Ōtara

In the Māori language, Ō-Tara means ‘the place of Tara’ or ‘territory belonging to Tara’, who was a rangatira (Māori chief) of the area.[2] 'Ōtara' is in turn the shortened form of Te Puke o Tara (literally; ‘The Hill of Tara’); known also for a time as Smales Mount.[3] Te Puke o Tara was one of Ōtara's prominent volcanic cones, and prior to European settlement in the area was the site of a scoria cone pā. Like most of Auckland, the Ōtara landscape is volcanic in origin and forms a part of what is known as the East Tamaki volcanic field, with Te Puke o Tara and Mātanginui (Greenmount) having been the dominant cones of Ōtara. A third cone called Highbrook by Pākeha (white/European) settlers and in Maori Te Puke Ariki nui or Te Maunga/mountain of the Great/paramount chief. Mātangi nui was also a pā site, not too far from Puke I Āki Rangi (Point View) which connected the Mangemangeroa valley, and the areas surrounding all three cones were thought to represent the densest area of pre-European settlement in East Tamaki, favoured rich volcanic gardening soils and fresh water springs.[4][5][6]

The mana whenua of Te Rohe o Tara are the local Iwi/Maori people known as Ngāi Tai, also called Ngāti Tai. Ngāi Tai are said to have originated as a distinct iwi identity on the eastern coastline of Auckland shortly after the Tainui canoe/waka called there in about the mid-14th century.[7][8][9][10] According to Ngāi Tai tradition, Te Puke o Tara and Ōtara are named after the ariki (paramount chief) of Ngāi Tai known as Tara Te Irirangi, who lived from the late 18th century until 1852. An earlier name applied to the area was Ngā Kopi o Toi ('The Karaka Berries of Toi'), named for a karaka grove said by tradition to have been brought to Tamaki from the Chatham Islands and planted in the vicinity of Greenmount by Toi-te-huatahi.[11]

Over time, with the emergence and expansion of later hapū/sub group of Iwi and iwi identities, Ngāti Tai occupying the area of Tara became closely interlinked by marriages with Te Akitai, Ngāti Tamaoho and Ngāti Kahu of the Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) confederation of tribes known collectively as Te Wai ō Hua, and with the Hauraki Gulf peoples of Ngāti Pāoa and Ngāti Tamaterā, among others. The Ngāti Pāoa chieftain Hauauru noted in 1851 that by the mid-1830s Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Tamaterā and Te Akitai had competing interests in Ōtara.[12] While all of these groups hold ancestral relationships to the Ōtara area, Ngāi Tai continue to retain recognised mana whenua status.[13]

During the 1830s, Ōtara was among many present-day suburbs of Manukau & Auckland originally included within the boundaries of what became known as the "Tamaki Block" or "Fairburn Purchase". Between 1836 and 1839, the newly arrived Church Mission Society (CMS) missionary William Thomas Fairburn began moves to establish a mission station at Maraetai while attempting to purchase a vast tract of land from various iwi of Auckland. Brokered as "an act of Christian peacemaking" between warring tribes on the Tamaki isthmus, Fairburn obtained "signatures" to the deed of purchase from over 30 Rangatira; few, if any of whom could read or write. Fairburn originally estimated the total area to contain 40,000 acres (160 km²), but it was later surveyed as being around 83,000. When the purchase came under scrutiny from the CMS, in 1837 Fairburn signed a deed promising to return one third of the land to the original inhabitants (a transaction which never took place), and unsuccessfully attempted to offer another third to the Church. Following the Treaty of Waitangi establishing New Zealand as a British Overseas Territories in 1840, Fairburn came under investigation from the new Government's Land Claims Commission. Following a protracted investigation (during which time Fairburn resigned from the mission), in 1848 the Commission disallowed Fairburn's original claim, awarding him instead a much smaller grant of just under 5,500 acres (22 km²). The remainder of the land, including Ōtara, was retained by the Crown as "surplus land" to be onsold to European settlers. Following the protests of Hori Te Whetuki on behalf of Ngāi Tai, in 1854 the Commission granted a "Native Reservation" of just over 6,000 acres (24 km²) at Duders Beach (Umupuia) to "the chiefs of the Ngatitai" and paid them £500 compensation, on the condition that they sign an agreement to vacate all other lands within the original purchase boundaries, and order all other iwi to do the same.

European settlement of Ōtara began in earnest from the 1850s onwards, with most settlers of the wider East Tamaki area being Scottish and Irish Presbyterians. The most prominent settler of Ōtara during this period was the Wesleyan missionary Reverend Gideon Smales. Smales had arrived from England in 1840, and upon his retirement moved to settle at East Tamaki, purchasing a 400-acre (1.6 km²) block from the Government in 1855, which included Te Puke Ō Tara. Smales farmed the land at the foot of Te Puke Ō Tara and opened a quarry on the mountain; the entirety of which has since been destroyed. Mātanginui Pā was also largely destroyed by quarrying from 1870 onwards and is now the site of the Greenmount Landfill.[14][15][16] 13 acres (53,000 m²) from the Smales Mount/Puke Ō Tara estate on the remains of the original cone now form reserve known as Te Puke Ō Tara Hampton Park, which includes a stone church built in the 1860s and the remains of extensive stone walls from Smales' farm, both constructed from the quarried scoria.

Farming and rural industries remained the dominant characteristic of Ōtara throughout the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Following World War II, Otara was developed by the Auckland Regional Authority as a State Housing area.