Mōkau is a small town on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island, located at the mouth of the Mōkau River on the North Taranaki Bight (pop. 117, area 20 km2). Flowing for 98 miles through forest and dairy pasture, the river is navigable up to the falls, 23 miles from the Tasman Sea. Mōkau, a Māori word, means “winding stream”.
Arriving in Aotearoa from the UK, 6 years ago, I had my first taste of snapper (sea fish) here - delicious - and popped over the road to visit the Mōkau Museum. This tiny, award-winning, treasure told of the way of life, isolation, resilience, and history of the people living on the banks of the Mōkau River. At one point, I held in my hands the actual propeller, that for 38 years pushed the Cygnet launch along the river, serving as the only contact with the outside world till 1957. Fish & Chips together with a museum discovery. It was a good day.
Now, I'm back in that same Museum to write an article for Mainly Museums, a Canadian website interested in delivering a personal take on museums around the world.
On the beach today it is hot, not a cloud in the sky, blue-green opaque ocean swell crashing with a roar over a line of bright white shells onto black sand. Inside the single-storey wooden cricket pavilion of a museum, it’s quiet, calm, and cool. Kathy, Museum Collection and Community Coordinator, has not received my message telling of my visit - I used the wrong email address – still, she jumps up from her work and takes me on a tour, with a welcome, and a wonderful story or two to introduce each display:
The museum’s foyer is an area dedicated to archives used for tracing local families, together with bound copies of all issues of the local papers. On the other side of the foyer is a collaborative exhibit by two local iwi, describing the culture of the Māori, which precedes the European arrival in 1840 by some 300 years.
Our stroll winds through the display cases:
At the far end of this museum is the original 10 ft2 Mōkau Prison, now functioning as a 4-seat cinema, where I watch a colour film of the Cygnet’s last river trip in 1957. The bronze propeller I had held in my hands on my first visit, was here in technicolour, swirling the deep red soil-laden river water as she pushed the launch upstream for 2 1/2 hours dropping off post and empty cream churns along with other supplies. The skipper would stay in his isolated upstream hut overnight, returning early in the morning, stopping at each farm’s rickety staging to pick up the now full churns for delivery to the river-mouth dairy works. I realise I’ve just walked through this same journey with Kathy as my guide. A perfect day.
Today, the Cygnet is under restoration. There's talk of relaunching a tourist river-ride along the Mōkau. The sandbar at the river mouth is notoriously difficult to navigate. There are ghosts of ships and sailors in this old harbour, but now they rest when eight bells are struck at midnight.
Should they need a skipper, I'd love to be holding the little ship's wheel in my hands.
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Sean Bevan was a construction engineer (Civils) till he came to Aotearoa 6 years ago from the UK. He now make gelato with a 60-year-old ice cream machine. His first location was over the top of the Huatoki Stream, the second location he shared with a Vietnamese restaurant in an old sea container, the third, a former brothel turned coffee roaster.