Proud history looks smartly to the future

ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE visits a church preparing to celebrate a centennial millennium.

TAURANGA - St Joseph's Catholic Church at Te Puna near Tauranga will enter the new millennium in full glory, and with a proud history.

It will be 100 years old on January 1, and volunteers are giving the sturdy little building a facelift for the occasion.

Descendants of the Bidois and Borell families, who built the church from native timbers, are still faithful parishioners.

"There were no tools or chainsaws then," says 76-year-old Rapata Bidois, whose grandfather was one of the builders.

Josephine Ormsby, at 83 the oldest parishioner, also traces her whakapapa to the founders of the picturesque church, which stands on a hillock overlooking Tauranga harbour and the Poututerangi Marae. She was baptised and married at St Joseph's and her children were christened there.

"This is home," she says proudly.

Local links go back to the beginning of the Catholic mission in Tauranga, when Bishop Pompallier visited early in 1840, after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

French Catholic traders Louis Bidois, Emil Borell, Charles Potier and Michael Ottenon, who lived near the mouth of the Wairoa River at Te Puna and were all married to local Maori women, are believed to have initiated the invitation.

The first of several chapels around the Tauranga district was established at Otumoetai. Today, St Joseph's at Te Puna boasts a bell brought by Bishop Pompallier and a historic stone baptismal font, both inherited from Otumoetai.

In the late 1890s, residents of the pre-European settlement of Poututerangi set about building their church from pitsawn rimu logs 4ft to 5ft in diameter, logged from bush at Whakamarama on the western hinterland.

With no wagons or roads, the timber was hauled by horses down to the headwaters of the Te Puna River. Assembled into sizeable rafts, which were poled down the river with the outgoing tide, the logs were laboriously transported to the Te Puna seafront.

From there, drays took them to the building site and the labour of love began.

Also pitsawn were the kauri floor and the rewa rewa lining of the church, all hand-ressed and varnished.

According to historians, Poutu Te Rangi, or "The pillar that stands from Earth to Heaven," was opened "in the presence of 500 natives on the first day of the Twentieth Century, after two years' hard work by the Maori."

These days, a small community of Marist priests lives alongside St Joseph's and the regular congregation number about 150.

Led by parish chairman Paul Farrelly, they are reflecting the endeavour of their forefathers in ensuring their cherished church faces the future strong and spruce.