Mawera Karetai

At the Sunday Market this week, I got to introduce two of my favourite Whakatāne Davids – David Stewart and David Poole. Both the Davids make the world a better place with their incredible creative talents and willingness to share them.

During the conversation, David Poole told me about a project he is working on, to build a giant kiwi. That got me thinking about our identity as a community.

Who are we? Not too long ago, we were the gateway to Whakaari and that not only kept the lights turned on with visitor numbers, it also put us on the map as a place everyone knew us as.

It was great to be the gateway to an active volcano you could safely wander around. Then, the event happened, and lives were lost, and it became a bad thing to be the gateway to the killer volcano.

Pretty quickly, the Whakaari signs came down, and we lost our community identity.

All the while, in the background, kiwi have been making babies and the mostly unused label of Whakatāne as the “Kiwi Capital of the World” has been waiting for its time. Now seems to be that time – we need something to bring back the tourists.

Mr Poole’s kiwi idea needs a home, and as we talked about it my mind went to the green island outside the library in town. It is a space where people sit on the edge for lunch and coffee, and where kids will sometimes run around.

If a big kiwi found a home there, I imagine it would be used even more for those two activities. It is time to develop the symbol of Whakatāne.

Some might argue that Mrs Sullivan, perched upon Ngāti Awa’s sacred Turuturu-Roimata is that symbol.

Really? It is a symbol of a colonial mindset that irritates me every time I see it.

We need something practical and real – like Ohakune’s carrot, Bulls’ bull, Taihape’s gumboot etc … and what better than a giant kiwi in the “Kiwi Capital”, to celebrate the effort of iwi and community to save our beautiful bird.