rights of a human. So one’s the Whanganui River, and the other’s Mount Taranaki. Now, the mana whenua are very keen to accord that status to Te Mata, and I don’t see any reason why not, but that’s quite a process. But my point is that it’s such a place of significance, that having people drive up at all times of day and night and doing whatever they’re doing is just not acceptable. At all. But having a well structured, well thought through, well developed strategy and plan to give people access in a way that’s free, but does recognise, various people’s inabilities to get around and whatever, you know ..? But it’s actually about control and safety, and enjoyment of what’s there. So that’s really the philosophy behind that.

Question: There’s been a little bit of discussion about caves at the peak. Can you give us some definitive detail about that?

Mike: Marei Apatu wrote quite a detailed cultural report for Hawke’s Bay, and that was sort of dusted off and then re-energised for the whole maunga, with the Craggy [Range] track hoo-ha. So the mayor formed a group which we were a part of, and Craggy was and a whole bunch of people were, and Marei was there, around the future of maunga; and we had to get through the initial issues they had. And part of that report and review is quite a definitive discussion around caves on that eastern escarpment, so there are caves up there. They’re unsure whether they were used for any purpose really, but they could be; so that’s the first thing. So there are a number of caves up there. And with limestone your going to get [hammering] caves anyway, you know, the way they channel and obviously the softness of the sandstone and stuff like that.

Do we know where every cave is? No, we don’t. There’s a cave on our new block which people might know of… the old Jack’s block. There was, I think many years ago when many of you were young girls and boys, [a] couple of cars got stuck in the mouth of those caves. [Chuckles] We’ve had quite a few cultural reports around sites of significance and caves in the park as well; so I mean, the caves we know of we’ve sort of, marked. Most of the caves in the eastern escarpment can’t be accessed ‘cause they’re fenced off. Some of them aren’t actually in the park; they’re below the park.

Question: In terms of significant caves that you can go into, is it one, two, three or four?

Mike: You can’t go into any of them, apart from the one on Jack’s block, which will be fenced off. So in fact no one should be able to get into any cave from a safety perspective.

Comment: I’m talking about back in the fifties and sixties?

Mike: Yeah.

Joyce: One question I’ve got for you, Mike. When we first came here in [the] 1970s, we heard that the houses were going to stop there and they didn’t; we saw them climbing higher and higher on the Havelock side and, do you know if there’s a cut-off point for houses?

Mike: Oh, there is; yeah there are. But the western side’s pretty much … it’s like the faces here …

Joyce: Open slather?

Mike: Oh no. No, there is a line. Yeah, it’s between one [hundred and] eighty and two hundred; it can change, you know. But from a cultural perspective, I mean, I think Māori have said, “Look … tāngata whenua have said, ‘Let’s just look after the eastern; the western – it is what it is’. But yeah, there are rules – the key issue is making sure the rules are followed.

Joyce: Well Mike, it’s fantastic … you’ve been part of this massive circle and it’s your inspiration and trust; Mike is obviously doing what has been needed, because that’s what people have felt in the hearts for a long time. So I can’t thank you enough. [Applause]

Mike: Thank you very much.

Joyce: Once again, thank you for coming.