Pania's story told at last

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Pania, the Maori maiden who sits on the Napier foreshore, might well be known locally as Our Lady of the Tea Towels.

Pania is a Napier icon and tourist attraction in the way that the L&P bottle is icon and tourist attraction to Paeroa. She features on those tea towels and postcards. She has a story that few know.

So, this is a nice thing: the story behind the statue of Pania. That story is told tonight in Pania of the Reef, (TV One, 10pm) in the Nga Reo slot, a series of documentaries made by up-and-coming Maori directors.

Pania of the Reef is the first documentary to be made by Toitu Productions. It is a stylish beginning: low budget, simple story-telling told against a backdrop of marae and striking sunrises.

It also takes a risk. For a good half of the half-hour documentary, Pania is told in Maori with subtitles. Three stories are related by three people with intimate knowledge of Pania.

The first story is Pania's, as told by 85-year-old Sophie Keefe. This is the myth of her tupuna, the love story of Pania, Napier's own mermaid maiden. "When the sea is calm and the tide is low, you can see Pania."

The second is Mei Robyn's story. She was the 13-year-old chosen in 1952 from a gaggle of schoolgirls to be the model for Pania's statue. Robyn was "a little bit famous". She also came in for a little bit of teasing. For when Pania was unveiled, she was seen to be topless.

Says Robyn, "I think we were very lucky to have a piupiu."

The Prime Minister came to the unveiling. Robyn and a former school mate remember the day well. But, "What was his name?" "Holland?"

The story of how Pania came to sit on the Napier foreshore is told by Arthur Paxie, secretary of the Napier 30,000 Club from 1970 until 1975. The club, set up to encourage the population of Napier to 30,000, hence the name, was a sort of let's-put-Napier-on-the-map group.

Wander along the Parade, says Paxie, and "hardly anything you see ... the club didn't have a hand in".

But Pania turned out to be the landmark that would become a tourist attraction. Paxie talks about how, in 1954 when the statue was unveiled, the idea was "quite a step forward", and about how the club had the piece cast in Italy, a long way from the beginnings of the legend of Pania.

Pania of the Reef moves with ease between English and Maori, between the different ways people tell their own stories.

It borrows from history, whakapapa, the radio broadcasts of the 1950s (another language altogether), oral history and the official history of the New Zealand of another time. It does what all good documentaries should do, and seldom do: allows people to tell their stories without ponderous or punning voice-overs. So, this is a nice thing.