Maori village transforms Northland's Te Hana

A replica traditional Maori village opening at Te Hana on Saturday is a dream come true for its creators.
The village by State Highway One 5km north of Wellsford is on the border between the new Auckland supercity and the Kaipara district, the Auckland and Northland regional councils, Waitemata and Northland health boards and Auckland and Northland DOC conservancies.
And there are 4.5 million vehicles travelling through Te Hana annually. For motorists heading north it's the gateway to Northland; for those travelling south it's the entrance to Auckland.
From the highway these travellers can see the Te Ao Marama 17th Century Maori Village and Paa which in a few days will be offering tourists and other visitors a Maori cultural experience unique in Aotearoa.
Guests will be welcomed on to the Te Ao Marama Marae with traditional powhiri, meals and kapa haka entertainment before touring the village, which is a work of art with its raupo whare, manuka pallisades and 9m-high pourewa lookout towers surrounded by 15,000 young native plants which will soon cover the site in lush foliage.
There are weaving and carving studios and an art gallery.
A visitor centre is due for construction over the next six months featuring a carving of iconic ancestor Princess Te Hana in a waka.
Other attractions are on the drawing board.
Accommodation will be offered at the marae, which has facilities for educational visits by school parties.
It is the second marae in the country - the first is at Pt Chevalier in Auckland - to gain Qualmark certification for its faciltities and cultural products.
The Te Ao Marama development has the potential to create 250 jobs, making it a beacon of hope in the area, where 550 people have lost jobs at Wellsford in the past four years.
The development - supported by several Government agencies and many sponsors including the Lotteries Board and ASB Trust - has transformed Te Hana, which was in trouble when the Te Hana Community Development Charitable Trust was formed nine years ago.
Twenty per cent of its 250 residents - mostly Maori - were unemployed. Crime, drug and alcohol abuse were flourishing.
Children were being hospitalised with illnesses caused by a sewage-contaminated town water supply. And the place was a dump, with car wrecks and other rubbish piled around the former Albertland Co-op dairy factory.
With no outside agency stepping in to cure the situation, the Te Hana Community Development Charitable Trust was formed by locals to solve the problems themselves.
Trust chairman Thomas de Thierry, 46, a former Army gunnery instructor, and CEO Linda Clapham, an architect, worked four years unpaid to get the project off the ground.
Guided by kaumatua and kuia from nearby Oruawharo Marae, an ancestral site for the Te Uri o Hau hapu of Ngati Whatua to which most locals belong, they have steered the Te Hana community into a gateway of hope for the future.
"It was just a dream 10 years ago. We're proud to be part of this reinvention of little Te Hana," the pair said yesterday.
More pictures of the Te Ao Marama village will be published in the Advocate on Saturday.