I whakaputahia tēnei atikara e RNZ.
Kaumātua Opo Ngawaka alongside his wife Elaine has spent more than 40 years as katiaki, the guardians, of Māhuki, a little island in the Hauraki Gulf.
When their whānau moved to the remote island in the early 1980s, rats were everywhere, the whenua was largely grass and the stories of the island were becoming, in Opo’s words, “all negative”.
Now native trees are pushing through the gorse, piwaiwaka are everywhere and tākapu, gannets, are flourishing along the cliffs.
It’s a sign that the whenua can heal, Opo says, as he’s still busy building a home for his whānau.
You don’t just arrive at the Ngawaka whare.
You leave Aotea Great Barrier Island by boat, cross the moana to Māhuki Island, find your way ashore and climb a ladder to reach the house. There are no roads or shops here, no service, and when the weather turns, there’s no easy way in or out.
Māhuki has a population of only three people, Opo, Elaine and their son Jeremiah Ngawaka - alongside their dog Missy.
The whare was built by Opo himself, and is where he and Elaine raised their six tamariki.
“One of the main reasons when we first came here was to create a home for our family,” Opo told RNZ.
“If they struggle at any time, wherever they are in the world, there’s a place for them to come back to.”
Opo is still creating a place for his whānau to come home to, as he begins the process of building a papakāinga adjacent to their whare.
Opo was born on neighbouring Rangiahua Island and said Māhuki and the surrounding islands have always been home.
However, for more than four decades, he has watched the environment around him change, and not always for the better.
As a young boy, whales were part of everyday life. He remembers climbing the hill to watch them breach in the moana.
“It wasn’t just one or two … it was a heck of a lot of whales.
“So now that’s all changed, you know, and it’s gone. It’s not there anymore.”
Opo said the environmental changes he has witnessed means people need to rethink how they live with the natural world.
“We’re going to have to change our ways and the way we think and how we need to look after our surroundings and where we live.”
As kaitiaki, that sense of responsibility is important to the Ngawaka whānau.
“A heck of a lot,” Opo said when asked what the whenua meant to him.
“It’s not just the land, but what lives on here, and what is here … and also the moana as well, that’s our space, and we’ve got to learn to look after it.”
When the Ngawaka whānau first moved to Māhuki, it was home to wild cattle and sheep and huge numbers of ship rats.
“They were terrible, the rats here, they’d swim out to your boat, get up on your boat and chew everything on your boat.”
The rats also made their way into the ngahere and the gannet colony, eating eggs, seeds and anything else they could find.
But over time, things began to change. The stock was removed, predator numbers were reduced and native vegetation returned.
“The gorse, we found out, was a shelter for the native trees,” he said.
“The native trees started coming up through that. And then all of a sudden the bird life started naturally coming back.
“When you’ve seen all that happen over time, you start to appreciate where we’re living.”
Those changes are now being supported by Tū Mai Taonga, a Ngāti Rehua Ngātiwai ki Aotea-led conservation project working to remove introduced predators across Aotea.
Māhuki is one of the Broken Islands where the project is carrying out predator control.
Hundreds of traps have been placed across the island, including around the tākapu colony. And Opo has spent hours clearing the track up to the ridge where the birds nest.
It’s the same hill he and his whānau once climbed to get phone reception. Now, instead of searching for a signal, he stops to look out over the colony.
Opo’s son Jeremiah is also helping restore the whenua. He has been putting out bait boxes and searching for rats alongside Tū Mai Taonga trappers and team lead Summer Fladgate.
“It’s good mahi,” he told RNZ.
“I want to do the land … I’ll find all the rats.”
The gannets have been part of the island for generations.
The Ngawaka whānau once harvested gannet eggs and used the birds’ guano to fertilise their gardens. But when they first arrived, rats were even stealing eggs from the colony.
“We found eggs in the grass where we built our house. And the rodents used to carry them all, roll them all the way over the hill there and store them up.”
Now, standing above the colony, Opo is seeing a very different Mahuki.
“It’s beautiful and really great to see.
“A couple of years ago, we didn’t have a story. It was all negative ... Now we’ve got a story to tell.
“We’ve got a story to tell to our mokopuna and hopefully they’ll pass that on.”
But Opo knows restoration is not guaranteed. He said history has a way of repeating itself.
“We’ve got to try and avoid that. We don’t go back to where we were.”
That means making sacrifices, putting in the mahi and finding ways to support the people doing the work.
“It’s a team effort in every angle you look at.”
For the Ngawaka whānau, kaitiakitanga is about recognising that people are part of nature, not separate, and Opo hopes the country understands the importance of caring for Mother Nature.
“We’re no different than those birds out there,” Opo said pointing at the gannet colony.
“It’s just that we have the power to do something, they don’t.”
Nā Layla Bailey-McDowell nō RNZ.
