Photographic images of Mangaia - Michael Venter Photography

Mangaia (Te Au-Au)

"A few score sea miles only off the main beaten track of the mail steamers, speeding on their monthly race from Wellington to San Francisco, and yet remote enough to preserve its picturesqueness, the fine bloom of its native life as yet unsmirched by the dust of the chariot wheels of the white man's civilisation, lies the lovely isle of Mangaia. The largest of the Cook Group, it is some 18 miles in circumference, and is about 1650 miles N. N. E. of Auckland and 600 miles from Tahiti. It lies in the Capricorn Tropic, roughly speaking about a third way across the great ocean, on a straight line drawn from Rockhampton in Central Queensland to the Iquique district on the northern Chilean coast.
Mangaia is protected by a formidable fringing reef, where there are no proper boat passages, but in fine weather there are practicable landing places at Oneroa, Avarua and Atuakoro on the west coast, and at Karanganui on the N.E. coast. Its geological formation is peculiar, and somewhat resembles that of the phosphate producing island of Nauru, many hundreds of miles away.
This picturesque background forms a sort of double-terraced slope running inland some 200 yards to the foot of the perpendicular limestone bluff, the relics of an ancient coral reef upraised by volcanic action, known as the “Maka-tea,” which in the shape of a rugged platform about half a mile in breadth, forming cliffs about 70 feet high facing the sea, and some 100 feet on the inner side, runs completely round the island. It encloses a large fertile central valley and many subsidiary valleys, full of orange, lime and lemon trees and magnificent palm groves, chequeral like a chess board with patches of swampy land planted with taro (“mamio”). It is watered by a number of shallow streams running down from a mass of black basaltic rock some 550 feet in height called “Rangi-Motia” or “Heaven’s End,” which forms the central plateau of Mangaia".  Source: F W Christian. (Edited).

Oneroa.
Oneroa is the main village. It lies a few kilometers south of the airport on the road that circles the island. The areas close to the sea are referred to as "downstairs" and on the makatea as "upstairs". The old harbour, petrol station, a shop and weekly market are "downstairs", while the school, hospital, telecommunications and solar power station are "upstairs". The main harbour is between Oneroa and the airport.

​"The population of Mangaia numbers some 1100, mainly centred in and around three villages, Oneroa on the west coast, Irirua in the north and Tamarua in the south, besides a few score living in Veitatei, the inner valley district. Tradition derives some of the tribesmen from Tahiti and the North Marquesas, and very circumstantially tells us also of the arrival of a large body of immigrants from the west, the ancestors of the Tonga-iti clan, who settled on the south coast". ​Source: F W Christian. (Edited).

Churches and Tombs, Oneroa.

CICC Church, Oneroa.

Records of Previous Ministers, CICC Church, Oneroa.

Christian Family History in Mangaia
In 1919 my grandfather, the explorer and ethnologist Frederick Christian, arrived on Mangaia to take charge of the Government native school in Oneroa. He took his wife and his daughters, including my three year old mother. He recorded at the time that an older name for the island was Au-au, meaning the “Peaceful Land” or the “Lovely Land”, based on similarities with the Samoan manaia, meaning handsome, or the Rarotongan manea, meaning beautiful. He believed the small settlement in the Coromandel, called Manaia, was either settled by Mangaians or a place from which some Mangaians came, in a “backwash” from the great migration of 1350. He thought the names of rivers and places in Mangaia bear a striking resemblance to the names of New Zealand places and rivers.
One hundred years on, in March 2019 I travelled to Mangaia to visit the island and present historical material I had found in Rarotonga and the Auckland Museum to the school. This included grandfather's Vocabulary of the Mangaian Language, published by the Bernice P Bishop Museum in Hawaii in 1924. The images of my grandparents wedding and Aunt Enid have been supplied by Rod Dixon.

Michael Papatua, the Principal of Mangaia School, kindly invited to give to give a presentation to classes of senior and middle school students. Here the teacher of the middle school class reads out a poem in Mangaian Maori written by my grandfather to his pupils 100 years ago.

The Mission House
Michael Papatua introduced me to Rod Dixon, former Director of the University of the South Pacific. He is writing a book about the history of education in the Cook Islands. In this he includes a chapter covering the period when my grand parents taught at the Oneroa school and lived in the Mission House. Originally Rod Dixon called the chapter “The Lost Garden”, but in April 2020 he renamed it "Acclimatising Exotics". There are exerts from that chapter on this webpage. 
Description of the the Mission House: “The quarters which are free, consist of part of the Mission House - a building with a long frontage and cut off from the remainder which is occupied by the native pastor. The rooms are as follows - sitting room, dining room, two bedrooms, spare room, pantry, detached Native built kitchen and bath house (also Native built)”. 

"Under conditions of joint occupancy, the old missionary boundaries between European and ‘native’, [the walled grounds and Mission House verandah] no longer functioned. Instead of offering privacy and social distance, the verandah operated as a runway for inquisitive children and visitors. Mangaian eyes were free to view European domestic arrangements while the shared open ceiling permitted the neighbouring family’s voices to intrude into each-others’ domestic space". 

Christian Family Garden Plots
​A garden plot was provided for the Christian family on the makatea. This "comprises some 3 1/2 acres of red clayey soils. I am going to make the place a regular tropical Botanical Gardens, where I shall acclimatize strange fruits and flowers from Java (I have some growing now) from Peradeniya and Singapore, gardens in Ceylon, from Rio Janeiro, from Queensland and New South Wales, from the Hawaiian Islands and perhaps from the far off Carolines up by New Guinea and from Japan, in nearly all of which I have scientific friends, and some native friends also, who will send me seeds. I want to make the place educational to the Mangaians, both adults and children, and a beautiful show place for New Zealand and American tourists, artists and photographers and men of leisure and invalids who come to our beautiful Mangaia seeking a restful holiday". Source: F W Christian. (Edited).

“The school garden was adjoined at the back of the Mission House by the Christian’s family garden. Both gardens were frequently uprooted by their neighbour’s fowls, pigs and horses”
“In this garden and the adjoining mission grounds “a whole tribe of youngsters” (the Christian children) ran “wild among the Native children, very often without a stitch of clothing on” to the shock of visiting officials”. ​“With the garden and its crop of fresh vegetables continually uprooted, the family’s health began to suffer. The situation was further aggravated by the absence of regular shipping with Christian reporting, early in 1920 - “Mrs. Christian and I have been in very poor health owing to scarcity of proper food as no vessel except the SS “Mokoia” has called at Mangaia for the last five months.”

Landing on Mangaia in 1919.
"The natives are fearless and highly-skilled canoe-men, and the usual method of landing is to wait for a very high wave, and then to come in with a rush on the crest of it as it spends its strength in the shallow pools of the coral flats. Thence the adventurous passenger is conveyed pick-a-pack ashore on the shoulders of a nut-brown Hercules, none the worse for a slight wetting, and the richer by a novel and highly-thrilling experience". Source F W Christian.

Babes Place
Babes Place is one of the few accommodation options on the island. It is a mix between a motel and a boarding house with wonderful food and hospitality. It appears there were expansion plans in place before Babe unexpectedly took his own life in 2018.

Mangaia Harbour.

Health Clinics, Old and New.

Oneroa Lagoon 25 Mar 2019

Homes in and around Oneroa.

Tropical Window 2 Mar 2019

Water Tank Interior 3 Mar 2017

Ute - Mangaian Topical Comic Songs in 1919.
​​In 1919 F W Christian wrote that "The "natives are also fond of composing “Ute,” which answers to our London music-hall ditties, topical songs, sometimes complimentary, sometimes critical, but most often distinctly of the comic order and couched in a vein of the very broadest humour. When the humorist oversteps the mark, the local church intervenes most irascibly in the capacity of censor of public morals, and compels the offending composer to put a blue pencil through his most powerful lines. In earlier days eccleciastical displeasure at such rude personalities would probably have taken the shape of a substantial fine in pigs; pork being the universal solatium for irritated feelings over since the passing of the old cannibal days. The Marqueaan Islanders far to the north call these ballads or topical songs “Uta.”" Source: F W Christian. (Edited).

The Makatea.
The Makatea "encloses a large fertile central valley and many subsidiary valleys, full of orange, lime and lemon trees and magnificent palm groves, chequeral like a chess board with patches of swampy land planted with taro (“mamio”). It is watered by a number of shallow streams running down from a mass of black basaltic rock some 550 feet in height called “Rangi-Motia” or “Heaven’s End,” which forms the central plateau of Mangaia". ​Source: F W Christian. (Edited).

Mangaia Airport.
On departure day arrive early. The Air Rarotonga plane arrives three times a week, a 45 minute flight away. It leaves as soon as its unloaded and all the return passengers are on board. No e-tickets or customs checks, just an 'ei to wear on your flight and remind you that you have left a special place.

​​“Far, far away on the ocean, fanned by the kindly trade. Where tho breadfruits ripen golden-green ’neith stately palm-trees shade. Lapped in perpetual summer, lies a second Maori-Land Where the ripples of the blue lagoon cream soft on silver strand"
​So true is the old Oceanic saying, “As the chief is, so will the people be.”

Sources:Frederick William Christian. "Mangaia, The Isle Beautiful”. Manawatu Standard, 21 December 1929. (exerts edited, 2020)Frederick William Christian. "Vocabulary of Mangaian Language". Bernice P Bishop Museum, Hawaii, 1924. (exerts edited 2020)Rod Dixon. "'ACCLIMATISING EXOTICS' Frederick and Lillian Christian and the first government school on Mangaia". Draft 15 April 2020.

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