Training Farm To Become Fourteen Maori Holdings

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 1, 25 November 1947, Page 5

Training Farm To Become Fourteen Maori Holdings

This week building was commenced of the first six houses and farm buildings at the.Hurumua Training Farm for Maori ex-servicemen, near Wairoa. This is a further stage in the plan to convert the training farm into fourteen individual holdings for allotment by ballot on permanent tenure to Maori ex-service-men farmers.

It is hoped that the first six men will be installed on their farms by the beginning of next dairy season. The houses they will occupy are being built by ex-rehabilitation trade trainees; a feature is that each house will be distinctive in appearance one from another. Hurumua is one of several properties in the North Island which have been purchased specifically for settling Maori ex-servicemen farmers of the recent war. Two properties adjoining it, one of over 1400 acres and the other of over 360 acres, were bought late last year from Mrs J. S. Jessop and Mr E. N. Knapp, and are now being developed. It is hoped to obtain six farms from these two contiguous areas. There is also the Mamakirmara Soldiers’ Settlement of over 900 acres which was also acquired last year, from Maori owners, for the settlement of ex-servicemen of the Ngati Haua tribe. Mamakumara, which is 12 miles from Te Awamutu, lying across the Kihikihi-Arapuni Road, should produce three sheep and dairy farms. A further five dairy farms and one mixed farm will, it is hoped, be obtained from over 2000 acres in the Rotorua district purchased from Mr Vernon Miller and the estate of the late Thomas Davies. Here development has reached a stage where offer of specific tenure has been made to Maori ex-servicemen of the Tuhoe tribe. Still another Rotorua property is now under negotiation.

In all cases Maori ex-servicemen are being employed developing and sub-dividing. They work under the supervision of the Native Department, which acts as agent of the Rehabilitation Board.

Maori trainees have gone to Huru-* mua from the Bay of Plenty, the East Coast, Gisborne, Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay and Wanganui. There are at present eleven at the farm, while a further 16 have passed through, either, gaining their “A” certificates, at the farm or completing their training with private farmers. Some have been assisting with the development work on the two adjoining properties mentioned earlier which are also to be used for settling Maori ex-servicemen.