Follow
Manaia: Township 15 km north-west of Hāwera, with a 2013 population of 960. Manaia was named after Hukunui Manaia, a paramount Māori chief of the district. It was the administrative centre of the Waimate West County Council and Manaia Town Board until both became part of South Taranaki District in 1989. The town is surrounded by some of the richest dairy land in the country. In the 1940s and 1950s the ratio of dairy factories to kilometres of road was the highest in New Zealand. To help transport milk to the factories, Waimate West County began a major road-sealing project in 1916 and within a few years had some of the country’s best rural roads. In the town’s central crossroads, an 1890 marble obelisk commemorates the Pākehā casualties of the 1868–69 Taranaki wars; a second obelisk and a band rotunda are First World War memorials. The Manaia redoubt has two 1880s blockhouses and a 1912 replica of the original lookout tower. Manaia is the site of Yarrows bakery, founded in 1923. The on-shore production station for the off-shore Kupe oil and gas field is near the mouth of the Kapuni River, 4 km south-east of the town. Source: Ron Lambert, 'Taranaki places - Waimate plain', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/taranaki-places/page-5 (accessed 31 July 2022).