Gone are the days when people at a South Taranaki marae have to cook for their visitors in a tin shed and serve the food in a tent.
The new kitchen, dining room and ablution block at Tauranga Ika Marae opened at dawn on April 30, project manager Martin Davis said.
Hundreds assembled at first light to "breathe life into the building", and went on to have a first meal there.
The marae is on the Nukumaru straight, about 15km from Wanganui. All that remains to be done there is to put up some shelters for visitors waiting to be welcomed and do some landscaping.
It's one of the 12 marae of Nga Rauru and belongs to the Ngati Ruaiti hapu.
Getting the marae back to the point where it could provide for all sorts of occasions was a long process, Mr Davis said.
Tauranga Ika was once Titokowaru's famous fighting pa, deserted in 1869. State Highway 3 may now run through its former site. Its more recent whare tupuna and outbuildings fell into disrepair in the mid-1980s, and were pulled down. In October 1991 a new meeting house was built by people on employment schemes.
Its toilet was a "classic unisex" longdrop and cooking was done in a tin shed but at least it was a place where the hapu could meet and talk.
"From 2008 we decided to get serious about re-establishing it as a full marae," Mr Davis said.
That process took a decisive step forward last month.
The nearby Tutahi Church dates back to the early 1880s and is an important place for Taranaki Maori. Mr Davis said people stopped there for karakia before heading southward out of the region.
It is said that the World War I and II soldiers who stopped there before leaving the country all came home and those that didn't did not return.
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