Mei Whaitiri, model for Napier’s famous Pania of the Reef statue, dies aged 86

Mei Whaitiri (nee Robin) in 2017 with the statue Pania of the Reef, a prominent feature of Napier's Marine Parade for almost three-quarters of a century and for which she was the model when it was cast. She died overnight Wednesday. Photo / NZME

Mei Whaitiri, who as a 13-year-old high school student became the model for the casting of the Pania of the Reef statue on Napier’s Marine Parade, died overnight.

The death was confirmed in a social media post from daughter and former MP Meka Whaitiri, one of five children of Whaitiri and late husband Wiremu Wirangi Whaitiri, who died in 2015.

Born Mei Hiritia Te Kururoa Robin at Hastings Memorial Hospital on February 22, 1938, and one of nine siblings, Whaitiri was a pupil at Hukarere College, Napier, when she was chosen as the model in 1951.

She lived all of her life in Hawke’s Bay, generally near Kohupatiki Marae, Farndon Rd, Clive, where she will be taken on Friday morning for her tangihanga. The final service is expected at 11am on Sunday.

A traditional piupiu skirt and the photographs of Mei and her mother’s hei tiki, were sent to an Italian marble company and used to create a clay model which, with an Italian model, were used to produce the bronze statue of Pania, estimated to weigh 60-70kg and unveiled by Prime Minister Sidney Holland on June 10, 1954.

Earlier this year, around the 70th anniversary of the day Pania was unveiled on the Parade, she told of how it came about.

She said Hukarere principal Miss IL Hunter had announced all the girls were to go to the school’s tennis courts.

“All 130 of us went to the tennis courts and there were all these Pākehā men present - I cannot remember any women,” she said. “These, I found out, were members of the Thirty Thousand Club [a future-Napier movement and funders of the project] and they selected four girls as possible models for Pania of the Reef.

“We went to Hurst’s photography studio in Emerson St and posed on cardboard to represent a rock, and wore a traditional Māori dress,” she said.

She was chosen from the photographs (in which she pointed out she was wearing a bodice), and said the fact she was the only Ngati Kahungunu girl among the four may have given her the edge.

“Pania”, she said, “was a real person ... and her whakapapa exists.

“The mermaid statute was a nude one and the sculptors were going to do the same for Pania,” she said, and told of how her grandfather and respected Māori leader Ike Robin intervened, saying it would not be a nude sculpture.

Pania is often described in mythology as a beautiful maiden who lived in the sea by day and swam about with other sea creatures, but after sunset would go to a stream that ran into the bay where the city of Napier now sits.

A personal highlight for the model in the 73 years since the photographs were taken came in 2021 when she realised a dream by being able to sail over Pania’s Reef.

Although a bit hesitant when offered the opportunity, and today described by son Robert as “quite private”, she said at the time: “I’m chuffed to have been able to go out to sea. I didn’t realise how long the reef was. It felt like we almost went to Wairoa.”

But less celebrated was the statue’s theft from its plinth on October 27, 2005.

She visited the site, and was tearfully devastated to the point of being unable to express her sorrow in words, deciding she wanted to visit again later in more privacy and without others around.

After being recovered by police, the statue was restored and replaced three weeks after it had been taken.

Meka Whaitiri wrote in a post on Facebook that “our hearts are shattered with the sudden loss of our beloved mum, nan & nanny ma”.

“She passed away peacefully this morning at home surrounded by her whānau.”

Mei Whaitiri was 86.

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