Beach photo by Hrvoje Grubisic.
Aedgar’s words are written this way.
Nerida’s words are written like this.
[Whispering] Hello.
Hello. Greetings and thank you for coming.
You’re welcome. Not an easy place to come to. Very busy. Very disturbed.
What is the problem here?
Very difficult to get through—like very dense. Very dense environment. Too many lost spirits.
Aah.
Very unfortunate place in some aspects. It’s almost, coming to talk to you, almost felt like wading through—dark matter.
The feeling of it is very different from the way it looks. Photo by Claudia Jocher.
Pause
Very, very unhappy place. It is coming through as a battlefield.
This place is not what it looks like.
The feeling of it is very different to the way it looks—to the way it looks now. Very, very unfortunate.
Was there a massacre here?
We can feel…torture.
Long, long tortures before finishing ‘em just to make space for new ones.
Sigh
So they killed them in the end, not to make an end to the suffering. Just to make space.
Pause
People of colour. Being tortured by other people—you can’t say they’ve not been ‘of colour’, but different.
Famine.
Because people of colour were not allowed to access the edge of the water. Can’t live a long time on leaves. The roots growing in this area can’t be eaten—not only because they are too dense.
Maori fruit-pigeon trap, Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, New Zealand. Photo by Andy king50.
There were traps for small birds.
Because this distinctive group of people had to hide, there wasn’t much hunting going on. If they were discovered, they’d have gone down the path of all the others.
That wasn’t really a chance to get out of here, either.
You won’t find people of colour here—because they can feel it, normally.
It used to be their place.
It was taken away in a very graphic kind of way.
So it got stuck through the generations, what happened. You won’t find much of it in the history books. There might be one historic paper where you can find a hint.
If you’re sensitive to these kinds of things, it is unbearable. Most of the people of colour would feel it. That’s why you can’t find them here. They are all gone away to other bays, not this one.
This bay was favoured by the ones that came in because you have direct access from the sea to other waterways without having to make too much effort.
It was—nowadays you might call it a strategic point—to get further inland, easily. You would need to picture this area with dense forest.
‘Picture this area with dense forest’. Pic courtesy of Trentis.
So there was the bay, there was the access to the other waterways, that went through dense forest. There were some patches created here and there, but not the way it is now.
Yes. They took the forests.
They took it to build things and to clear areas to make sure the others couldn’t hide. You can’t hide in an area that’s got no trees.
[Whispers] Yes.
For now, you can consider it as an area very suitable to the people that took over, because they made it the way they wanted it to be. They can’t feel the spirits around, these unhappy spirits.
That’s why they prefer to stay here.
Some of them get a feeling that things might be a bit bad.
Or, not quite right.
They can’t exactly tell what it is because the way it looks is so different to the way it feels. And to them, who can’t feel it, there is a bit of a discrepancy between these things, but they can’t tell because their feelings are not strong enough.
‘We could go for a boat ride. It was a good day.’ Photo courtesy Isles Yacht Club.
It’s like, ‘We caught some fish. Was a good day.’ ‘Oh, we could go for a boat ride. It was a good day.’ ‘Walking around on the beach. It was a good day.’ Because they can’t feel the land and the spirits.
Bless them.
They would be walking up and down the beach screaming.
But then, that was a bit about our trouble getting here. So, how can we be of any help to you?
I appreciate very much the insight into the history of the place.
Along the coast, especially this part, there are lots of places like this.
That’s right.