This is a much loved bush reserve. Formerly part of Woodlands Estate, Hukutaia Domain was gifted to the people of Opotiki by E.M.Hutchinson. In 1918 it was set aside as a reserve, mainly to protect Taketakerau, an ancient burial tree which was once the final resting place of the ancestral remains of the Te Upokorehe iwi. The puriri tree was highly tapu (sacred, forbidden to touch).
Taketakerau is over 2000 years old. In 1913 after the tree was damaged in a storm, a large cache of bones was discovered hidden deep within the hollow of the old tree. After the tree was damaged the remains were buried elsewhere.
As well as the puriri burial tree and mighty tawa trees, the reserve has rare plants and abundant bird life. This is the noisiest reserve we’ve walked through as far as the birds go, probably because the pests and predators are kept down.
I give the reserve a triple A – for ancient, atmospheric and amazing.
This is the only patch of bush left on the Gisborne plains. It’s unique in that Kahikatea, which likes swampy soil, and Puriri, which likes well drained soil, grow together. The Puriri has the room to grow up tall and straight rather than branching out like it normally does.
The reserve is small but very well kept.
History
Charles Gray was born in Huntingdon, England in 1840 and spent time at sea in his formative years. In 1870 he emigrated to Queensland, where he found employment as a farm worker. After moving to New Zealand, he purchased Waiohika Farm and became a notable member of the community.
In 1914 the Commissioner of Crown Lands, Napier proposed the purchase of Kowhai Domain to form present day Gray’s Bush, however the Minister of Lands vetoed the idea. Following Gray’s death in 1918, his Trustees approached the Minister, K.S. Williams, in 1924 with over £3,000 to purchase the domain. It was gazetted in 1926 and a domain board appointed to manage the day-to-day running.
They cut tracks and employed a caretaker to keep the picnic areas stocked with firewood and the facilities maintained. This arrangement continued until 1979, when guardianship was handed back to the Crown.
Most of the Mahia peninsula is bare of trees but this reserve protects 374 hectares of native bush. It’s a loop walk along a ridge and then down to the valley bottom where you cross the same stream several times. There’s been rain so the track was muddy in places.
The walk is supposed to take 2 hours but it was more than that, perhaps because of the mud.
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⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
History
According to Māori legend, Mahia Peninsula is Te matau a Maui – the fish-hook of Maui.
The Takitimu waka landed here in the 14th century.
Ngāti Rongomaiwahine is the Maori iwi (tribe) traditionally centred in the Māhia Peninsula. It is closely connected to the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi. Kahungungu visited Mahia after hearing stories about Rongomaiwahine, a beautiful woman. He married her and many local people are descended from them.
Rongomaiwahine was descended from Ruawharo, the tohunga (navigator) of the Tākitimuwaka (Māori migration canoe), and Popoto, the commander of the Kurahaupō waka.
From 2007 to 2010 Mahia became known for the presence of Moko, a dolphin.
In Coronation Reserve (Piko te Rangi) on the eastern side of the peninsula is a natural rock basin that was used by Bishop William Williams to baptise local Maori. A small cleft in the rocks was said to have been used to store Bibles.
It reminds me of a megalithic Bullaun bowl. We didn’t see a heap of rocks like this anywhere else on the peninsula.
Links
A bullaun (Irish: bullán; from a word cognate with “bowl” and French bol) is the term used for the depression in a stone which is often water filled. Natural rounded boulders or pebbles may sit in the bullaun. Source: Wikipedia
The Takitimu waka (canoe) was tapu (sacred) and the waka was not permitted to carry any woman or food on its journey. So the account of the Takitimu appears to be semi-mythological, although I have no doubt there was a real waka captained by a real man named Tamatea.
Wikipedia states Tākitimu was a waka (canoe) with whakapapa throughout the Pacific particularly with Samoa, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand in ancient times. The Tākitumu was an important waka in the Cook Islands with one of the districts on the main island of Rarotonga consequently named after it.
The birth of Kahungunu Tamatea Ure Haea had three wives, who were sisters: Te Onoono-i-waho, Iwipūpū and Te Moana-i-kauia, the daughters of Ira and Tokerauwahine. With Iwipūpū he had a son, whom they named Kahungunu. Kahungunu (also known as Kahu-hunuhunu) was born at the Tinotino pā in Ōrongotea (later named Kaitāia). His father subsequently moved to the Tauranga area, where Kahungunu grew to adulthood.
Rocket Lab built on the Eastern end of Mahi Peninsular not far from impoverished Wairoa and Fraser town ( Te Kopu) where the great non weapon bearing Waitaha waka Takatimu landed.
This is a small bush reserve alongside the banks of the Tukituki River between Waipukurau and Waipawa. The bush is mainly comprised of kahikatea trees which love swampy ground.
The bush is not far from the area where my forefathers settled in Hawkes Bay. Sadly, ninety-nine percent of the bush was felled and milled. Growing up in Hawkes Bay I never saw or heard a Tui, or any of our native birds, until a visit to a bush reserve in 1970 when I was eleven.
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Just down the road from the bush reserve is the site of Kaitotoa Pa. The site used to be a food gathering place but it became a permanent settlement in the 1840s when the Maori traded harakeke (dressed flax) to the Europeans who used it for rope and ship rigging.
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.
This is a small bush remnant between Wanganui and Wellington overlooking Lake Waiwiri, a dune lake. This area is a rare example of an uninterrupted transition from coastal wetland to mature, dry terrace forest. The whole coast was once covered in this dense and luxurious bush and sadly it’s all gone.
There are two islands on the lake, the larger is Papaitonga and the smaller is Papawhārangi. The smaller island was constructed by the Muaūpoko (Ngati Tara) people in the late 18th to early 19th century.
The reserve is home to the endangered birds like the elusive bittern and spotless crake.
People from the Muaūpoko tribe lived on the islands in the lake but they were wiped out in a battle against Te Rauparaha.
After the local Muaūpoko tribe attacked a group including Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha, they became a target for reprisal raids by Ngāti Toa. Despite retreating to artificial islands they had built in Lakes Papaitonga and Horowhenua, large numbers of Muaūpoko were killed, and survivors fled to the nearby Tararua Range.
The Evening Post published this item on Papaitonga on 6 November 1911:
Papaitonga – NATIONAL RESERVE?
Everything is eerie and silent; there are kiwi on the islet, but you only hear them at night, and the doleful morepork keeps them company. At a turn in the path, in the glooms of the tapu grove, an eerie thing confronts one — a human skull, stuck up on a short pole, grinning as if in menace, a silent warning to “keep off the grass !” This, one finds, is an isle of skulls, a Maori Golgotha, and over the ancient battle-ground and burial-ground that skull on its tapu stick mounts guard. A few yards further on, and in a little open space on the summit of the island, a memorial of another and more picturesque kind is found. A great canoe, an olden war-canoe, carved and painted, rears itself above the trees; one end is sunk firmly in the ground and stoutly braced to keep it upright. It is a stately memento mori, tapu to the manes of the tribal dead.
Sitting here on this thrice-tapu island with a Ngati-Ruakawa companion from the little village of Muhunoa, a mile or so away, one heard some thrilling tale of Papaitonga’s pact. For this quiet island was a lively spot in the cannibal days, the early twenties of last century, when Rauparaha and Rangihaeata and their musket-armed Northern warriors happened along. Papaitonga, like. Horowhenua, and in fact all this country from Paekakarikei to Manawatu and Rangitikei, was owned by the Muaupoko and Rangitane, and some kindred tribes. The Muanpoko had a stronghold on this islet; a stockade, or “tuwatawata,” encircled it There were many canoes on the lake; when danger threatened the people withdrew to the island, taking all their dug-outs with them.
It was in about the beginning of the year 1823 that Rauparaha and his Ngatitoa-and Ngati-Awa invaded and captured this district. Muaupoko brought their fate on themselves, to a certain extent, by a massacre in this vicinity; but the wily Rauparaha had intended to take the place anyway, so the murders only brought matters to a head a little quicker.
It is believed this pataka was built at Taheke on the shores of Lake Rotoiti in the 1870s.
It is said to have been built out of a large war canoe which was drawn overland from Maketu, on the coast of the Bay of Plenty, to Rotorua, Lake, a distance of about thirty miles, by Hongi, when that great Nga-Puhi warrior attacked Mokoia Island, in Rotorua Lake, in the year 1822. Source: THE DOMINION MUSEUM. Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 56, 4 September 1911, Page 6
In 1886 the pataka was purchased by Gilbert Mair, a soldier and government agent who lived among Te Arawa. He bought it for his brother-in-law Sir Walter Buller, a prominent naturalist and politician.
After being exhibited in London and Melbourne during the 1880s Te Takinga was erected on Sir Walter Buller’s estate. When he died the Buller family donated the house to the Dominion Museum.
Horowhenua Land Dispute : The arrival of other tribes in the Wellington region from 1822 onwards led to a number of conflicts over land ownership. Shown above are the opening lines of an article that was published in the Māori newspaper Te Waka Maori o Niu Tirani in December 1873. The article, printed in Māori and English, outlines a dispute over land at Horowhenua between the Muaūpoko and Ngāti Raukawa tribes.
Muaūpoko were drawn into the wars over land and authority in the 1860s, under the leadership of Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui (known to Pākehā as Major Kemp). Te Keepa saw the conflict as an opportunity to exact revenge on tribes that had humiliated Muaūpoko in the past. After the wars he used his influence to regain lands at Horowhenua through the Native Land Court. Some of this territory was sold in the 1880s for railway and settlement land, but subsequent intertribal disputes about its ownership led to protracted court hearings, parliamentary debate and finally a royal commission in 1896. In the process, Muaūpoko lost more land. Some was taken to pay for the commission costs, and Walter Buller, who had acted as Te Keepa’s lawyer, took Lake Papaitonga in Horowhenua as his fee.
The Pettifar and Gilchrist loop tracks lead you down a series of terraces to the Pohangina River. Both walks make use of the Old Coach road, the original horse and cart track that wended its way through the Pohangina Valley.
We chose the Gilchrist loop, which passed through a mixed kahikatea and totara forest. Kahikatea Trees grow in the wetter areas. An abandoned tree nursery on this loop was the source of most of the large poplars now visible throughout the beautiful and picturesque valley.
This beautiful reserve is the remnant of a forest that used to cover the area. The trees are kahikatea (white pine), totara, beech, matai, tawa and kowhai. The track forms a figure of 8 loop which we had a bit of trouble figuring out. We took the loop which follows the Tangarewai stream.
There’s a large covered shelter and barbeque area at the entrance to the walk, provided by the Takapau Lions Club.
My ancestors settled in this area and cleared the bush on the Ruataniwha plains for farmland. I’m glad this and nearby A’Deanes Bush were spared the axe and the forests also survived the bush fires in the 1880’s.
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My friends on this walk are distant cousins, we three are descended from the same German couple and were there to learn some history.
In 1871, 250,000 acres (101,171 hectares) was purchased from the Maori for the Seventy Mile Bush, and this land was settled by assisted immigrants from Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1872. The Danes had no experience in felling forests, but all the groups managed to clear the land and establish small farms. The townships of Norsewood, Dannevirke and Woodville were located on the new road and rail route through the bush.
My Great-Great Grandfather Wilhelm Dassler wanted to settle on the rail route at Makotuku, but instead was allocated land at Makaretu, an out of the way settlement where he had to carve his farm out of the bush.
I know they were affected by the bush fires of 1885-86.
This is a bush remnant growing on an old river terrace next to the Rangitikei River. The bush had been preserved by E O Pryce and the land was gifted by him to the Rangitikei Scenery Preservation and Tree Planting Society in 1941, on threat of the forest being milled under War Regulations. The Society was dissolved and formed the Rangitikei section of Forest & Bird in 1961.
The reserve is not well frequented and we had the place all to ourselves.
There are some noteable trees in the reserve, including Kauri, which are growing well out of their range. There’s also an enormous Kowhai tree on the red track and Matai on the yellow track.
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