Strong disrespecters of private property rights, Dad tells me the horses roam freely from the beach on to his yard. After they’re done munching his lawn, they make their way up his driveway and continue chewing at the playground reserve nearby. Selena, who runs Ahipara Horse Treks, says the horses go “anywhere and everywhere” they feel like: into backyards, parks, paddocks – she’s even seen them wandering through the main drag, past Ahipara Superette and Bidz takeaways.
The Far North’s wild horses have been the subject of serious controversy in years past. In the late 1990s, Department of Conservation staff shot and killed seven Aupōuri horses they said damaged a $100,000 electric fence surrounding conservation land, infuriating members of the local iwi, Ngāti Kurī. “One of the mares killed, known as Big Red, had been a favourite of children at Te Hapua School and some pupils had learned to ride on her,” the Herald reported. (Ngāti Kurī trust did not respond to a request for an interview for this story.)
These days, the controversy continues, albeit on a smaller, more low-key scale. Selena describes the local attitude to the horses as “very mixed”. “Some people love them and class them as locals,” she says. “The other half hate them: they’re ruining their lawns and they’re in the way of traffic, that sort of thing.” Dan confirms he’s heard complaints about “horses going wherever they want, walking over everyone’s sections, crapping everywhere and making a mess”.
But Dad, Selena and Dan are all pro-horse, as are most of the longstanding locals, Dan says. Some are even making the most of all the horseshit. “I know of one old fullah who walks around with a wheelbarrow and he loves it,” Dan tells me, “because he picks it all up and takes it back to his garden.”
Dan grew up in Ahipara, and horses are an integral part of the town’s history, he says. “We all grew up with horses. Everyone had their own horse tied up on their section. There weren’t many cars and motorbikes and stuff like that, so everyone went around on horseback. If I had my way, I’d be on horses 100 per cent of the time.”
Despite them staging a ruthless takeover of his property, Dad sometimes feels moved by the horses’ humble way of life. “Yesterday I looked out of the window, and there they all were,” he said, switching into an oratory mode. “The heavens darkened and the rains poured down and they were all standing there, all facing the same way, looking out to sea. And I felt a bit sorry for them, you know. But that’s how they live their lives.”
Soggy as they may sometimes get, overall the horses’ lives seem far from pitiable: they’re gorgeous, hardy creatures, with an untrammelled run on the bountiful Ahipara grasses. The relationship is symbiotic, too: the wild horses get to graze in a picturesque seaside town, and the human residents are treated to sublime equine scenes. “They’re getting quite used to humans,” Selena says. “The kids will go up and pat them at the park.”
Messy, arrogant and rebellious as they might be, horses like these are “iconic to Ahipara”, Dan says. My dad’s lifelong friend Blue, another recipient of the horse pics, sums up the situation well: “Man,” he says, “does that beach keep on giving.”
