Rawene is a town on the south side of the Hokianga harbour, in Northland, New Zealand.

[4] Rawene started as a timber centre, with a mill and shipyards[5] established in the early 19th century.

[4] Captain James Herd in 1822 had taken out the first shipment of kauri from the Hokianga in his ship Providence.

Starting at Stewart Island / Rakiura,[7] Herd sailed up the east coast eventually rounding North Cape to enter Hokianga - his old stamping ground.

[9] Later it was called "Hokianga Township", and in 1884 it became "Rawene", possibly to identify the post office and telegraph.

[11] Aperahama Taonui, chief of Te Popoto hapū, allegedly operated a school at Rawene in the mid-19th century.

[12] James Reddy Clendon, previously the United States Consul to New Zealand, settled in Rawene in 1862 and served as the local magistrate under the Native Circuit Courts Act until 1867.

[16] On 5 May 1898 120 men marched from Rawene to Waima to deal with the "rebels", but the dispute was settled without them.

[19] Dr George McCall Smith headed the hospital from 1914 to 1948 and developed a unique health-system for the Hokianga.

[20] Dr Smith became a practitioner of "painless childbirth" in the early 1930s, using premedication with the barbiturate Nembutal combined with Hyoscine.

Smith fronted up with case notes on his last two hundred patients, and his results could not be bettered anywhere.

[22] This meant that all medical officers in the Hokianga were salaried, and all consultations, pharmaceuticals, investigations and hospital admissions were free.

The settlement is part of the larger Hokianga South statistical area.

The results were 55.7% European (Pākehā); 61.4% Māori; 8.2% Pasifika; 2.5% Asian; 0.6% Middle Eastern, Latin American and African New Zealanders (MELAA); and 1.3% other, which includes people giving their ethnicity as "New Zealander".

The results were 55.4% European (Pākehā); 62.3% Māori; 6.2% Pasifika; 1.8% Asian; 0.7% Middle Eastern, Latin American and African New Zealanders (MELAA); and 2.2% other, which includes people giving their ethnicity as "New Zealander".