I Want To Go Home (But I’m Already On My Rohe)

Madi Brokenshire (she/her, Ngāti Maru Hauraki & Te Āti Awa) 

I miss home. But I’m already on my iwi’s land. 

The only time I feel at home in Te Whanganui-a-Tara is when I’m hiking the Brooklyn Wind Turbine route. Because of that, I’ve been spending a lot of my life in the Waimāpihi and Te Kopahou Reserves lately. That’s us, cuz; meandering through the kawkawa and the ponga in the lower reaches, then more sparse bush higher up, then along the Zealandia fenceline where the tūi and kākā are vocal as. Passing the eponymous wind turbine into what feels a little more like the wops, where the scrub is low and the wind is high, as the land opens up into something vaguely mountainous and unconfined. The view there is 360: the city becomes something miniscule, swallowed up by a gleaming blue harbour. There’s the glorious Wainuiomata coast, the Remutaka ranges to the north, countless wind turbines dotting the west, the swooping cliffs of Ōwhiro Bay in front of me, Raukawa Moana within reach, and the silhouette of Te Waipounamu on the horizon. 

Suddenly, it’s all right there. I remember where I am. I remember why I am. 

Last year, walking around Wellington City no longer felt the same to me. Every corner I took (and still take), left me lost and homesick. I was constantly thinking about how the pavement I walked on was stolen from my ancestors by Wakefield personally, thinking about the streams and bush that had been buried beneath the streets and the concrete. It fed my misery. 

My whakapapa connections to Te Whanganui-a-Tara are slightly hazy, in all honesty. My eponymous Te Āti Awa ancestor, Te Wai, was part of the Taranaki Whānui migration who journeyed down to settle here due to pressures up north in the early 1830s. She lived on Pipitea Pā (now the vicinity of Parliament), but she also spent time in the tip of the South Island (she married a Pākehā whaler there). They were at a whaling station on Arapaoa Island for a while, but from what I can tell, by around 1840 they were back in Wellington—and this time, her husband was working for the enemy. 

Now, I’m just a descendant spinning a yarn, so please take my dramatic air with a grain of salt because who on earth knows what anybody in history was really thinking. Disclaimers aside, I’m of course referring to the fact that by 1839, Wakefield and his New Zealand Company had blundered onto these shores and begun to divide and conquer the harbour with their “tenth’s scheme.” Te Wai’s husband, despite being an independent whaler by trade, was now pilot to Wakefield’s ship: the Tory. For several decades, they lived in a pilot’s cottage in Lyall Bay, then Worser Bay, where they raised their mixed-descent family. If this story was familiar to you, then I admit with equal pride and woe that yes: I am a child of the eponymous Worser. By 1871, a map of Pipitea Pā depicted a block as being allocated to my whānau, under the surname.

Now that’s a lovely (?) story and all, but my branch of the whānau didn’t stay in Te Whanganui-a-Tara for too many generations. Their son lived and died here. Their grandson was born here, but he moved up north to Hauraki during his lifetime—and that’s where we’ve been ever since. So it’s no surprise that now that I’m here for University, I feel worried, distant, a little lost and disconnected, knowing that I walk on a history that slipped between my family’s fingers quite a long time ago (although several of us still carry the surname and the legacy). 

For me it’s more than that, though. My feelings of disconnect are compounded by the fact that this cityscape feels unrecognisable. I long to find kinship with this place, but that feels impossible to do—especially given that when I go to visit that block of Pipitea Pā that once sat in my whānau name, I am met with a concrete carpark and the steel building of a Cityfitness gym. Brutal. 

I confess to being a bit of a city-hater. 

It’s somewhat strange to think that not very long ago, Wellington was made up of low-lying swampland, hillsides swept with the red blooms of rātā, and streams threading down to the harbour. It’s difficult to visualise. 

For me, the Waimapihi and Te Kopahou Reserves are different. The ngahere is different. When far enough away that the city becomes something small and insignificant and mildly picturesque, it becomes easier to visualise what this place must once have been like. Way up there on top of a maunga, the scale and beauty of this region hits me. As I’m looking out over the lush bush and the mountainous valleys sprawling out to the ocean, I remember, Oh. This is why my tūpuna settled here. This is what they saw, this is the kind of place they lived. I don’t come from the roar of Willis Street; I come from the quiet of the hills and the soft rush of the awa. Fragments of me are still here, bubbling away. I just have to search hard to find them between the cracks of the concrete surface. 

And search, I have. Lately, I’ve taken it upon myself to slow down, be more observant, and keep an eye out for places where artists have already attempted to uncover the mana whenua history of this area. If you pay attention to the footpath as you walk through Aro Valley, you’ll find blue niho taniwha patterns of triangles painted onto the road, accompanied by the words “Waimapihi Stream.” They’re there to remind you of the awa that now lies buried, flowing through underground pipes beneath the CBD. Another example sits between Lambton Quay and the Terrace, where upon walking into the Woodward Street pedestrian tunnel, you will be met by the unexpected sound of native birdsong and gently rushing water. The sound installation commemorates the path of the Kumutoto Stream, which also runs beneath the concrete there. 

In fact, Wellington is full of solemn artistic odes that attempt to uncover what this city has buried. Te Aro Park, more widely (dis)regarded as Pigeon Park, is the work of artist Shona Rapira Davies: marking the site of Te Aro pā, the ceramic tiles form the shape of waka. Nearby on Taranaki Street, when an old building was being demolished to make way for a shiny new apartment complex, remains of that very pā were found. Now, Te Aro Pā visitor site is preserved on the ground floor, where you can peer through the glass at these fragments of history. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told, but whenever I’ve walked past, it never seems to be open. Do I have impeccably bad scheduling? Are automatic doors allergic to me? Please help. 

Meanwhile in the Pipitea area, artists like Brett Graham and Ra Vincent have installed large-scale sculptural works to recall what was once the shoreline of a thriving pā and the mooring point of many a waka. In Civic Square, the City-to-Sea bridge itself is the work of artists Paratene Matchitt, Rewi Thompson and John Gray, depicting taniwha, birds, fish, whales, maunga, gateway poles, celestial pou, and the intertwining whakapapa of it all that creates the cultural significance of this location on the water’s edge. 

We walk all over history every day, but most of us don’t even look up to realise it. I guess that’s easy to do when your surroundings feel so anthropocene. But that drain cover you’re tapping your heel on while you wait for the light to turn green? That’s covering up a beautiful stream that my tūpuna used to gather pipi around. 

‘Cause our history is still here. My history is still here. Yes, parts of it have been built on top of, turned invisible and made hard to find. There’s mamae in that. We deserve to be allowed to mourn that. But there’s also so much about Te Whanganui-a-Tara that is still beautiful. There are parts of this place that still feel a little bit like the home my tūpuna once saw. On top of the maunga, that southerly wind still rolls in. Auē! How chilling and how beautiful. And look at all those valleys! They’re surrounding me! They tower over that puny little city! Sheesh, didn’t realise how vast all this whenua was. Didn’t realise that I still have all this ngahere and land and ocean to embrace me, if only I manage to break out of my inner-city hall of residence and go re-seek it, re-find it, re-claim it. 

The world is wide. Bonkers concept, I know, but last year I really did feel like my world was confined to an urban cage. I’m trying to break away from that now. My answer is running away to the mountains; so far it’s working. 

Who knew I’d be doing day hikes? Me from one and a half years ago would’ve laughed her head off at that!