Rotunda at Ngaruawahia 1948

In Douglas MacDiarmid’s early days in Europe, he sometimes nostalgically painted New Zealand scenes from memory. The Ngaruawahia Band Rotunda is one of these fond recollections.

It’s a highly visible landmark Douglas would have seen on family holidays around the North Island, or from the train to Auckland. Situated 20 kilometres north west of Hamilton, the small dairy farming town of Ngaruawahia (population 5,500) is very strategically situated at the confluence of the Waikato and Waipa Rivers.

The elegant rotunda presides over both the meeting of these rivers and the main railway line. Until recently it was also on the main highway between Hamilton and Auckland.

It dates back to 1912, built by the local regatta association in the public domain and no doubt witness to many competitive boat skirmishes on the river. In September 1985 the rotunda was declared a New Zealand National Historic Landmark, under the Historic Places Trust, now known as Heritage New Zealand. Refurbished in 1998, it still retains its distinctive seven-sided, bull-nosed roof, central spire, decorative iron posts and original wooden ceiling. Obviously, it was built to last through good times and bad and continues to be a significant feature of the town, central to the past and present cultural and recreational life of the district.

Ngaruawahia itself is packed with history. It was once considered as a potential capital of New Zealand, and is regarded to be the capital of Māoridom in New Zealand – the Kingitanga, home of the Māori King.

Douglas’ little watercolour of the band rotunda was painted in France in 1948 and brought back to New Zealand to appear in his first solo, commercial dealer exhibition in the trailblazing Gallery of Helen Hitchings, at Wellington in May 1950. The catalogue from this exhibition lists the painting as No 54, five guineas. Nowadays Rotunda at Ngaruawahia lives in the Waikato Museum of Art and History in Hamilton. The painting appears in a magnificent book Treasures of the Waikato, cataloguing the scope and cultural richness of the Trust Waikato Art and Taonga collection. Published in November 2017, the book has been distributed to libraries and schools throughout the Hamilton region as an valuable educational and historical resource for the community.