Pātoromu Church, Whāngārā Mai Tawhiti, Te Tairāwhiti

We were welcomed to Pātoromu in mid-2025 by Reverend Hone Kaiwai, who spent his early years in Whāngārā before his family moved to Wellington. Having lived most of his life away from Whāngārā, he retired from his first career a few years ago and returned home, becoming minister of Pātoromu. The generator on the back of his ute turns the lights on in the church on the Sunday mornings when there are services. We are grateful to Rev. Hone for his support of this project.

We invite you to virtually enter Pātoromu, where you can hear Rev. Hone speak about its history, alongside stories from others with a long connection to the church or to Whāngārā.

Outside the church building you can hear from Tā Derek Lardelli, esteemed kapa haka leader (for the rōpū Whāngārā Mai Tawhiti), artist, composer of haka, and cultural advisor to the All Blacks, who spoke to us about the whenua on which Pātoromu, the marae at Whāngārā and the surrounding houses and farms stand. His words are supplemented or illustrated by artwork, photographs, genealogical trees, and newspaper articles.

Inside the church, you’ll find stories about the church and the treasured objects within it, and about the community in Whāngārā, past and present, shared by Ope Maxwell, youngest daughter of Te Hira Paenga, an important lay leader in Whāngārā Pariha; Arihia Mataira, daughter of Hinemahi Paenga, another of Te Hira and Maraea Paenga’s daughters, who took on significant leadership positions in her turn; Annette Wehi, current Chair of the Whāngārā C4 Trust, which manages the whenua on which Pātoromu stands; and Rev. Hone Kaiwai.

In addition to the kōrero of these leaders, you’ll also find historical photographs, newspaper articles, and music attached to these tags, adding additional layers to the history of Pātoromu.

By scrolling up to the large image of Pātoromu above and clicking the ‘play’ symbol, or, for a more immersive version, by clicking on this link, you will be virtually deposited in front of the memorial gates outside Pātoromu Church. You can make this experience even more immersive by clicking on the Fullscreen icon in the bottom right corner, or if you have a VR headset, you can click the ‘View in VR’ icon next to that.

Tags

You’ll immediately spot a green circle standing out of the grass in front of you; this is a tag. Tags in this scan contain videos, music, primary documents or other historical information. To view their contents, you hold your mouse over a tag (videos will begin to play automatically).

Some tags have more than one resource attached to them. To access all of these, look for the arrow on the right side of the video or image, and click on that to move along (there is also a left-facing arrow, which will scroll through the resources in the opposite direction).

The tags are in different colours. These colours indicate what kinds of stories you’ll find attached to each one:

	Green: stories of whenua and tupuna.
	Pink: stories about the church building and the histories of objects within it.
	Blue: stories about the community of Pātoromu, past and present, including its ministers and lay leaders.
	Purple: stories which connect community to parts of the physical church (e.g. the ANZAC memorial plaque on the wall contains kōrero about the ways ANZAC Day is and was celebrated at Pātoromu)
	Yellow: reflections on future hopes and plans for the church.

Navigation

In order to move around the scan, use your mouse to click in a direction you want to go. If you click on a tag, you’ll be pulled up close to it. You will also be able to see some faint white circles on the ground at regular intervals; if you click on those circles, you’ll be brought to ‘stand’ in that position. To move side to side, you can click and hold your mouse, and pull it in the direction you want to travel (left, right, up, down)

Where to go

Travelling from tag to tag is a ‘choose your own adventure’ situation—you can explore them in any order you wish. But we have also designed a pathway along which you can travel, with some chronological and/or thematic connections.

In order to follow the designed pathway, start at the gate and follow the four green tabs in the order you encounter them, to the right across the front of the church, until you reach Ahimāunu, the foundation stone. Next, return along the front of the church and head towards the main church door, where on the front steps you can discover stories about the building of this church and those church buildings which preceded it. Inside the church, we recommend that you move to the centre aisle and then explore the stories on the pews to your left-hand side as you ‘walk’ towards the altar. In the church nave, explore stories attached to the organ, altar, and main window, then head back down the altar, exploring community stories placed on the other side of the pews. At the back of the church are some stories on the Roll of Honour, the baptismal font, the kids’ table, and the noticeboard. The yellow tag at the back table looks ahead to the future of Pātoromu. Alternatively, if you dock the video in the first tag, you’ll notice at the top that it will say ‘1 of 23’. You can click through using the arrows next to those numbers and you will be pulled from tag to tag within the scan, in the above order.

How to view historical resources

If you hover your mouse over a tag, material will load as a pop-up and any video will start automatically playing. There is important information in the text in each tag, explaining context and providing references to the sources shared here. To read it, click ‘View more’ at the bottom, and a box will open to the right hand side of the screen. You can also achieve the same effect by clicking the docking symbol on the top right of the pop-up tab, which looks like this:

To enlarge any file you want to look at, you can double click on videos, photos, newspaper articles, etc, either from the pop-up view or when they’re docked on the right hand side of the screen, and they will open in a large format in the centre of your screen. To close them again, touch the esc key on your keyboard.

• Kauri Tangohau, great-great-grandson of Wi Te Hauwaho Tangohau, who was the longest-serving minister in Whāngārā (1926–1948) as well as minister when the current church was built and consecrated, worked on this project. He interviewed Sir Derek Lardelli, translated his words, undertook historical research into the church and whenua, and can be heard accompanying Pātoromu congregation on guitar, in the video tagged to the organ.
• Matterport scanning was done by Te Huiarei Wano and Melka Oakley, ToroTech (Gisborne).
• Camerawork: In Tairāwhiti, TakirauPro filmed interviews in Pātoromu and outside Whitireia, one of the wharenui at Whāngārā marae, filmed a church service, and took footage of Whāngārā Mai Tawhiti on the ground and in the air. Thanks to Hataraka Ngata-Gibson and Ben Cowper, with support from Puawai Ngata-Gibson and Maia Rangihuna of TakirauPro.
  In Auckland, Ethan Smith of Kaitiaki Creative filmed the interview with Nanny Ope Maxwell.
• Film editing was done by Amy Olrick and Josh Olrick of Skycross Media.
• Website design: Two Sparrows Ltd.
• Genevieve de Pont undertook project management, conducted all interviews not otherwise credited, guided the film editing and subtitling, designed the exhibition pathways and tag design, collated all the historical documentation, and is responsible for the final product.