Taharoa Destiny
Pictured above is one of the ships that comes to Taharoa several times during the year. It lies anchored 3 miles from shore while
Our Story
We lived on the West Coast of the North Island in the small coastal rural community of Taharoa. My husband was born and bred there, and in the last 26 years he worked at the local steel mining site for New Zealand Steel where they export iron sand to the Asian markets, of which they have done for over 40 years.
We are one of two steel mining site in New Zealand that tunnels Ironsand underwater, through pipes to the waiting barge ships that come to our waters on a monthly basis. The large ships are too big to dock at any of our main city ports and it is for this reason that when they come to Taharoa, they have to sit tied up to a buoy 3 miles out from shore while the processed iron sand is tunneled out to their ship. It normally takes 3 days to fill the ship before it travels back to its own country.
Working there over the years has brought many of the families financial stability in most cases. There were a lot of perks in working in an isolated rural area, an hours drive to the nearest town. And the uniqueness of the small community lies in the whanau environment, where all of the families are related to each other, because of their link to the land, they are the Tangata Whenua .
Early 2017, New Zealand Steel sold the Taharoa Mining Site to a new company Taharoa MIning Investments Limited. This was the beginning of the end for over 30 employees who were to be made redundant.
We were one of those families - and it is from there that our story begins.
