Big Shoes to Fill

Known to all as Bubba, William Thompson (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu) was the son of Valmai Peka (née Sherborne) and Henare Thompson. He was born in Invercargill, although he spent much of his early life at Arowhenua with his mother’s whānau.

Although many would go on to describe Bubba as a lifelong learner, he was not a particularly dedicated student and in fact was known to say that he only went to school to eat his lunch.

When he left school he had a handful of jobs, including carpet manufacturing and the freezing works, before he joined the Southland Acclimatisation Society (predecessor to the Department of Conservation) in Fiordland National Park. He was living and working out of Te Ānau when he met his wife, Gail, in the late 1970s.

“I think I was only 18 at the time, and Bubba had come down to Invercargill for the weekend,” Gail recalls. “He was friends with a girlfriend of mine and when I met him I said to her, ‘I don’t like that bloke.’ He must have won me over because we were together for forty-something years in the end.”

The pair didn’t officially tie the knot until 1990, and when they did it was for a very specific reason – access to Gail’s family’s muttonbird island. After her father died, Gail and her brother were struggling to carry out the annual trips and Bubba offered to help. “I went to see Peter Topi and told him the plan, and he said ‘If you’re not married, he won’t get on the rocks,’” Gail remembers. “Never mind that we had been together for twelve years and had two kids, he wouldn’t be allowed to set foot on the island unless we were married.”

They went down to the State Insurance building in Invercargill and were married the next week so Bubba could join the whānau on that year’s birding trip. “And it was the worst year ever, so of course he joked he wanted a divorce on the grounds that he married me for these muttonbird islands that had no muttonbirds,” Gail laughs.

In saying that, Bubba never missed a season from then on, travelling down to the island for 30 years until the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early years of their relationship, Bubba was always drawn to work that took him away for large chunks of time. “When I met him he would go into the bush for up to six weeks at a time up in Fiordland.

After that he started working as a crewman on fishing boats and he’d be out at sea for a week or ten days,” Gail says. “He liked to be off out adventuring for long periods – he wanted to be out there doing it, not sitting around in an office.”

Given that he would go on to become an integral part of the daily running of Te Rau Aroha Marae, it’s strange to reflect that there was a time when he wasn’t around and Gail would attend rūnaka meetings and events on her own.

“It’s not that he wasn’t interested. You can’t grow up in Arowhenua without having a connection to te ao Māori, but it was laying underneath for all those years,” says Gail. “He just didn’t have the arena to bring it out until he became involved in our marae project in 1999.”

This was when renowned Māori artist Cliff Whiting moved to Awarua to decorate the wharekai and design and carve the new wharenui, Tahu Pōtiki. The opportunity appealed to Bubba’s creative side, and he joined the group of whānau volunteers who spent their days trying their hand at painting, tukutuku or carving, and researching the stories that would underpin the design of the new wharenui. It was during this three-year period that Bubba’s friendship with Dean Whaanga first began to flourish.

Dean Whaanga, Louise Fowler, Bubba Thompson and Gail Thompson.

“I had always known Bubba as Gail’s husband, of course, but it wasn’t until we got involved with the building of the meeting house that we became a lot closer,” Dean says. “It was a really exciting time for us, and it definitely created a special bond between us. We thought of it as a university education, the opportunity to learn from someone of Cliff’s stature for three years.”

At the time Bubba was oystering, which meant he could work in the mornings and head up to the marae most afternoons. It was a collaborative environment and his skills and experience were valued by the group. Dean describes Bubba as a problem solver, who brought with him a deep knowledge of the environment and an eagerness to learn.

“He was a good thinker, a solution finder. I learned to pay attention to Bubba when he said ‘let’s do it this way,’ because it generally was the easier way of doing things,”

Dean says. “And his work with DOC and muttonbirding with Gail meant he had a lot of knowledge of the places that were important to us, which helped in planning the stories we wanted to tell.”

Bubba showed an enthusiasm and natural aptitude for carving, and went on to complete several elements of the wharenui. “One of the main things he did was the carving of the pare and the amo, so his legacy really lives on in those physical elements,” says Dean. “But it’s more than that, because he was the face of our marae for many years. They say that the words you speak on the paepae create mana and mauri. They go into the house and make it stronger. That is his legacy.”

The story goes that Bubba delivered his first whaikōrero when the late Hana Morgan, then rūnaka chair, rang him and said he had 20 minutes to get down to the marae and greet a group of manuhiri. Although he was reluctant, he saw it as his responsibility and he took it seriously, going on to deliver whaikōrero at almost every pōwhiri held at Te Rau Aroha for the next 25 years.

“It was always a pleasure to be handling a bunch of visitors with Bubba,” says Tā Tipene O’Regan, the Upoko of Awarua Rūnaka. “Like many of us, he wasn’t a native speaker. But he applied himself wonderfully, vigorously to the task of growing his capacity. He sought knowledge, studied hard, prepared himself carefully and became known for his generosity with that same knowledge.”

Bubba with tamariki at Te Rau Aroha Marae.

This passion for learning and sharing knowledge became the theme for the rest of Bubba’s life, and he dedicated himself to finding new ways to ensure that Kāi Tahu stories were preserved for future generations.

As well as greeting groups of manuhiri during pōwhiri at Te Rau Aroha, he would spend time with them on their visit, regaling them with the stories represented in artworks throughout the marae complex. He also penned a series of children’s books retelling local pūrākau, giving tamariki a way to learn and understand the history of Murihiku.

As Dean reflects, Bubba must have been good at what he did because the same groups kept coming back, year after year.

“He would have greeted thousands and thousands of people over the years, usually handling three or four pōwhiri a week. And the same groups kept coming back,” Dean says. “School students of all ages, university groups, businesses and government departments – Bubba engaged with them all and he adapted his style to fit the audience.”

“Bubba did a whole lot of other things beyond caring for the mana of the marae,” says Tā Tipene. “For many years he led a work programme lifting young eels out of the Meridian dams, so they could get downstream to spawn. To say nothing of his contribution as an artist, with a number of his works placed around different parts of Fiordland.”

Gail says that his interest in conservation never waned, and his experience made him a valuable member of the many committees and boards he sat on over the years.

“He could cause trouble in the conservation arena, that’s for sure. Once he set his mind on something, he was like a dog with a bone,” she says. “He knew the areas they were talking about intimately. He’d walked through pretty much the entirety of Fiordland National Park; he’d been all over Whenua Hou during the original eradication of weka over there.”

For many years, Bubba’s work at the marae was voluntary, and even when he took on the role of Kaitoko Mātauraka, he still went above and beyond. “It wasn’t your standard employment contract. He was paid for 20 hours a week but it wasn’t uncommon for him to get home at half past nine at night when groups were staying at the marae,” says Gail. “I always remember that he just never seemed to get tired of it, even though it must have been the same conversations over and over again.”

When Bubba died suddenly on June 1 2023 due to a medical complication, his loss reverberated throughout the iwi. However, it is at home with his whānau that his absence is felt most strongly.

“There’s that old saying that every good man is backed up by a good woman, or the other way around,” says Dean. “And that was the case for Gail and Bubba. They were always at the marae together and their family’s contribution has been huge.”

For someone who gave so much of himself to the iwi, Gail says that Bubba always managed to keep something back for his whānau. “He used to say that people didn’t really know him, that there was his public persona and then the private one that only his family knew,” she says. “He was stubborn, and he liked a good argument but he was loyal and kind. We knew how to banter and to wind each other up but he was my biggest supporter. He always, always had my back.”

Bubba was incredibly proud of his three children, Leah, Skye and Saird, and everyone who knew him in later years knows the great joy he took in his mokopuna. “He was always the good guy when our kids were young, and I was the bad guy,” Gail recalls. “When he was away fishing I’d threaten the kids with the usual ‘wait till your father gets home’ but they knew it was an empty threat. He was a good dad and an amazing pōua. He just absolutely loved our grandkids.”

Although Bubba’s passing has left a huge hole in the fabric of Te Rau Aroha Marae, the whānau are choosing to focus on their gratitude to have had Bubba around for as long as they did.

“The past twenty-five years were the gift he gave us. A lot of marae struggle to maintain that ahi kā presence, so having someone like Bubba was very special,” Dean says. “People always talk about filling someone’s shoes after they’re gone, but the truth is no-one ever will. You can’t fill the shoes of a person like Bubba.”

Dean Whaanga (left) and Bubba Thompson holding up an albatross that is about to be plucked.