Whataroa

Whataroa is a small township in southern Westland on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It is located on alluvial flats to the west of the Whataroa River. State Highway 6 passes through Whataroa on its route from Ross to Franz Josef / Waiau. Hari Hari is 31 kilometres (19 mi) to the north-east, and Franz Josef is 32 km to the south-west.

The population of Whataroa and its surrounding area was 288 in the 2013 census, a decrease of 117 from 2006.

Whataroa is located in an agricultural area where dairying is the primary activity. The town contains establishments such as a school, two churches, and a dairy and tearooms. Whataroa is the base for tours of the nearby Waitangiroto Nature Reserve, the location of the only breeding colony of kōtuku or white heron (Ardea alba modesta) in New Zealand.

The Māori name of the area was Matainui, still preserved in the Matainui Creek which passes through the town. A post office was built in what is now the centre of the settlement in the 1930s and named the Matainui P.O. but when it was moved to a new building the locals petitioned for it to be renamed "Wataroa" (spelled thus), after the nearby river and flats. Wataroa was the standard spelling of the settlement's name for many years, and is still a common pronunciation by locals. The post office was changed to the official name "Whataroa" in 1951. The Māori word whata means an elevated stage, and roa denotes "long or tall".

The history of Whataroa is tied to the gold rush settlement of Ōkārito on the coast, which boomed in 1865–66. Ōkārito was the third-largest port in Westland at the time, supplying other coastal gold-mining settlements, and the inland camps at Waiho and the Forks. By the end of the 1860s most claims had been worked out, and the district's population had dropped from 4500 to 650.

Surveyors had explored the Whataroa area around 1860, and Gerhard Mueller spent three months exploring the inland area in 1866, venturing to Lake Rotokino with his Māori guides and becoming the first European to see the white heron nesting colony on the Waitangiroto River. In the 1870s Harry Friend, a butcher from Ōkārito, began running cattle on the Whataroa flats to supply the gold miners. The area between the Whataroa River and the Waitangitāhuna (called the Waitangi or Waitangitaona at the time) was tōtara forest, swampland, and pakihi clearings, all suitable for grazing. More cattle farmers followed, and an inland track was cleared past the Forks and Lake Wahapo to the interior.

Up to about 1900 the flat land was common grazing for sheep, horse, and cattle, and the settlers cooperated to muster stock in rugged scrub country. The first telephone line to the Whataroa post office was connected in 1897, and by 1900 a new road north across Mt Hercules was built, which created a outlet for farm produce in addition to the port at Ōkārito. Flax mills were set up, and several sawmills operated to clear rimu and silver pine; Paynter Sawmills continued to operate as a significant employer in the town until the late 20th century. A 1904 visit by the prime minister, Richard Seddon, led to the construction of the Whataroa Bridge in 1907–08, at a cost of £11,000. Opening in 1909, it essentially ended the need for Ōkārito as a port.

Early settler Henry Burrough subdivided his land in 1913, and many farmers arrived. Dairying was briefly popular, with a cheese and butter factory being built, but this declined when the settlement turned to raising beef cattle. The first cattle sale had happened in 1912 and in 1915 the South Western Saleyards Company was formed. Cattle farming and twice-yearly stock sales were to play a large role in Whataroa, both as an industry and a social event, with cattle being driven from as far south as the Cascade River in a two-week journey via the Haast-Paringa Cattle Track. After the opening of the road connecting Haast with Otago over the Haast Pass on 12 November 1960, it was possible to use trucks to take stock south to Cromwell, and the last mob of cattle was driven north to Whataroa in 1961.