Māpua's Changing Tides

On a Sunday afternoon in the summer down at the Māpua Wharf, with teenagers and kids leaping off the wharf and parents enjoying a coffee at a nearby café, it is very difficult to imagine anything different. The sheds, in which there are now buzzing retail outlets, and the wharf, that has now a reputation for family fun, were once busy in a very different way. The wharf began as an exporting point for apples, other fruit and flax and it shaped the development of Māpua.

The Early Years

The first wharf in the vicinity of Māpua was situated at the end of Bronte Road. It was known at the time as Bronte Landing. Scows would make their way into to the Waimea estuary and flax fibre was taken back into Nelson. Not  long after, the wharf was relocated with the jetty being moved closer to the entrance into Māpua, known as the Western Entrance. 

In 1912 it was announced that a shed was to be installed for the safe-keeping of produce. In 1913 the jetty needed to be upgraded to allow for the growing export of fruit from around the area. The estimated cost was £69 -11-6.  This started the era of Māpua as a fruit shipping port, beginning with regular shipments of up to a ton of strawberries a week. Māpua celebrated the completion of the wharf and the success of the business that it was bringing to the small area of Māpua.

As there was no luxury of "roll on roll off"¹ Mr Weyergang, the wharfinger at the time, ordered a small winch and a boom in order to get things on and off the boats.

A more substantial wharf was built in 1915 and with that came requests for a road joining Māpua to Appleby and to Motueka. The  minister said "why should the Tasman people get something no-one else got?"².

However, whoever made the decision about the installation of a road was on the locals' side and they were later notified that they had six hundred pounds for a road to the Moutere and one thousand pounds for a road to Appleby. The only catch being that it had to be completed in a very short time. They tried to begin the construction of the road, but there were a few things that held up progress, one being weather. It was said at the time "a start on the work is anticipated as soon as the weather clears up"³. It became apparent that the addition of the new road was going to bring a lot of business to Māpua and the surrounding areas.

The Rise and Fall of The Māpua Wharf and surrounding areas

As the wharf became an export centre for the burgeoning apple industry's produce more people came to Māpua, and more amenities and services to support them.  Social occasions began to occur and shops opened.

Social dances began happening annually in the packing sheds, with music supplied by the Mahana Orchestra. An old horse named Dick would pull around a sack of oats to polish the floor to make it suitable for dancing. The whole district would come to these "events of the year", which would carry on until well into the morning.

In Māpua's early years there was no school, as there were not enough children around for a school to be worthwhile. However in 1915 five children of school age meant a school could commence in the sitting room of Mr Higgs' home. It was not long until it relocated to Mr J. Senior's barn. Mrs Weyergang did say "from the rafters straw from the starlings' nests used to drift down and sometimes other little oddments, unnameable and disliked by all the other little girls"⁴. In 1917 Māpua School started with a roll of 19 pupils which was pleasantly surprising for those running the school, as it showed it was worthwhile.

In July 1921, 33,865 cases of produce had passed over the wharf since the beginning of the year, showing a remarkable increase of business around Tasman. The same year the first store opened in Māpua located in the same place as it is now. By 1948 export numbers had grown massively, with 550,000 cases passing over the wharf in the apple season.

In 1922 a newly built wharf officially opened on 3 February. This meant that Nelson Port had very little to do with the export of fruit from the Nelson Region in the early years, as they were able to get bigger ships into Mapua.  A telephone connection was established at Mapua within a few months of the wharf's 1922 opening, with the Nelson Harbour Board paying a 1/3 of the cost.

Māpua's community was growing rapidly. An old packing shed seemed like a very good location for a gathering place for the population. It opened as a community hall on June 26 1931. It had many rooms which were used for meetings, mostly for the fruit growers of the region. The coolstore served as the Community Hall until 1945, when the hall in Aranui Road was erected. Meetings were held there quite often, one of these being a meeting that was to ascertain the desire for electricity within the community: 100% were in favour.

However, all this was reasonably short-lived, as the Waterside Workers strike hit New Zealand in 1951. It created a state of emergency nationwide and signalled the end of the wharf as a fruit shipping port. Six months of apple exports were lost at Māpua. Port Nelson resumed loadings first and soon picked up the Mapua trade, with its better facilities. It was a tragedy for Māpua. Shipping was the centre of the community. The Wharf had provided many jobs which were lost. Orchardists were forced  to use alternative transport, taking produce to Nelson by road. By 1957 it became obvious Māpua was past its ‘heyday' as a shipping port.

After Commercial Shipping

In 1987 the Nelson Harbour Board was planning to pull the wharf down. A  group of locals rallied together to try and keep the wharf. They went to the Nelson Harbour Board to ask what could be done and it was suggested that they form a boat club. They got a 14 year lease on the wharf, including the surrounding sheds. However the "law changed and ownership was passed to the Tasman District Council".⁵ The boat club became responsible for the upkeep of the wharf deck, while the council maintained the substructure. The club had to raise funds for the upkeep of the wharf by charging launching and mooring and club membership fees.

The wharf is now a thriving tourist centre; it has a combination of restaurants, boutiques and galleries. In the middle of summer Māpua is busy with cars, people staying at the Māpua Leisure Park and various Bed and Breakfasts nearby. In 2002 a photo museum by George Wallace was opened in the boat club building. This was in response to the new threats to the future of the wharf, with proposed changes to the leasing arrangements and the possibility that the wharf may be pulled down.

John Ward, as the president of the Mapua Boat Club in 2002, created a survey that asked people what they would like to see happen to the wharf. These were left outside the boat club building. It was not long before 1000 of these surveys were returned, with over 99% of people in favour of it staying as it was. Māpua Boat Club, that same year, became the "Guardians of the Wharf" which they incorporated into their name.

NatureSmoke, a business started by Dennis Crawford, is believed by many to have pulled Māpua out of the ‘deep end'. Naturesmoke was a buzzing little business and its success of showed that there was a way for Māpua to still grow and develop. The Smokehouse (now selling hot smoked and ready to eat seafood and fish and chips) started up soon after, attracting even more people. The Smokehouse became very well known around the country, "it was even put on postcards, showing off the building and the surrounding wharf and views, this attracted a lot of attention. Friends who came from as far away as Auckland would want to dine there when they visited"⁶ Susi Blackmore said.

For many years there was just a café culture in Māpua, but it has only been in ‘the last few years'⁷ that Māpua has really taken off, with boutiques, a wider range of restaurants and bars and facilities serving tourists - particularly those biking the Great Taste Trail. For a few years ‘Māpua Magic' operated, a tourism business offering experiences such as jet boat trips around the estuary.

Since the closing of the wharf as an export centre, no other commercial vessel has ever crossed that sand bar, apart from the small Ferry now servicing the Great Taste Trail and anyone crossing to Rabbit Island. The Aroha was the last large commercial vessel inside the ‘Western Entrance'. Instead the estuary is now filled with recreational boats, children sea biscuiting and water skiing and people fishing.

The Wharf is now the absolute focal point of Māpua because of the boat club. Iola McPherson said "My heartfelt thanks go to those who gave us back the only piece left of historic Māpua..."⁸ and it is so true.

When you are next in Māpua, have a look at the wharf and the clubrooms. The deck may have been changed and that room may have been renovated, but they remind us of an important piece of the Nelson region's history.

Bryony Blackmore, Nelson College for Girls, 2011. Updated May 2020

Story by: Bryony Blackmore

Māpua Wharf Apple Industry Mapua Boat Club