The Tuia Mātauranga Pōkai Whenua GeoTour follows the footsteps of early explorers of Aotearoa New Zealand taking you to places where leaders of the past searched for food, resources and ways to adapt and survive in this new land.
Use the Pōkai Whenua GeoTour as your classroom to explore the stories of the past, in the present, to preserve what is unique in Aotearoa New Zealand for the future.
Collect the codewords to get the Geocoin puzzle piece.
To be able to complete this GeoTour and receive your special Geocoin collectable, remember to take a note of the codeword placed in the cache. This will need to be recorded in your passport which can be downloaded here.
|
63 of the 150 Pōkai Whenua GeoTour caches will contain a randomly placed special FTF token (a replica of the Tuia Mātauranga GeoTour commemorative coin). This is yours to keep! If you find more than one, you might consider leaving it for the next person who finds the cache.
Before the town and mill were established the district was known as Onepū. Then in 1953, the New Zealand Geographic Board applied the name Kawerau to the new town and district.
Kawerau was a grandson of Toi Kai Rākau, who arrived in New Zealand about 1150 and from whom many of the present tribes of the Bay of Plenty claim descent.
Boundaries were defined when Tūwharetoa claimed the old Rangitāiki River boundary as its eastern border and Matatā as its seaboard. Tūwharetoa's territory extended west along the coast to Ōtamarākau, southeast to Maungawhakamana and across to Pūtauaki.
When the sons of the ancestor Tūwharetoa moved from Kawerau to the Lake Taupō region, those who remained held fast to their ancestral name, which the two groups now share. Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau and Tūwharetoa ki te Tonga have, for geographic and other reasons, developed separately as important tribal entities but remain united in their genealogy.
In the early 1930s Percy Fenton, a saw miller in the Bay of Plenty, acquired the cutting rights for 1500 acres of dense rimu bush at Te Haehaenga. The block was above the headwaters of the Tarawera River behind Lake Okataina. To set up the mill and associated facilities for its workers and their families, and to get the timber to market, Fenton had to build and maintain a 17.5km stretch of road, which included the strengthening of two bridges.
By 1935 New Zealand's economy was improving and things were looking up for the mill. The then Whakatāne County Council built a steel bridge across the Tarawera River near Waterhouse Street, to give better access to the area. It then extended the road from the Māori Affairs Block to the new bridge. Percy Fenton further extended the road to reach the mill. This became known as Fenton Mill Road.
In the early 1950s, the government and the Fletcher Company were involved in planning a pulp and paper mill adjacent to Onepū on the banks of the Tarawera River. The site was chosen because of the ready availability of geothermal steam as a power source. This led to the formation of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company (now Norske Skog Tasman / Carter Holt Harvey Tasman) in 1952. Pulping operations were underway by 1955.
The Tasman Mill is the largest single employer in the Eastern Bay of Plenty region. Three pulp or paper companies operate in Kawerau: Norske Skog operates the mechanical pulp mill and paper mill; Oji Fibre Solutions, formerly Carter Holt Harvey, operates the kraft pulp mill; and SCA who manufacture tissue and base paper (physically separate mill on Fletcher Avenue).
Currently, Oji Fibre Solutions process approximately 1.25 million cubic metres of wood annually, converting it into specialty bleached and unbleached pulp for use in the manufacture of paper, tissue and building products. Forty percent is subsequently sold to customers in New Zealand, primarily Norske Skog.
Norske Skog Tasman supplies all of New Zealand's newsprint and telephone directory requirements and also provides around thirty percent of Australia's newsprint requirements. Norske Skog Tasman is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Norske Skogindustrier ASA, a Norwegian pulp and paper company based in Oslo. The corporation is the world's largest producer of newsprint magazine paper.
Annual paper production by Norske Skog Tasman is now 300,000 tonnes from the company's two paper machines. SCA also purchases pulp from Oji Fibre Solutions for the manufacture of base paper for their brands Purex and Libra, among others.
The balance of production from both Norske Skog and Oji Fibre Solutions is exported throughout Asia and Oceania earning an export income of around $224 million.
The cache is placed within the Onepū Mountain Bike Park - The trails are managed by the Whakatāne Mountain Bike Club and free to access. The park started as a community project initiated by the Onepū Park Care Group on Norske Skog Tasman forestry land. It is provided for members of the public for mountain biking, walking and running.