Tinui – tiny but historic
Posted 6 May 2009 // Helen Rickerby
Nearby Castlepoint was the main port for Wairarapa
Anzac Day once again saw tiny Tinui swell with people attending the service in the small Wairarapa town. However, it looks like like the air force’s recent proposal to turn Tinui into a place of pilgrimage may have hit a snag.
Tinui was the site of the first Anzac Day service in 1916, just one year after the Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli. The service was held in the village church, and afterwards the villagers processed up Tinui Taipo (a rock outcrop also known as Mt Maunsell) and erected a cross – the first permanent Anzac memorial. The original cross was replaced with an aluminium cross in 1965.
So the air force’s idea has some justification, but it seems this plan wasn’t discussed with the owners of the Tinui station, on whose land the memorial stands. Tinui station is a working farm and, while the owners have allowed people access to the memorial on Anzac Day and by prior arrangement, they’re understandably reluctant to have people tramping across their fields willy nilly. Pilgrims could instead gather at the memorial in the town, but what a pilgrimage would be complete without a climb up a hill?
Tinui is a small town steeped in history. I experienced this first hand while staying in a holiday cottage at homestead of the very same Tinui station. The cottage itself was about 130 years old, and the station even older.
The village has a wee museum behind a craft shop, from which I learned that Tinui had once been a thriving village, servicing the enormous sheep stations of the region. At this stage nearby Castlepoint was Wairarapa’s main port, and it was much easier to transport goods by sea than by land – especially on the narrow windy roads around that area.
Photos of Tinui’s main street from the late 19th century showed it lined with shops, but in the 2000s most of the shops are gone, replaced by grassy fields. When I visited a few years ago, the Tinui hotel was still there, but apparently it has been moved to Greytown now. And I’m told that a church from Tinui has been moved out to Riversdale. It’s sad that the town should have to sell its historic family jewels, but, I guess – with a much-depleted population, and with wool prices not what they once were – what’s a small town to do.
Many residents of Tinui and others opposed the moving of the hotel. It was subject to legal action and only moved to Greytown following an Environment Court decision. Read more here: http://www.times-age.co.nz/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3757597&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=
The people of Tinui did not give up hotel without a fight. The battle started when a wealthy Wellington couple decided the hotel would look flasher on their Greytown lifestyle block than in Tinui. They gave the hotel’s owner an offer he couldn’t refuse. When locals got wind of move they took the new owners to the Environment Court, but lost. Despite the building’s 100-year connection to the settlement the esteemed judges didn’t consider the hotel ‘historic’ enough for it to stay put. Hopefully the pillage of the township’s buildings will stop if the pilgrimage idea takes off.
Wow, what a horrible concept - go and grab whatever your bank account desires and bugger the town or its heritage!
I hope the pilgrimage idea takes off and the community is able to fund a replica of the buildings that have been ‘appropriated’ through fair means or foul.
Replicas certainly aren’t as good as keeping the originals but it might entice more to the region, permanently, and offer a visible reminder of the town’s pride in its heritage and culture.
I dunno - replicas are always a very distant second best. Local communities should have more say about what happens to ‘their’ buildings. We all have very real & importance attachements to buildings in our midst - nothwithstanding the fact we don’t own them - which should be recognised in law better. If this was the case then we wouldn’t see cases like the Tinui Hotel cropping up so often, and we wouldn’t need to talk about building replicas.
I’m involved with the Anzac commemmoration in Tinui. It wasn’t the RNZAF that made it appear that anyone could wander across private land to visit the Memorial Cross - it was the media slipping up again. The Church of The Good Shepherd (in which the first Anzac service was held ) and can be visited no problem, and the Memorial Cross can be seen up on the Tinui Taipo albeit 2.2 kilometres away.
The owners of Tinui Station readily allow access to the mountain on Anzac Day, but that access is coordinated by the Tinui Anzac Committee.
The Village isn’t “having” to resort to selling “the family jewels” - outsiders come in, see something, want it, wave money in peoples faces and assert pressure to get what they want. The locals have fought all the way on losing these valuable and historically significant buildings etc, but there is not many of them to keep up the fight and they do not have the power of money on their side. They are trying to retain a good old fashioned community village where people live side by side, know each other well, support each other when in need and work together to make a beautiful wee slice of NZ even more beautiful!