Ahipara

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Ahipara is based 14 kms west of Kaitaia, and has a proud history of Maori settlement, gum digging and sea adventures. The name Ahipara means ‘Sacred Fire’ this ancient fire was kept burning constantly for the village, on the ground where the school is now located. Ahipara is in the tribal area of the Te Rarawa people, and descendants of the waka Tinana carried the first people here from the Pacific, landing at Tauroa on the south end of the reef past Shipwreck Bay.

Situated on Ahipara Bay, Ahipara is 18 km north-west of Ahipara Hill, a former gum-digging area and now the site of a historic reserve. The Māori population of Ahipara in the 1950s was reported on (under the name Kōtare) by anthropologist Joan Metge, in A new Māori migration: rural and urban relations in northern New Zealand (1964).