Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

Gadzooks! The audacity of the man. Listen to this.

“Come on Tauranga, don’t make me laugh,” says Jesse Mulligan. You know Jesse. The Auckland-based media celeb. He’s on more platforms than a station master – radio, TV, newspapers. Hard to dislike him – but he’s giving us good reason to try.

“You’re nice enough,” he tells Tauranga. “But you come up short against New Zealand’s greatest city.”

Where did this come from? He’s comparing Kirikiriroa to Tauranga. Jesse, maybe a lapsed stand-up comic but this is as funny as a train wreck.

Jesse is a favourite son of Kirikiriroa. Grew up there, loves it. But not enough to live there. What does that tell us?

Beige

Now he’s crapping on Tauranga in a national news story, when crapping on Kirikiriroa is actually the established national pastime. Everyone craps on Kirikiriroa. It’s as Kiwi as cheerios at a kids party.

And Kirikiriroa asks for it.

Mention fog, a deep, fast-flowing creek full of car wrecks and stolen property, cow byres and cow bells, bogans and streets racers, and what do you think of? Kirikiriroa of course. Legend has it Kirikiriroa is the place guys try to win over a love interest with a burnout.

Here’s a ringing endorsement from a local. “Kirikiriroa is terrible only because it’s underwhelming. If Kirikiriroa was a colour it would be beige. If it was food it would be a protein shake. Kirikiriroa is as exciting as discussing shrubbery.”

You started it Jesse.

And a sales pitch in one sentence. “If you want to move somewhere lacking everything that makes New Zealand endearing and exciting, then Kirikiriroa is for you.” Locals apparently compare their city to Gore to make themselves feel better.

This all came on the back of vague population data indicating Kirikiriroa has overtaken Tauranga as the country’s fastest growing city – whoopee s#*t!

An aberration

In the year to June 2023  Kirikiriroa grew 3.4 per cent, Tauranga 2.5 per cent. Infinitesimal stuff – cos over the longer term, for five years to June 2023, Tauranga grew 2.6 per cent, Kirikiriroa 1.9 per cent.  So, says Statistics NZ, the notion that Tauranga is the fastest growing area is “largely correct”, and the 2023 stat an aberration.

Then Jesse chimes in, wanting to turn it into a competition. They cling to the small stuff over the hill. “Cheer up Tauranga,” says Jesse. “Go make a sandcastle.”

We will because we can – we have sand, you only have mud and gravel.

Kirikiriroa means long stretch of gravel – hardly a romantic notion, but all the same mellifluous, as most Maori place names are. And I just can’t bring myself to use the ‘H’ word, because it’s a nod to that city’s colonialist past. ‘H’ was named for John Fane Charles ‘H’, a British soldier killed while killing our tangata whenua at Gate Pā. Seems he never even set foot in a city that took his name. But people ‘over there’ are entrenched. A poll was held after a Mayor suggested the city revert to its Maori name – Kirikiriroa. But nuh-uh! Not! No! Never! They even preferred the nonsense name ‘Tron’ to Kirikiriroa. 

Whereas we in the Bay embrace Te Reo – we are proudly Tauranga – the ‘resting place or safe anchorage’ – pronounced ‘toe-rong-uh’ please.

In his jibe, and I trust it’s a friendly one, Jesse is elevating ‘H’ to New Zealand’s “greatest city”. Tauranga is a city Jesse, ‘H’ is a suburb, Auckland’s most southern suburb. Soon it’ll be gobbled up by the super city lingering above it. You even have commuter trains for workers escaping to Auckland for the day. Because, as they say, any time out of ‘H’ has to be good time.

Of course he would talk up Kirikiriroa’s “world class garden”. Well, come on over Jesse, because the entire Bay of Plenty is a “world class garden” – not a dime-at-the-door ‘funsy’ garden but a veritable cornucopia, a vast and bountiful citrus and sub-tropical fruit bowl. There’s a reason it’s called Bay of Plenty.

No contest!

You have fog – dense, wet stuff. At best, delicate lungs are exposed to cold watery-air-causing chills, coughs, sniffles and pockets filled with soggy tissues. At worst it undermines your emotional wellbeing – read ‘depression’. Over the hill we’re a chipper, healthy bunch because we have sun and sea breezes. Pop over if you need some therapy.

A couple of other rousing reviews of ‘H’. “I don’t have an opinion about ‘H’, because I always go through it, never to it.” And: “I’d rather be lost at sea for three months than spend a weekend in Kirikiriroa”. “Tauranga only has one coastline,” says Jesse. That’s right – 260km plus a few islands and three harbours. But then he inanely suggests ‘H’ has two coasts: “The eastern and western banks of the mighty Waikato River.” Now that’s a stretch, because ‘H’ is unequivocally landlocked, a mud bank is not a coast and that “mighty” river is dead spooky, deep, dark and foreboding. And you can’t compare wetlands and peat bog vegetation to the golden sands and surf that make up our vast and bountiful ocean playground? No contest.