Iconic site due for a revamp

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Many residents will likely be surprised and some upset at the council’s decision yesterday to proceed with a complete revamp of what is now the Cook Plaza at the top of Titirangi/Kaiti Hill.

It is Gisborne’s most iconic tourist destination and a place many of us enjoy visiting. That is principally because of the breath-taking views it affords the city, its hinterland, our bay and the near-white cliffs of Te Kuri a Paoa/Young Nicks Head.

It is also a great vantage point to trace some of the amazing history that took place below — the arrival of the Horouta, Te Ikaroa a Rauru and Takitimu waka and the region’s first inhabitants about 700 years ago, then in October 1769 the appearance of the Endeavour captained by James Cook, one of the world’s most famous navigators and cartographers thanks to this and his other voyages of “discovery” (for Europeans) in the Pacific.

At the foot of Titirangi, Maori and Europeans met, clashed and communicated for the first time. The encounters were a disastrous start to the relationship, with probably six Maori killed. There was, though, a first hongi between the two peoples who would go on to partner — in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, and again in more recent years as the many breaches of our founding document have been acknowledged — in creating our modern nation.

Maori also reconnected below Titirangi, after many centuries, with their ancestral Polynesian relations. Fortuitously the navigator priest Tupaia had joined the Endeavour at his home island of Ra’iatea several months earlier, and discovered on the blood-stained shores of Turanganui that he was able to understand te reo.

Added to this, Titirangi is a sacred maunga for local iwi as well as a taonga for all residents.

Yet another reason for the site’s iconic status is that a quirky Cook statue has resided at the plaza since it was established in 1969 to mark the bicentenary of Cook’s arrival here. Recently we have learned the so-called “Crook Cook” is indeed meant to be the man whose 1769 voyage connected Aotearoa with the rest of the world. It is a memorable statue with a great story attached — a story that Tairawhiti Museum is well-placed to tell and benefit from.