Mātāwai is a small inland settlement in the
Gisborne Region in the northeast of
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
's
North Island
The North Island ( , 'the fish of Māui', historically New Ulster) is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but less populous South Island by Cook Strait. With an area of , it is the List ...
. It is located on the upper reaches of the
Mōtū River
The Mōtū River is a major waterway in the eastern part of the North Island of New Zealand. It rises south-west of Mātāwai in the Gisborne District, on the south-western side of the Raukūmara Range, and heads roughly northwards to the Pacif ...
, in the
Raukumara Range.
It is on
State Highway 2 between
Gisborne and
Ōpōtiki
Ōpōtiki (; from ''Ōpōtiki-Mai-Tawhiti'') is a town in the eastern Bay of Plenty in the North Island of New Zealand. It houses the headquarters of the Ōpōtiki District Council, the mayor of Ōpōtiki and comes under the Bay of Plenty Region ...
.
The Matawai War Memorial Hall was opened in 1952, replacing a previous hall built in 1910. It was refurbished in 2016 to accommodate war rolls of honour from neighbouring communities.
Parks
The settlement's main reserve, Matawai Reserve, is a sports ground and local park.
Marae
The local Mātāwai Marae and Tapapa meeting house is a meeting place of
Te Aitanga ā Māhaki's
hapū
In Māori language, Māori and New Zealand English, a ' ("subtribe", or "clan") functions as "the basic political unit within Māori society". A Māori person can belong to or have links to many hapū. Historically, each hapū had its own chief ...
of
Ngā Pōtiki,
Ngāti Mātāwai,
Ngāti Wahia and
Te Whānau a Taupara.
In October 2020, the Government committed $812,548 from the
Provincial Growth Fund
Shane Geoffrey Jones (born 3 September 1959) is a New Zealand politician and a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the New Zealand First party.
Jones' political career began 2005 New Zealand general election, in 2005 as a l ...
to upgrade it and
Te Wainui Marae, creating 15.4 jobs.
Education
Matawai School is a Year 1–8 co-educational public primary school.
In 2019, it was a
decile
In descriptive statistics, a decile is any of the nine values that divide the sorted data into ten equal parts, so that each part represents 1/10 of the sample or population. A decile is one possible form of a quantile; others include the quartile ...
4 school with a roll of 58.
The nearby Otoko School was closed in 1997.
Climate
Railway station
Railway houses were built in 1912''
'' and
PWD
pwd (print working directory) is a shell command that reports the working directory path to standard output.
Although often associated with Unix, its predecessor Multics had a pwd command (which was a short name of the print_wdir command) from ...
started a train service in May 1913.
By 2 November 1914, when the
Moutohora Branch officially opened from Otoko, Mātāwai station also had a building, platform, x goods shed, loading bank, cattle and sheep yards, engine shed, a 6,000 gallon water vat and a
passing loop
A passing loop (UK usage) or passing siding (North America) (also called a crossing loop, crossing place, refuge loop or, colloquially, a hole) is a place on a single line railway or tramway, often located at or near a station, where trains o ...
for 41 wagons, from
Gisborne. The branch was extended to Moutohora in November 1917. Until 7 January 1918 there was a stationmaster. A house was added in 1921 and 2 more in 1942. The station closed with the branch on 15 March 1959.''
''
References
Populated places in the Gisborne District
{{Gisborne-geo-stub