Hakarimata Reserve is in the hills between Ngaruawahia and Huntly. The range of hills, Haakari-kai-mata (shortened to Hakarimata) was named after an abundance of food from a feast held between the Waikato people and nearby Ngāti Maniapoto.
The reserve has one of the largest kauri trees in the Waikato which somehow escaped the axe and a beautiful kauri grove. The trees are on the Kauri Loop track.
According to local lore Ngāti Kahupungapunga were said to be the people that populated the area around Ngāruawāhia/Karakariki. The original name of the Hākarimata is a denotion to these people, it originally was called whāwhāpunga – or pungapunga whāwhā – this was one of the many caverns of the Kahupungapunga people. There were remnants of these people who lived in caverns out west towards Te Pahu also.
Hamilton Gardens is a public garden which, for now, is free to enter. The 54-hectare park is based on the banks of the Waikato River. There are 18 themed gardensto wander through.
It’s definitely worth a return visit but car parking could be a problem, the car park was full when we arrived.
Te Parapara is New Zealand’s first traditional Maori garden. It showcases traditional practices, materials and ceremonies relating to food production and storage, drawn from the knowledge of local Maori which has been passed down the generations.
Huka Falls is a popular waterfall to visit. The clear blue \ green water thunders through a narrow gap and roars over a spectacular three metre drop at 200,000 litres per second.
Huka means to foam or froth.
We started the walk from Spa Park . The start of the walk began near a popular swimming hole where a hot spring joins the Waikato River.
This walk changed the way I look at the past. I’ve learned about the New Zealand land wars and now have a better appreciation for the hurt caused to the Maori. The actions of the British in the 1860’s caused injustice we’re still paying for.
Overlooking SH1 and the Waikato river.
This is from the information boards: “Overlooking the confluence of the Whangamarino and Waikato Rivers, this old pa was briefly re-occupied in July by a Maori force led by the Ngati Mahuta chief Te Huiraima.
They were opposing the advance of British forces along the Koheroa Ridge to the north.
Thirty Maori warriors died in the skirmishing, Te Huiraima among them. They were eventually forced back and moved south across the Whangamarino River.
By August 1863 Lieutenant General Cameron’s soldiers had occupied the deserted pa and built a redoubt nearby – Whangamarino Redoubt, 150 metres to the east.
Today, the main features on the pa is this ditch and bank defence cut across the end of the ridge. The bank is likely to have been surmounted with timber palisades.”
Whangamarino Redoubt
From this site, the British shelled Meremere which is 3-4 kms south.
War in the Waikato
Governor George Grey ordered the troops led by Cameron to invade the Waikato, because of their lust for land. “Ultimately, the war was fought over one million acres of fertile farmland that, by mid 1864, was entirely under British control.”
“It was (Grey’s general) Cameron, not William Hobson at Waitangi, who sounded the death knell of Maori independance.” Unsurprisingly and understandably it looks like Cameron’s image has been slashed at.
Travelling home from our holiday at the Chateau in the early spring of 2018, we pulled off SH1 at Atiamuri, the site of a dam and a prominent hill called Pohaturoa Rock. I’d zoomed past it for years without realising its significance.
The hill brooded over the flowing dark green water of the Waikato river. Eventually we found a trail along the river bank but the history from the sign board didn’t say a lot. Reading it I understood some people got killed;
“Ngāti Kahupungapunga (possibly a surviving Moa hunter tribe) occupied this site as their final stronghold but lack of food finally forced them to abandon their refuge and only five escaped with their lives. The tribe were killed by invading Ngati Raukawa of the Tainui tribe, and by 1840 the site was left empty.”
I had to dig to find out more about the tribes of this area.
The information board on the South Waikato trails seemed more interesting. There were five Waikato trails and we could have followed this path to the Whakamaru Dam if we’d had time.
As well it informed us of “talking poles,” a series of carved poles at Tokoroa, the next town north on State Highway 1, where a fierce looking pou or pole represented Raukawa, the main Tainui tribe of south Waikato.
Even though the town of Tokoroa is named after a chief of the Ngāti Kahupungapunga, there is nothing to learn of them. It goes to show history is written by the victors.
A newspaper article from 2001 proclaimed the Kahupungapunga to be a people of mystery who were cut down like pines;
NZ Herald, Pohaturoa: a historical site of rare significance
“In 1995 it was decided to harvest the pines from the hill. Before work started, however, CHH staff consulted the local iwi and sent Perry Fletcher, a local historian who had first climbed the hill in 1972, to investigate the site:
“Fletcher, well, he stumbled on a historical site of rare significance. What he found were 31 whare sites, plus gardens and numerous storage pits estimated to match the number of families that once lived in the pa – a well-preserved insight into New Zealand’s pre-colonial past. Fretting that trees could fall at any time due to old age, he warned that “if these trees are not removed they will cause significant damage to the historic features.”
At last, someone was paying attention to Pohaturoa’s story.”
The pine trees date from 1927. A photo from 1923 shows it looking quite bare. It would be nice to see the land set aside as a reserve, with a sign board about the Ngāti Kahupungapunga people and the slopes of the mountain replanted with native trees.
Walk: Central North Island 33
Who were the Ngati Kahupungapunga?
“The first people believed to have arrived in the region, says local historian Perry Fletcher, are known as the Tini o Toi. “That was just a loose name for these ancient people. They were spread throughout the country from one of the original peoples – you had Kupe and you had Toi,” he says.
Some say that Arawa explorer Tia came there and his children lived in the area, but the first people known to occupy Pohaturoa were a people of mystery, the Kahupungapunga. None can say where they came from, and in a final stand at Pohaturoa 400 years ago they were cut down like today’s pines, suffering what the Waitangi Tribunal called “their final extinction as a tribal identity.” Source: NZ Herald, Pohaturoa – the story of a New Zealand hill.
It appeared the Ngati Kahupungapunga were just a small, transient bunch of hunter gatherers. But were they? The following year one of our walks took us to the Lake Okataina. The information board at the start of the track stated the first people to settle in the area were the myriads of Maruiwi followed by myriads of Ruatamore, who were later to adopt the name Kahupungapunga. Myriads meant an innumerable number of these people.
So the Kahupungapunga tribe weren’t just a small group at Atiamuri. Where did they go? In the quiet of the lockdowns of 2020 I decided to do some research.
The name Pungapunga only exists now as the names of localities and a river. The Pungapunga once lived around Lake Okataina in the Rotorua Lakes area. There’s a track from the Outdoor Education Centre which we explored called the Waipungapunga track.
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