NGA TUHITUHI

Tu Tangata, Issue 31, 1 August 1986, Page 43

NGA TUHITUHI

Tena koe Philip I am sending you information on the recent Kumara Festival run in the Northern Wairoa during the first week of the May holidays. It featured in a very good programme put together by the Top Half Team with Roger Price as the interviewer. The whole festival was a resounding success and will become a regular yearly event held in Dargaville.

There is a predominance of Maori labour employed in this horticultural industry and a number of them are readers of your magazine through the local branch of the Maori Womens Welfare League who acts as a distribution agency for the magazine.

I am also sending you the Kumara Recipe Book and would welcome Kumara recipes from your readers as I intend to keep updating this book. It is also being used as publicity feature by the local Kumara Growers Association and the Produce Market soon to be Wrightson N.M.A., as well. Kumara icecream by the way is delicious. It tastes like caramel.

In conjunction with the festival was a Kumara Festival Queen competition and the criteria was the princess who raised the most money for the ambulance appeal was to be declared the Queen.

Aileen Wihongi was the Maori Princess and her committee was the local branch of the Maori Womens Welfare League. Aileen’s win after having raised just four dollars short of $6,000 was a very popular one. Aileen is the daughter of Taka Wihongi the local I.T.M. teacher and Ngarue Wihongi a senior teacher at the Dargaville Intermediate School. The Committee raised their contribution through such varied activities as a ‘Schools Music Festival’ with the theme of bringing families and friends together. You just had to be there to get the feeling that was in the Town Hall that night. I have been teaching for nearly 20 years and have compared many events but I have never experienced anything like that night. There was standing room only and I think the kids would have sung ‘We are the World’, all night if we had let them. The evening was opened and closed by Rev. Sam Toia, and the welcome given by the Kaihu Valley School and closed with the Dargaville High School Concert Band, who, although they travel the North Island giving concerts to schools, as we have been the Pilot Music School, have never had such a rousing reception as they got from those primary school children from all over the district.

It was fitting that the High School band should be involved in the fund raising for Aileen as she has been a member of the Concert Band and the Jazz Band for the five years she was at High School. She is a skilled Saxophonist and a

regular player at the Tauranga Jazz Festival.

Some of the other activities used to raise money for the Maori Princess were an Axemans Carnival and Gala Day. Bat-tons-up evenings. Formal Dinner, Basket Social, Hangi Lunch on the foreshore, and catering for the Kumara Luncheon at the release of the Kumara Cookbook. You should have seen the sales of the book after people realised just what could be done with kumara!

Aileen Wihongi was a prefect at the Dargaville High School. House Captain, played netball and swam for the school team, threw discus and shot, as well as her involvement in the very full music programme and tours by this school. At present she is at Waiariki Community College in Rotorua studying Tourism and Hotel management and thoroughly enjpying it.

One of her first duties was to present the trophies for the Triathlon and of interest to those who have followed swimming over the years would be to see Glenn Smith Maori swimmer and a national swimming representative featuring in the winning teams event. Glenn is now a kumara grower, farming at Turiwiri, and married to a local girl Vivienne nee Tito.

The second place getter was also a Maori and ex-pupil of Dargaville High School. Sandie Kirkman was the James Hardie Plastics Princess. Formerly employed by the firm, she is at present in Whangarei training to be a nurse. Sandie impressed all those she came in contact with and continued to carry out all that was required of her although she buried her father just a fortnight before the crowning ceremony, after his battle with cancer. The year was not an easy one for Sandie.

You will notice a picture of Carlrine Anderson among the photographs of the princesses. Carlrine is of Pacific IslandEuropean descent and was the girl held hostage by the man who robbed the Dargaville Post Office and shot by local police. We have had our fair share of drama!!

I hope that I have given you enough information, Philip for someone to write a small article on our behalf. We don’t get to feature in your magazine and I suspect that is through lack of information supplied to you form this area.

There is an excellent programme running at the Kokiri Centre in Te Kopuru, south of Dargaville in which exciting things are being done in clay, hue, carving and weaving that would make an interesting article for your readers as would the latest archeological discoveries in the Waipoua forest.

Please excuse my dreadful typing. I am an Art Teacher not a typist, but I think even dreadful typing is easier to read for something like this than wading

through handwriting. Should you require original for printing please contact the Northland Times and ask for Jenni Cocurullo, or the owner Robert Maxted Phone 8209 Dargaville. The photos can be sent to you on request. If anyone wishes to purchase the recipe book they can do so through me. Colleen Urlich J.P., Oturei Marae Committee, 28 Charlotte Street, Dargaville. Phone: 7522 home, 7229 ext 819 Dargaville High School. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance. I am a great admirer of the work being done by the TU TANGATA Magazine team. Arohanui Kia Ora Ra

COLLEEN URLICH Dargaville