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Tom Phillips mystery: Where is the small coastal town of Marokopa?
Libby Kirkby-McLeod, Reporter
Many people have opinions about where Tom Phillips and his children have been the past two-and-a-half years, but few could tell you much about the tiny coastal settlement of Marokopa at the centre of the search for the family.
If you were visiting the famous glow worm caves of Waitomo, you would usually head back up to State Highway 3.
But keep following Te Anga Road west instead, driving for around an hour through farm land and forestry (and not much else) and you'll hit the coast, and Marokopa.
Like the rest of Waitomo, the land around Marokopa is riddled with caves. This has led to speculation the family could be hiding out in caves, though it seems unlikely.
The whole western side of the Waitomo District, from the coastal inlets in the north to Awakino in the south, had less than a thousand people in the 2018 census. The 2018 electoral population given for Marokopa and much of the area inland was 69.
The settlement's resident population are older, and many of the houses are holiday homes in the old style - more 1950's baches than Whangamata seaside mansions.
Before Tom Phillips, if people thought of Marokopa they would have likely thought about Marokopa Falls, which is nearly 20 kilometres inland from the coast. The Department of Conservation says it is "often described as the most beautiful in the country".
The falls are part of the Marokopa river, which drains into the Tasman sea at Marokopa beach. But first it carves a path almost parallel to the beach so that hills like geological dominoes sit beside the settlement, which nests beside the river, which sits along a sandbar, which sits on the side of the beach.
Marokopa is referred to variously as being in Waikato, western Waikato, and King Country. So which is it? If you looked only at a territorial authorities map you would see Waitomo District Council is part of the Waikato Regional Council boundaries so - Waikato.
But from a historic perspective it is very much the King Country, which is more of a geographic and cultural area that includes land within the administrative boundaries of both Waikato and Manawatū-Whanganui regional councils, and some or all of Ōtorohanga, Ruapehu, Taupō and Waitomo districts.
The identification of the area as King Country is deeply important to the history of the New Zealand Wars and Ngāti Maniapoto.
If you aren't convinced think of it this way - Colin Meads from Te Kūiti is famous for playing rugby for King Country, not Waikato.
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