Te Uruhi

Location: Bluegum Road, Paraparaumu Beach

In 1824, Ngāti Toa lived here for a few months before moving to Kāpiti Island. In the early 1830s the Puketapu hapū of Te Āti Awa built a pā on a large sand dune on this site, protected by swamp on three sides and a ditch to the north. Flax, food and other items were traded with whalers and early Pākehā traders.

In 1840, Bill Jenkins opened a popular accommodation house near the Te Āti Awa pā for people travelling along the beach to Whanganui. This was one of the first inns to be built outside of Wellington.

Between 1847 and 1848, many of the Puketapu people either returned to the Te Āti Awa ancestral lands at Waitara in Taranaki, moved to a new village called Tuku Rākau, north of the Waikanae River, or moved to other places south including Te Whanganui ā Tara.

Māori farmers continued to farm here for many years. Te Oti Roberts grazed his livestock on the ‘long green acre’ between dunes and the wetlands now occupied by the airport.

In 1902, Malcolm and Robin Maclean bought the Paraparaumu Beach area. In 1920, 1923 and 1929 they subdivided it as a beach resort. This section, the site of Jenkins’s Bush Inn, became a recreation reserve. 

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