PWGT5 - Leases and Licenses Traditional Cache

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.

Many European settlers arrived in New Zealand with the hope of owning and farming their own land. Traditional Māori ideas of land ownership frequently came into conflict with European ideals.  Traditional Māori society did not have a concept of absolute ownership of land. Whānau (extended families) and hapū (sub-tribes) could have different rights to the same piece of land. One group may have the right to catch birds in a clump of trees, another to fish in the water nearby, and yet another to grow crops on the surrounding land. Exclusive boundaries were rare, and rights were constantly being renegotiated. Over 150 years on, the ownersip of land is still being contested in areas around New Zealand,

After the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the Crown gained the legal right to all land, and pre-1840 purchases by Europeans were declared void subject to validation in terms of Government policy and the terms of the Treaty.

Unsold Crown lands were known as “waste” lands, and were leased rather than sold.  This was partly to maintain a landless labour force.

In 1851 Depasturisation leases started in the South Island.

17. A depasturing license shall be granted to every such owner or occupier who shall apply for the same to the Board on or before the first day of December in each year, provided that be shall furnish to the Board a return showing the description and area of land owned or occupied by him, and the number of acres (if any) unenclosed or available for pasture, and the number, description, and brands of all cattle depastured or intended to be depastured by him within the hundred...

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Stout44-t5-body-d13-d11.html

The government introduced the Land Act (1877) which repealed all prior statutes and introduced a nationwide policy of auctioning lands under the deferred payment tenure. With deferred payment, leasehold settlers (or selectors as they were known) could obtain 320 acres of rural land with a deposit of 1/20 the price, with the total price payable in half-yearly instalments over ten years. This form of tenure included improvement conditions which had to be fulfilled within six years, and it required that applicants reside on the land. At expiry of the deferred payment lease, a Crown grant for freehold title was available.

Waste land leases in Western Southland included 5 “runs” (numbered 83-87) forming a triangular shape from Yellow Bluff (near Otautau) to Riverton in the west and the Waimatuku Stream mouth in the east. These leases were granted prior to 1859.

This cache is located towards the top of the boundary between Runs 83 and 84, behind a marker for a more modern communication method.  The original map can be viewed here.