Courage needed to make right call over access to Tukurua Beach

Gerard Hindmarsh is a published author, living in Golden Bay

Opinion: TDC need to formalise access to Tukurua Beach now.

Being an old cartographer, snooping around worn cadastral maps has always fascinated me. I just love what land boundaries reveal and how they layer history.

One of the most curious titles I have ever came across is situated just down the road from where I live, at the true right or southern corner of the mouth of the Tukurua Stream, which is labelled on the earliest survey map as a ‘canoe watering reserve’.

This small parcel of land, around an acre in size and still largely intact from sea erosion, now forms a vegetated corner of the Golden Bay Holiday Park which naturally incorporates it.

When I first came to live at Tukurua 47 years ago, I came to understand that the most probable meaning of Tukurua was ‘two outlets’. But this never quite made sense to me nor anyone else I spoke to about it. You can tell there has always been only one outlet.

Then in a roadside conversation with the late Parapara resident and Māori historian Darcy McPherson, many years back now, he told me that two big rata trees used to exist at the mouth of Tukurua Creek, their magnificent crowns growing into each other to form what looked like a kind of cave which was highly visible from out to sea.

Passing canoes would paddle in and get fresh water at the mouth, the creek notable as the only creek available in Golden Bay for waka to paddle into to get fresh water. Every other creek, stream or river in Golden Bay/Mohua was brackish up from their mouths.

All a thirsty waka-load of paddlers had to do was paddle in, park up under the towering rata and gourd out as much water as they could drink.

I was amazed to find validation for his explanation later when pouring over an old Tukurua cadastral map, seeing the words ‘canoe watering reserve’ handwritten by the surveyor on the map.

Darcy’s interpretation of the name Tukurua was ‘the cave between the two rata trees’, literally travel instructions to passing waka crews.

I love Māori place names, the way they relate to the land so pertinently and practically. Unlike English names so randomly given which bear no relation to the land except by some colonial inference.

The importance of this access to fresh water for sea travellers was not lost on early European surveyors who upon request from local Maori surveyed off this small parcel of land.

The title effectively predates our European land system, this ‘canoe watering reserve’ being, the only one recognised in Golden Bay/Mohua.

Those two towering rata trees have long succumbed to coastal erosion, but their jagged sea worn stumps can still be occasionally seen on either side of creek (about 60m out from the existing shoreline) when the sand gets removed under certain wave conditions.

It has always been a treat to see these giant stumps when they reappear, and I always imagine the sight of long gone waka being paddled in.

Unfortunately, I barely go there these days.

When I first came to Tukurua our access through the Tukurua Motor Camp was unrestricted, if informal. I understood that access reserves were never put in place when the 6.17ha Camp was subdivided off from Tukurua farm, because the Golden Bay County Council (GBCC) at the time accepted the developer’s argument that formal reserve access was not needed.

The reason given by him was that the new commercial motor camp designation naturally opened up free public access to the beach to the general public on a 24/7 basis, and it would save him a bomb in reserve fees which he didn’t want to pay.

My family enjoyed this quazi-legal ‘right’ to walk down Tukurua Road (also owned by the camp) and through the Motor Camp on to the beach, as did all other residents of the road who have a formal right of way access to use the road.

This all changed when latest owner purchased the camp in 2006.

Suddenly we all started getting legal letters in our boxes explaining the new regime with regards to access through the camp and use of the legal road. Suddenly we all realised how grey the situation was.

Access is now completely restricted during the summer months when the camp is busy, ostensibly for ‘security reasons’. The time we most like to use the beach.

Things change I know, and I don’t actually blame the current owner for declaring his camp off limits, but I do wonder about the beach being declared as a ‘Private Beach’, as claimed on the camp advertising and signage.

This mentality has spread quickly to at least one other beachside accommodation providers along Tukurua Beach who began putting ‘Private Beach’ on their blurbs as well.

But I do hold TDC responsible here, and I believe it has a strong moral responsibility as much as its forerunner GBCC to protect the rights of Tukurua residents to beach access.

Many now have to drive around to Parapara or Onekaka for their beach walks which is a crazy situation when they live just a couple of hundred metres away from the water.

For a start, TDC need to take over and formalise the private Tukurua Road down to the camp, then establish a metre wide walking access through a couple of unconnected river reserves which do exist already, or purchase a strip off an obliging landowner who is compensated out of reserve funds.

Only then will we establish proper access through to the beach all Golden Bay people have a right to enjoy.

This is not an unreasonable request. Precedents exist in the high Court of people in this country getting legal access after 40 years of informal public access, as exists in England.

But here we have a situation created by a succession of councils that has simply put the issue into the too hard basket for too long.

It’s another example of our council creating social distress in our community by allowing ‘Selfish Giants’ to take over. Something needs to be done urgently.