Magical Memories

Nā Hannah Kerr

It was a blustery spring day and the flowers I had picked for the host of our interview were battered and bruised by the time they found their way into a vase and onto the table.

Regardless of the weather, the view from host Patti Vanderburg’s house is spectacular over Waikouaiti Awa towards Waikouaiti Beach and the scenic headland of Matainaka. Today the ocean is wild with white caps. One of the only fishing boats left in Karitāne is trying to return home back across the bar.

Kathy Coombes and her mokopuna Shaunae arrive soon after we move furniture around in Patti’s living room. The kettle is on, and the smell of fresh baking fills the house. Brendan and Suzi Flack arrive with pikelets crammed with jam and cream and, before we know it, this casual conversation between friends has become a feast. With coffee poured and plates full, Kathy’s stories of her life here in our village begin to flow.

Kathy has lived in the small village of Karitāne most of her life. Growing up there she attended school on the site of the current

Kāti Huirapa ki Puketeraki Rūnaka office.

Leaving school at 16, she went to Roxburgh to work in the health camps before meeting her future husband, Roy, at a party in Dunedin. Parties were something Kathy loved to attend and host. Laughing, she recalls one of her first: “I had a party after school, with my friends, with all of mum’s fine china, and she came home to find us. That was it, no more parties, off to the crayfish shed, out of trouble.”

Back in the day Kathy says 20 to 30 boats would be moored at Karitāne. Her brothers, Gary and Wayne, would go crayfishing. Her dad, Rata, and her mum, Betty, worked the crayfish shed, with Kathy joining occasionally after school, on weekends, or during school holidays. When asked about crayfishing seasons and the signs to look for when the kōura begin their walk, Kathy says, “I wouldn’t have a clue. I’ve never been on a boat, I can’t swim!”

Her brothers bought and built boats. Kathy says the income was steady if you were a fisherman in Karitāne at the time, so they knew the boats would pay for themselves. Her husband, Roy, had pleasure boats, not fishing boats, but she never set foot on one.

"Roy sunk his boat at Ahuriri rock,” she says. “He was too far in, and the wave broke on him … he didn’t see it coming and got swamped.
Took the roof off.”

Our eyes must have widened because she quickly followed up with, “He was OK … but his mate wasn’t, he couldn’t swim and he had his bloody freezing works’ white gumboots on. Roy managed to get him up and into a friend’s boat, but Roy was worried about his own (artificial) leg, that it might fall off!”

Fishing boats moored at Karitāne in the 1970s.

The boats grew bigger in the 1960s and 70s as crayfishing started to boom. More fishermen joined the cavalry of boats leaving the Waikouaiti River mouth and the shed began sending packed crayfish overseas.

“It went to America. It went to Australia too because I did get a letter from a girl in Australia,” Kathy recalls. “I wrote my name in the crayfish tub, in the lid of the crayfish box so they could write back to me. And I got a letter from a girl in Australia, and also got a letter from a guy in America.

“He wanted to know all about it, so I had to get mum to help write a letter about what we did. So, I wrote and sent it to him, and he put it in the newspaper over there. Everyone knew what they were doing with the crayfish before they ate it.”

After living for a time in Invercargill, Kathy and Roy moved back to Karitāne in 1980 to run the iconic Karitāne shop. “You don’t really realise how much work you’ve got to do when you’re in those places,” she says.

While selling milk, bread and other general store stuff, she was also the post-mistress, and handed out money to beneficiaries and pensioners every week. The cash would arrive on the back of the bus in a mailbag, and she often wondered if people would try to steal it, but they never did. “If it was going to happen, it would’ve happened.”

Kathy tried to group the beneficiaries into batches to make her job easier, as she had to ring through to Dunedin to confirm the totals were correct for each person. There was a telephonist in Waikouaiti who would transfer her calls through to the Dunedin office.

Newspaper delivery was also part of the job. At the time they owned a V8 Premier, which became the village alarm clock. When locals heard Roy and his V8 rumbling through the village early in the morning, they knew it was time to get out of bed. “If he was late, then everyone was late.”

After selling the shop in the late 1980s, Kathy, Roy and her dad began chatting to David Ellison about what would eventually become the East Otago Taiāpure. Newspapers took an interest and Kathy says it divided the whole community. “They thought, ‘Not allowed to fish, we can’t go on the beach ... what are we going to do?’ And they thought if we [Taiāpure] put signs up, they’ll run them over anyway, just bowl them down. It had nothing to do with the beach or fishing, but that’s what people thought.”

At the time, newspaper articles were being published that reflected a view Māori were attempting to lock people out of the fishery and decisions were being made along “racial lines” that pitted people “iwi versus Kiwi”, but Kathy says it was all nonsense.

Gathering pāua from the Taiāpure for local kaumātua, Easter 2022.

Kathy had to catch a lot of the chatter in the wind: “We tried to keep to ourselves.”

“Didn’t go down to the pub?” Brendan asks. “Nope … if we did no-one mentioned it!” she replies.

Today, the East Otago Taiāpure extends from Ohineamio (Cornish Head) past Te Awa Koiea (Brinns Point) near Seacliff to Waiweke (Potato Point), but the proposed area was quite a bit bigger.

Kathy says the Ministry of Fisheries didn’t like it as it was too big to police, so a smaller area, point to point, was eventually approved.

“What changed?” Patti asks. “Persistence really,” says Kathy.

There was a big meeting in the old hall where Puketeraki Marae now stands, “Doug Kidd, the minister at the time, even came down for it,” Kathy recalls. The application was presented and supported by multiple clubs in the areas. It went to Parliament in 1992, but it took years for it to be finally actioned. Kathy says she can’t remember the exact moment she learnt they had been successful, but says she would have felt relief.

To this day Kathy is still a committee member and attends every meeting she can. “What do you reckon about the taiāpure now?”

Patti asks. “It’s a good thing, I’m quite amazed how the community has changed their ways … I haven’t heard anyone against it, mind you I don’t go out enough to hear it,” she laughs. Then, more seriously, “and the students who are coming out, they’re doing a good thing. If we didn’t have them, I don’t think we’d be doing what we are.”

Kathy is referring to students from Otago University’s Marine Science Department, led by Professor Chris Hepburn. They have been coming to work and study the East Otago Taiāpure for years. “They appreciate feeling part of the community and they get a real sense of the place. In fact I have some who just keep coming back to visit; they’re my friends now.”

The work Chris and his students have done is incredibly valuable to Kāti Huirapa ki Puketeraki and the East Otago Taiāpure Committee.

“I quite enjoy the students coming to the meetings, because you don’t know what they are going to come up with next, new stories about our area each month.”

Huriawa was officially closed in 2010, meaning no pāua could be taken. This decision was made by local takata tiaki exercising their kaitiakitaka in a bid to rebuild the pāua fishery, so future generations, like Kathy’s granddaughter, can have access to pāua and learn traditional mahika kai gathering skills from their families.

At Easter last year, an authorisation was written by Puketeraki Takata Tiaki for a small group of Puketeraki kaumātua to source a few pāua from the Taiāpure. Professor Khyla Russell along with Brendan Flack, Adam Keane and a couple of marine science students gathered a handful of pāua for the kaumātua. It was a beautiful occasion, and I would be lying if a few of us didn’t shed some tears, especially as one kaumātua popped his first pāua off a rock in over a decade. Kathy couldn’t attend the day, but some were dropped off for her and she says it was great to finally taste it again.

Pāua harvested from Taiāpure for local kaumātua.

Part of the reason the authorisation was granted was to see if the pāua that was taken would replenish itself and grow back to a suitable size. This information is extremely valuable to takata tiaki and marine scientists as they continue to research this unique piece of moana with the end goal of reopening the fishery so it can be used in a sustainable way and feed future generations.

The light began to fade in Patti’s living room before we realised how long we had been talking. The day was ending, and it was almost time for dinner.

Just as plates were being cleared, I asked Kathy one last question: What does being Kāi Tahu mean to her. She looked a little confused, then laughed. “I remember when we were kids … we were just so proud … so proud to tell people we had Māori blood in us.”

Her eyes light up and the cheeky grin returns.