Why Upland needs Hawera

Hawera is my hometown. I grew up on one of the busiest streets in town - Glover Road. It was an interesting road. For one it fed the business part of town so trucks went past often. It is also where the railroad goes past so we got trains even in the early hours. Our house was opposite a farm machinery sales yard. If our house burned down my dad couldn't rebuild because our house was on industrial zoned land. On a weird note, my bedroom is now the customer carpark for another farm machinery sales yard.

Hawera is a Maori name meaning "Burned Place". It got this name because there were a large number of fires in the town. Many thought they knew who was causing the fires but they couldn't prove it. These fires led to the construction of the most notable site in Hawera - the Water Tower.

The Water Tower had its construction started in 1912. It took two years to build and is completely made of concrete. On completion the tower got used a grand total of zero times. That's right, it was never actually used as a water tower. The reason for this is that in 1914 all the fires stopped. In a coincidence(?) the person the town suspected of lighting the fires died in this year as well. Spooky. The Water Tower does have one distinct flaw which is being dealt to even today. The sand for the tower came from Ohawe Beach. You can imagine why that's a bad idea. I'll give you a clue, Taranaki beaches are iron ore sand and the sea has salt. Chunks have fallen in recent years but the council has done some good work fixing it.

5 minutes out of town there is a museum called Tawhiti Museum. Nigel Ogle started the museum by building all the displays himself. An ex-art teacher, he created all the characters himself. Modelling many after actual people in the town there is a realistic flare to this museum. The local history on display is brilliant. There's even a working bush railway that he also made himself. The boat ride is pretty cool as well.

When people ask me what makes Hawera I tell them it's where farmers go to die. As they retire they sell their farms and millions of dollars comes into town. Hawera is on the up but there is still a lot of the old. But there's more to this town.

At one point it had the largest dairy processing factory in the Souther Hemisphere. At the time Fonterra never existed. After the dairy companies merged - forming Fonterra - most of the development went to the Waikato. Hawera still has a very large site and develops most of the formulas for children as well as powdered milk.

15 minutes out of town is the small village of Kapuni. Here is the national gas processing field which strips gas from the oil coming in off the Maui A platform. Besides the gas works there is Shell Todd Oil next door. Across the road is Ballance AgriNutrients. These three sites provide well paying jobs for Hawera. The meat works also provides many jobs as well.

A little further on from Kapuni is the Dawson Falls access to Mount Egmont. Like New Plymouth, Hawera is a very outdoors sort of town. Beaches come in the form of Waihi and Ohawe. They're not great beaches for swimming but Ohawe has the Waiongoro river which I spent a lot of time at. My mate used to live in Ohawe and so I would go there as often as mum and dad would allow. He was my escape from my sisters.

The biggest annual event in Hawera is the A&P (Agriculture and Pastoral) Show. It's very much like those carnivals you see on US movies in rural towns. It's pretty cool with lots of rides as well.

Of course as I mentioned in my previous post, Hawera is one of the stops for Americarna. A show off of American cars.

There are a few sites of interest around Hawera. One of these is the Turuturu Mokai Pa. This was the site of a pretty brutal defeat. The tribe of Turuturu Mokai was at war with the tribe at Te Nutu o te Manu out at Kapuni. Te Nutu was the smaller tribe and the two tribes went on raiding parties against each other. Te Nutu came up with a plan to end the war. As a peace offering they offered to tattoo the testicles of the Turuturu Mokai warriors. The tribe accepted. Well, you could guess the rest. With the Turuturu Mokai warriors incapacitated the Te Nutu warriors killed them. They then plundered the pa and took the women, children, and old people as slaves. Mate, if anyone offered to tattoo my nut sack I'd jam that tattoo gun in their eye.

King Edward park is a large feature of the town as well. While nothing compared to Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, it is a large park. It has lovely gardens, a large lake where they often have model boat regattas. There is also an observatory which I went to a couple of times for school trips.

Next door to the park is the local swimming pool. It's changed a lot since I was a kid. Back then we had a 3m diving pool. But that got demolished and a hydroslide and indoor pool got installed instead.

So why does this all add up to being a must for Upland? Not sure to be honest. It's an odd town that shouldn't exist and yet it does. Not only that it's richer than it should ever be. But the one thing that makes Hawera brilliant is its rich history. Many battles, many fires, many oddities make this town fun and a great anomaly. I was once called an anomaly as an insult but I took it as a compliment. I guess that's why I love this stupid town so much.