The Tihoi land purchase.

Photocopied typescript with handwritten annotations. The following description of the typescript is taken from correspondence between the author, lawyer N.D. Ferguson and Professor Keith Sorrenson of the Department of History at the time that the item was donated to the Library.

The account is in two parts, the first starts in 1919 with the first approach to the [Maori] owners by the crown and ends in 1951 when the crown having obtained by purchase about 95% by value of several large blocks which were subdivisions of the original Tihoi Block applied to the Native Land Court for Partition Orders.

The second part commences c. 1965 when Taupo County began to levy rates on the Maori blocks in Kawakawa Bay. In 1972 Ferguson was asked to represent the owners at a hearing in the Maori Land Court at Taupo, of an application by Taupo County to have the blocks in Kawakawa Bay vested in the Maori Trustee for sale on account of unpaid rates. The hearing was adjourned and the County's authority to act was revoked, and Ferguson began to investigate the matter independently.