Whanganui River Walk

Walk #84, 19th March 2022

Today’s walk was along the banks of the historic Whanganui River, from the town bridge to the Dublin St bridge along Somme Parade Anzac Parade. The stroll included Kowai Park, a wonderful children’s park, on the Anzac Pde side of the river by the Dublin St bridge, and the James McGregor Memorial park. This park contains an arboretum with a collection of trees dating back to 1917.

Starting off at Durie Hill, the suburb where we now live, we walked down the stairs by the Durie Hill Tower to the river. There’s a historic elevator inside the hill but the tunnel is currently blocked by a slip. The elevator was constructed during World War 1 and the flu pandemic 100 years ago and finished in 1919. It makes our suburb kind of unique in NZ.

Durie Hill Tunnel and Elevator

Durie Hill elevator

Before roads, the river was the main route north. A fleet of paddlesteamers used to ply the river from Wanganui to Pipiriki and back. With a length of 290 kilometres (180 mi), the Whanganui is the country’s third-longest river.

Two riverboats have been restored, the Waimarie and the Wairua.

Here’s three interesting facts about the river:-

Shakespeare Cliff is across the river from where the riverboat is moored. In Maori tradition a taniwha named Tutae-poroporo is said to have lived in the river at Shakespeare Cliff (Taumaha-aute) where he intercepted and swallowed canoes passing up and down the river sending a great wave rolling before him.

In 1867 Senor Vertelli crossed the Whanganui River on a tightrope. He offered to take a passenger across in a wheelbarrow but there were no takers.

We also have mild geothermal activity in the Whanganui area where occasional streams of sulphurous gas bubble up from the riverbed. The last eruption was Westmere Lake; on 12 Feb 1929 there was a sort of eruption from the lake that covered the vegetation in a blueish sulphurous sediment.

Walk #18 Wanganui

Links

Riverboat Wairua

PS Waimarie Is Relaunched In 1999 (3News NZ)

Waimarie

James McGregor Memorial Park

Kowhai Park, the Aboretum

Related walk

Here’s another walk a bit further up the Wanganui River, between Wanganui and Upokongraro : Waitaha Pa, Wanganui

Savage Crescent, Palmerston North

Walk #81 1st February 2022

I’d just finished cancer treatment at Palmerston Nth Hospital and decided to celebrate by going for a walk before heading home.

This was one of the more unusual walks from the book. Instead of a walk through the bush, or along the coast, or in the open country, the walk was in a suburb.

Savage Cres is in the book as it’s described as one of the best examples of unaltered early state housing.

One of the key promises of prime minister Michael Joseph Savage was to provide good housing for New Zealand’s working population. The election of his government heralded a boom in state housing that lasted for decades.

Unlike other NZ leaders, this prime minister kept his promises. He got it done. He is worthy of respect. His picture sits on a shelf in prime minister Jacinda Adern’s office. He’d be shocked at how our state housing stock has been sold off by successive governments, and dismayed at the broken promises … promises like Jacinda Adern’s KiwiBuild, which was scrapped in the first year.

I didn’t think much of the suburb. The state houses were sturdy and the gardens were all neatly kept, but the people weren’t all New Zealanders and some were noisy. It didn’t seem like a community. A domestic was going on in one house and the police were at another. I decided to cut the walk short and head back to my car. Just before reaching the park I heard a guy yell out the police were there because a car had been stolen. I hurried back to my own vehicle.

Would I recommend this walk? Yeah nah.

Walk: Manawatu 27

New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage – 1938 Speech (Remastered Audio)

KiwiBuild failure is more than a broken promise, it’s a betrayal

KiwiBuild: Yet another failure revealed

City of Rotorua

Walk 59, 23 Jan 2021

The walk starts at the very Edwardian Government Gardens. From there, we walked to the lakefront, then Ohinemutu and finally Kurau Park. We walked back through town and finished at the Princes Gate.

The highlight of the walk for me is the window at St Faith’s Church, Ohinemutu, of Jesus walking on the water wearing a feathered cloak. The soldier’s graves next to the church are buried above ground because it’s a thermal area.

Ohinemutu is a Ngati Whakaue settlement. They’re an Arawa tribe. The 1887 carved meeting house of Ngati Whakaue is named for the captain of the Te Arawa canoe, Tama-te-Kapua.

Rotorua is the town my husband considers his hometown. His family moved there from the USA when he was twelve so the walk was a trip down memory lane for him.

Walk: 22 Rotorua City

Links

The Bath House Story

Ohinemutu St Faith’s Church and Tamatekapua Meeting House

Rotorua Lakes Council walkways

Mangaweka

Walk 26 and 27, Mangaweka, 1st Jan 2020

Mangaweka is a sleepy place where the Rangitikei River flows past cliffs of white papa. The very grandly named main street of Mangaweka is now devoid of traffic since State Highway 1 bypassed the main street in the late 1970s.

It’s a town where time seems to have stopped. The unaltered buildings in “Broadway” are from a previous century.

Many buildings stand empty, but Mangaweka still has a school, library, hotel, and a DC3 plane on the main highway which operated as a tearoom.

Manga means stream and weka means woodhen.

Mangaweka was one of the first towns on the North Island Main Trunk Railway to get electricity. The Mangaweka Power Station project commenced in 1911, originally it was intended to serve as a water resevoir.

Little remains of the tiny power station and a small building containing historic photos shelters the site. The walk to the resevoir intake is across the road. The path is through a beautiful small gorge which follows the Mangawharaiki River. The resevoir is intact but the brick-lined intake tunnel to the right is blocked by a log which wedged there in 1937, causing the power station to finally close down.

Mangaweka street panorama -resized — Broadway, Mangaweka

Walk: Manawatu 22

Mangaweka Scenic Reserve

I think there was supposed to be a viewing point by a Kahikatea tree but we couldn’t find it. The track is not well maintained. The walks are not clearly marked but there’s a good view of the town of Mangaweka from the road by the entrance. Part of the walk is on the old main trunk railway line which is littered with broken pieces of the white papa rock. There’s a large matai and other trees like rimu, tawa and titoki trees in the reserve.

Mangaweka panorama -resized

Walk: Manawatu 21

Links

Kawhatau Dam from a drone

MANGAWEKA POWER STATION

Mangaweka

Mangaweka Scenic Reserve

History

Early History of Rangitikei by TW Downes, 1909

Haiku Path, Katikati

Walk 12: Haiku Path, Katikati, 19 Jan 2019

Every New Zealand town has it’s ‘thing’ and for the Bay of Plenty town of Katikati it is haiku.

A quiet walk alongside the Uretara River in Katikati, behind the main street, features thirty boulders engraved with haiku. It is the largest collection of “haiku stones” in English in the world.

Haiku Path, Katikati

There were some murals I liked as well. This one was my favourite as I’m a descendant of settlers who, in coming to New Zealand from Europe, Scotland and England, made the longest journey.

Finally, there’s a small scale replica of a kauri driving dam in the main street on the left as you’re heading for Tauranga. To see a working model, join us on our walk to the Kauaeranga Valley model dam near Thames.

Walk: Bay of Plenty 3

Whakatane

Walk 11: Whakatane, 19 Jan 2019

Whakatane

Click here for the video

The walk starts off at the rock of Pohaturoa. Matters of war and peace were discussed and debated here. The rock now serves as a World War 1 memorial.

Most of the original cave in the rock has been replaced by a road. The remaining arch has an ugly frame under it.

Desecration is the word that comes to mind when I look at what remains. It’s a pity there wasn’t any forethought about preserving the landmarks when the town was planned out. They should have listened to the Maori.

The town is pretty. There’s a marina behind the main street where you could get on a tour for White Island. (You can’t go there now because the volcano erupted in Dec 2019.)

Pohaturoa rock

left: Me at Pohuturoa rock and right: the entrance to Muriwai’s cave

20190119_155415-1500

History:

Marae

In local Māori tradition, the Mātaatua waka (ocean-going canoe) was the first to land at Whakatane, approximately 700 years ago and many iwi can trace their origins to ancestors on the Mātaatua canoe.

Toroa, the captain of the Mataatua canoe, had been instructed by his father to look for three landmarks in his search for Whakatane – the Wairere Falls, Muriwai’s cave, and Irakewa rock.

“There is a land far away that is a good place for you to go to. There is a waterfall at that place and a cave in the hillside for Muriwai. The rock standing in the river is myself.”

Te Toka o Irakewa (Irakewa rock) was destroyed in by the harbour board in 1924. The rock’s remains can be seen by the riverbank – but we did see Wairere Falls and Muriwai’s cave.

Walk: Bay of Plenty 15

Links

Historic Trail

Whakatane Historical Society

Pōhaturoa, a rock in the centre of Whakatāne, is now a memorial to those who fell in the First World War. But long before this the rock was a sacred place for Ngāti Awa. In its tunnel (once a cave) young warriors were tattooed, and in the nearby Waiewe Stream newborn children were immersed in a form of baptism. Twelve Ngāti Awa chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi here on 12 June 1840.

Toi

“Ngāti Awa are the descendants of Te Tini o Toi, the original inhabitants of the region, and the people of Mataatua waka.”

According to Elsdon Best, the task of Ngati-Awa when dwelling at Whakatane, Ohiwa, and Opotiki was continuous fighting against Maruiwi and Ngati-Ruatamore.

Unfortunately this iwi, along with other Maori, believe they own the water. Their website contains this statement in Maori: “We, the indigenous people of Mataatua, believe that the freshwater of this country is a legacy from our ancestors, down to the generations that live in this changing world, and to the rising generations.”

In New Zealand, no-one owns the water. If we tried to make it so all New Zealanders owned the water, the Maori will say the water is theirs, and ownership would turn into a political hot potato.

Chinese bottling plants like Nongfu Spring take advantage of “no-one owning the water.” They take it for cents on the dollar and turn into plastic. This is how the Resource Management Act is exploited by foreigners.

“It’s really, really difficult for an everyday New Zealander to navigate this kind of system when the government is relying on us, as citizens, to uphold the RMA. If you look at it, they spend $30 million a year enticing overseas companies to come here, but only spend less than a million supporting everyday kiwis who are fighting gross consents like this in court. It’s diabolical really.” Source: Community takes fight against water bottling plant to High Court

1818 – Bay of Plenty Ravaged: Episode 25 (Musket Wars #7) In January 1818 Te Morenga, a Ngapuhi chief, lead a war party to the Bay of Plenty. A month later, Hongi Hika lead another war party to the same area. The Bay of Plenty became a killing ground as the musket armed Ngapuhi wreak havoc on local Maori.