In the 1880s, a large tract of land in Wainuiototo Bay, on the Coromandel, was farmed by Enoch Mason. Eighty years later this land had passed down to his great-grandson, Richard Mason, who, in 1968 established a commune on the property.

This commune hosted several alternative music festivals and drop-outs, dope smokers and hippies began to camp on the land in house trucks and teepees. However, Mason become increasingly concerned with environmental issues and began to attract activists and radicals. He wrote several books on sustainable farming in which he denounced the commercialisation of food by multinationals. Mason believed that the world could end soon in a nuclear holocaust and that people had to do all that they could to save the planet, by whatever means.

He recognised that there were many, many problems in the world, from deforestation of the rain forests, to poverty and famine in the Third World - as well as domestic violence and crime. There were too many issues for any one person to do anything about. But he argued that everything could be solved if every person chose just one issue that they felt passionately about, and then did something about it.

One of the issues that upset him most was commercial whaling and he decided to do something radical to end the slaughter of whales. In 1974 he bought a derelict uboat, and the focus of the community then shifted to the restoration of this submarine. The commune attracted WWOOFers with technical expertise such as welding, as well as radical activists and disciples of Mason who regarded him as something of a prophet. When the uboat did not return from it’s first mission in 1986, the community began to fall apart, but a core group still lives on the property following Mason’s teachings.