Hikoi Day Two: Waitomo Museum

 


The Waitomo Caves Museum & Discovery Centre 

 was a pleasant surprise with a treasure trove of photos, books, and archived records. The museum naturally has a lot of resources related to the caves with scientific and historic material as well as quite a collection of material related to early settler families.  Bridget is the museum director and since covid has significantly reduce tourist numbers the staff at the museum/education centre/ information centre have been reduced significantly and there is little time or resource for her to put into the collections.  Bridget seemed pleased to have a visitor interested in the archive and an excuse to “do some museum stuff” – her two associates at the centre had a good grasp on the archive and were able to give me some good leads for my research.

Waitomo is an interesting case study in early settlement because of the caves and the hotel.  Tours of the caves were offered informally by local Māori through the mid 19th century long before the Caves were “nationalised” in 1904 and commercial tours were offered.  The opening up of the Caves for tourism coincided with and was dependent on the opening of the King Country and the completion of the main trunk railway line.  Tourists could catch the train from Auckland or Wellington to Hangatiki and then be taken by coach the final 10ks on a ‘good road’.
Photos at the museum indicate racial and gender division of labour at the hotel.  While there was a sizable local population of Maniapoto, young white females were imported to work in the hotel.  Anecdotally it seems that a number of these young women married local Māori men, this being a relatively uncommon phenomena as up until then a vast majority of interrace marriages were between white men and Māori women.




A personal delight was to discover a local history of the settlement of Mairoa (30ks Southwest of Waitomo). This is where my great grandparents broke in a bush farm in the early 1900s.  The book included a copy of the first few pages of the Mairoa School role where my great uncle and aunties, Kate, Mary Ellen and Joseph Main were enrolled in 1906.  I remember Uncle Joe visiting my Nana in Morrinsville in the 1970s.  He was a real gentleman farmer (retired)  Mary Ellen wrote a family memoir including accounts of the time at Mairoa which has inspired my hikoi and research.  Aunty Kate had a horse related accident while at Mairoa and was commonly referred to as 'Poor Old Aunty Kate' as a result of the injuries she suffered and their consequences for the rest of her life.  Uncle Joe helped my GGF build the family whare at Mairoa as a 7 year old.  He along with other siblings was badly burned by an accident involving gunpowder used to clear stumps from the land.
if you get the chance do visit the Waitomo Museum well worth the stop.


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