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Town near the shores of Tauranga Harbour, 35 km north-west of Tauranga. Katikati is part of a special Protestant settlement established by George Vesey Stewart in the 1870s. Settlers included tenant farmers and immigrants with capital from the north of Ireland, in particular County Tyrone, where Stewart had tenants. In the early 1960s there were important archaeological investigations of an old Māori settlement at Te Kauri. The present town was laid out in 1879 on the south bank of the Uretara River.
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Meaning of place name
When Tamatekapua, commander of the Arawa canoe, stopped here for a meal, his men ate their food quickly, but Tama nibbled his slowly, hence Katikati-o-Tamatekapua, katikati: nibbling; o: of; Tamatekapua. Reputedly the original name of Waterford was changed to Katikati because the town's founder George Vesey Stewart did not want to pay extra on telegrams from Britain by adding the words ‘New Zealand’ (the original Waterford being in Ireland).
