TUAPIRO MARAE

TE TIMATANGA O TUAPIRO

TUAPIRO MARAE

Transcribed Kōrero by Des Tata
In the late 1960s, the whānau was looking for a building to establish a marae. Uncle Bob Nepia (son of Weteri) saw a building at the racecourse, so he and his son Robert Nepia picked up the whare, put it on the truck, and brought it here: and that was the beginning of the kāinga. That building was their wharekai-come-whare for their tūpāpaku. Then we move forward to their whare. If you drove past on the Monday and you came back on the Tuesday, or the Wednesday you would have seen the house standing up and this is the house.
Nepia went to collect a whare from Rotorua because of the beautiful timber. If there is any whare in the Moana that is stronger than this, you would have to go a long way to find one because this here has got bulk native timber and the studs here are huge. Nepia went to Rotorua to collect it, carted it back here, and completed the build. It only took a few days, and it was finished.

The last part was the concrete to be completed in front of the wharenui. Nepia being Nepia, he gets out a book and he goes around and gets all the kids and all the workers and everyone else that’s on the marae to sign their names and the date. Then he rolls up the book, goes somewhere to find some tin foil, and then rolls the book up in tin foil.

I (Des Tata) told him: “Cuz, cuz that’s gonna rot.” He replied: “No it won’t, no it won’t, I’ll put heaps on.” Then he dug a hole in front of the wharenui, had a karakia, and buried it; he covered it up and then we started to pour the concrete. So in a hundred years, according to Nepia, it will still be there.

TUAPIRO MARAE

TUAPIRO MARAE

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