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 pieces
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.
*** Please DO NOT park on the grass beside the orchard. ***
*** Please park on the grass on the opposite side of the road. ***
James Hutton Kidd was born on 12 September 1877 in Hexham, Northumberland, England. With his family he emigrated to New Zealand when he was a child. He started growing apples and other fruit in Wanganui and in 1906 he moved his fruit-growing operations to Greytown where he bought five acres, which he soon increased to 20 acres for his orchard.
Kidd tried new ideas in his orchard. His trees were planted in fertile soil and did not have deep cultivation around the trees. He encouraged research into disease prevention. While he agreed with the need for new apple varieties, he wanted apples that appealed to consumers both visually and with flavour. Kidd started cross pollinating apples. His first success was cross pollinating Delicious with Cox's Orange Pippin which became known as Kidd's Orange Red. His greatest success came after he died in 1946. One of his cultivators, a cross between his variety ‘Kidd’s Orange Red’ and ‘Golden Delicious’, was recognised to have commercial appeal and when judged against 900 other varieties from around the world, was considered outstanding. It was named ‘Gala’. One of its many sports (mutations) is Royal Gala, which has become accepted as the standard for red apples. In 2018 the US Apple Association predicted the Royal Gala will surpass Red Delicious by the end of that year, putting the Kiwi variety on track for world domination in the next decade.
Gala apple variety creator James Hutton Kidd in his packing shed at Pinehaven Orchards in Greytown.
James Kidd’s orchard was known as Orchard Holm, and when Stan Meyrick bought it in 1952, he renamed it ‘Pinehaven’, as it was surrounded by a shelter belt of pine trees. The orchard is still owned by the Meyricks.
One of the many branches of the historic Moroa Race irrigation scheme passes through the property. This scheme, which takes water from the Waiohine River, is 240 km long and services 8500ha of farmland.
*** This next bit is optional ***
I would love to see a photo taken at GZ of the orchard which shows it at is various phases throughout the year.