02/06/2026
Ngā Tāngata o Te Hiku o Te Ika 💚👨👩👧👦🌿
Tom Allan
"Life was really great back in the early '50s, up into the '60s. At that time, there was no health and safety. We didn’t have TV, but we had matches. We built things; we built tin boats and sailed them up and down the rivers here. There were suspension bridges all around Kaitaia, and instead of taking the road, we’d cross over on the swing bridges just to make them move.
Kaitaia was a place of tradesmen then. We’d walk home from Kaitaia Primary and visit the Dutch cobblers on Bank Street, watching them make boots, or scrounge bits of wood from the joinery shop to build things at home. We’d even scavenge bits of plaster from the plasterworks to draw hopscotch squares on the footpaths. An empty nugget tin was worth gold, that was our marker. You’d hunt behind hedges for drink bottles to return for a deposit, just to get enough for a seat at the movies.
My high school teachers shaped how I look at the world. Mr. McMahon had a military air about him, and while we feared him, we learned the importance of discipline. Mr. Wilson, our woodwork teacher, taught us how to chisel, hammer, and draw straight lines. Teachers back then spent their time with the students rather than filling out forms for the government. The biggest lesson I took from that time was a sense of discipline and the importance of doing right by people, a value I still carry today. I’m the oldest of four children, and it is ironic that all four of us are now in our seventies and still working. That work ethic was ingrained in us young.
My trade was actually instrument and clockmaking, automotive and industrialgauges. I spent years doing industrial engraving and die-sinking. But as the world shifted from transistors to microprocessors, I moved into computers. In the '80s, I became Apple Dealer #11.
By the year 2000, I found myself helping Te Hiku Hauora. The building we occupy had been confiscated from the Crown and was slated for demolition. A group of our elders broke in to occupy it, and they needed someone with computer experience to network the place. I didn't set out to be a leader; I was just the guy who could make the systems talk to each other. We took that building from a derelict dump into a restored space.
When we began Te Hiku Hauora, we were looked down upon. People would remark, 'What do those Māori know about health?'. We were audited like nobody’s business, far more than European organisations with the same contracts. But we never lost a contract through incompetence. We met or exceeded every government expectation. We moved from a nurse-led clinic to bringing in doctors, and we built the clinic at Mamaru, we had saved up and paid in cash.
I’ve seen this area change over generations, but the spirit of Te Hiku remains. People here still have a sense of community. We see a problem, like how m**h affects everybody, and people from all walks of life come together to find a solution. It is a friendly place. Being small, we are all connected; I’ve realised through genealogy that I share cousins with people I never knew I was related to.
These days, I still fix clocks and do laserengraving, but I am also deeply involved in my whakapapa. I’ve discovered my own connections, including Viking ancestry through my father’s Fleet line. I serve as a Justice of the Peace and a marriage celebrant. I make guava jelly to give to our kuia and kaumātua.
If I could sit down with the rangatahi of Te Hiku today and give them one piece of wisdom, it would be this: Be educated, even though it’s hoha. Do a course, even if it’s not school. That will get you somewhere in life. And the other bit of wisdom? Don't argue with fools, because from a distance, an observer won't know who’s who.
I’m also fond of whakataukī. At Te Hiku Hauora, we have a karakia every morning and I put up a whakataukī. My favourite one suggests the most significant things about someone or som**hing are not immediately visible.
‘Ko te toka Akiha he toka whitinga rā, ko te toka Māpuna, mā te ripo kau noa e kitea ai.’
Do not liken me to the rock where seagulls sit in the sunshine and squabble, but liken me to the rock in the deep, swirling waters.
That is what we strive for, that depth."
