A walk up some 250 steps to the Cape Palliser Lighthouse on the southernmost point of the North Island. The views are awesome but it was too cloudy to see the South Island on the day we visited.
The 5km stretch of road from Ngawi to Cape Palliser is interesting, there are two concrete fords to drive over. Also a seal colony which we didn’t see.
Stone walled gardens
There were stone walled gardens at Cape Palliser.
… Adkin (1955) drew attention to an apparently high density of settlement in eastern Palliser Bay and found artifacts of typical archaic forms, many of which ended up in private hands or in the Museum of New Zealand collection (Leach 1981). Four burials, one with a shark’s tooth necklace, were excavated at the mouth of the Pararaki River in the 1950s and 1960s (Davis 1959;Cairns 1971; Leach 1981; Walton 1994). Wellman (1962b) describes a wave-cut section about 3 km west of Cape Palliser lighthouse with moa bone (Euryapteryx geranoides) and oven stones near the top. … Source ResearchGate
The land may have been abandoned because of invasion, seismic activity or a tsunami in the 16th century or early 17th century.
This 156 metre rock is the remains of a volcanic crater. From about half way up a chain has to be used to get to the top. The climb is worthwhile, there are 360 degree views from the top although Mount Taranaki was obscured by cloud on this occasion.
There are two tracks, I recommend the nature trail.
The Jubilee track is straight up for an hour with no views. It was a nice walk with friends, great for my friend who wanted exercise, meh for me.
This walk had the most fungi I’ve seen anywhere.
At the start of the walk is a large rata, the only one in the reserve.
The Patupaiarahe
This mountain used to be the home of the ancient patupaiarehe. They weren’t fairies, some looked like Maori, some like Europeans.
The name Ngongotaha is derived from an encounter with them. It means to drink water from the calabash, which was offered to Ihenga (the grandson of Tamatekapua) by a patupaiarehe maiden when he was exploring the country around Rotorua. There’s no water up the top of the mountain and Ihenga was thirsty.
Normally the elusive patupaiarehe had no truck with Maori but Ihenga made friends with them and he eventually lived near the mountain on the banks of the Waitete Stream.
The patupaiarehe left the mountain and moved west after the Maori accidentally or deliberately burned them out.
“The name of that tribe of Patu-paiarehe was Ngati-Rua, and the chiefs of that tribe in the days of my ancestor Ihenga were Tuehu, Te Rangitamai, Tongakohu, and Rotokohu. The people were very numerous; there were a thousand or perhaps many more on Ngongotaha.
They were an iwi atua (a god-like race, a people of supernatural powers). In appearance some of them were very much like the Maori people of today; others resembled the pakeha race. The colour of most of them was kiri puwhero (reddish skins), and their hair had the red or golden tinge which we call uru-kehu.
Some had black eyes, some blue like fair-skinned Europeans. They were about the same height as ourselves. Some of their women were very beautiful, very fair of complexion, with shining fair hair.
They wore chiefly the flax garments called pakerangi, dyed a red colour; they also wore the rough mats pora and pureke. In disposition they were peaceful; they were not a war-loving, angry people.
Their food consisted of the products of the forest, and they also came down to this Lake Rotorua to catch inanga (whitebait.)
There was one curious characteristic of these Patu-paiarehe; they had a great dread of the steam that rose from cooked food. In the evenings, when the Maori people living at Te Raho-o-te-Rangipiere and other places near the fairy abodes opened their cooking-ovens, all the Patu-paiarehe retired to their houses immediately they saw the clouds of vapour rising, and shut themselves up; they were afraid of the mamaoa—the steam.
Fairy Springs: so named because the Patupaiarehe would descend the slopes of Mount Ngongotaha to visit the springs at night and to drink from the waters.
Fairy Springs, Mitai Maori Village
Nearby Rainbow Springs: A rainbow would appear over the spring, therefore Rainbow Springs is another name given to this location.
Unfortunately the wildlife park that was here has been closed after 90 years of business – because of the Covid lockdowns.
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