A community building much used over the years has been saved recently from the encroaching tide by being shifted back towards the Kokiri centre near the end of Riria Kereopa Memorial Drive.
Once the stage for the Te Ao Marama Festival – last held in 2016 – but now used primarily as a dojo training centre for martial arts and a wellness hub, the building ended up earlier this year perched only metres from the sea.
Coastal erosion had already taken the site’s original retaining wall made up of wooden poles and concrete slabs.
“Yeah it was gradually going,” concedes Johnny Rickard of the building, now known as The Refinery, from where he runs daily martial arts classes. Wooden steps leading down onto the beach had long gone, as had fencing wire and the odd matai tree left with exposed roots from the constant erosion.
About all that remains is a plethora of chained-together rubber tyres strewn along the foreshore, which is evidence of earlier efforts to shore up the area and save the building.
Johnny reckons the land has receded about a metre a year over the past 30 years. The site is part of ancestral land taken by the Government during World War ll for use as an aerodrome and which his grandmother, celebrated Maori land-rights activist Eva Rickard, fought successfully to have returned back in the 70s.
While there are a number of communal buildings on site, including Whaingaroa Kohanga Reo, the one-time stage directly backing on to the sea is the only near-casualty.
The 11x17m facility was revamped in 2015 courtesy of Maori Television’s Marae DIY series. Over a busy four days it was given new walls, floor and roof as well as some carved pou. A bay of the building on the seaward side was also removed because of the threat posed by erosion.
As The Refinery the facility is now used regularly for health and fitness, and is also the base of Whaingaroa Kyokushin Karate Club which Johnny’s father Pablo established back in 1994. Johnny now teaches “the kids of the kids” his father trained two generations ago.
He emphasises the building is “widely used” in the community, including by school groups for performances and the like.
Johnny says Whaingaroa Ki Te Whenua Trust which administers the property, was left with no choice but to take emergency action and move the building before being lost to the sea.
Hamilton-based Prestige Building Removals dropped it onto new piles well back from the beach. The old site has now been levelled off ready to be reseeded, replanted, and restored. Johnny explains there’ll be a bit of a wait now until “the ocean redirects the landline” before scraping back the clay and adding sand to hold new vegetation in place.
