Omokoroa InfoIn 1877 a retired minister, Joseph Tice Gellibrand, began buying land on the peninsula and in Tauranga. He kept buying until he owned practically the whole of Ōmokoroa. Out near the Point he built a large kauri homestead and put money and labour into making the land productive.
Gellibrand was a keen naturalist. He collected seeds on his travels and sent them home, and the peninsula was planted with many exotic trees and shrubs as a result. The walnut trees at Walnut Grove are part of the same legacy.
In 1878 his adopted daughter Elizabeth married Captain Arthur Crapp. Returning from the wedding in Auckland, Gellibrand’s wife Selina drowned on Tauranga Harbour within sight of her own home.
Arthur Crapp had been a surveyor and a member of the Armed Constabulary. He became a friend and adviser to Gellibrand, later took over the management of the property, and it was he who germinated and planted many of the seeds Gellibrand had sent back. Trees planted by the two men between the late 1870s and 1900 still stand today, some of them unusual specimens.
In 1975 G V Crapp, who was born on the property and lived at Ōmokoroa Beach all his life, gifted just over two hectares to the nation. That land is now the Gerald Crapp Historic Reserve, classified as Historic for its association with the family, with European settlement of the district, and with the pre-European occupation of the headland.